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Pega Is Showing Companies How To Put Empathy Into Their Workflows

This article is more than 4 years old.

When you think of AI systems and business workflows, it’s hard to imagine that they can preserve and enable better human to human interaction. This is because most AI systems don’t. What separates effective AI Systems from the ineffective ones is often the degree that the AI System helps the customer. To measure this, you will need to zoom in on the relationship between your company and your customers. Does your existing AI-enabled system help or hurt your company’s relationship with your customers? This is the question that Pegasystems grapples with every day. It is in part why they are the leader in offering AI-enabled CRM solutions that are so effective for their customers. 

This month, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Vince Jeffs, the Senior Director of Product Strategy – Marketing, AI & Decisioning at Pegasystems. We spoke extensively about what it means to build AI-enabled solutions that not only optimize for efficiency, but also maximize empathy and enhance relationships. 

Forbes:How does Pega integrate empathy into the CRM workflow?

Jeffs: “Empathy is really about putting relationships at the heart of your system. You want to develop your system in a way that puts the relationship between you and your customer at the center.  There are a few components to emphasizing this relationship. First and foremost, you have to understand the individuals that you are marketing to, selling to or providing services for. This means that you have to be a good listener, and so in system terms, you have to build systems that can listen well. Often, it means that you have to bring in the right data about your customers, generate deeper insights from customer behaviors. It’s not about the raw data but the depth of insights. Listening to the customer also means honoring your customers. This means honoring both their privacy and preferences and putting emphasis on things like transparency. Essentially, you are wearing your knowledge of the customer on your sleeve, and you are saying, this is what I know about you, reaffirming you’ve given me permission to use your information. You want your customer to give you validation, so if the customer says that you are wrong, you work to fix the issue and not make the same mistake again. Finally, you have to be fair. Customers are not always right, but, you still need to treat the customer with respect and be fair to the customer. This means setting boundaries of what you can do and you can’t do. You have to set the right expectation for the customer.”

First and foremost, you have to understand the individuals that you are marketing to, selling to or providing services for. This means that you have to be a good listener, and so in system terms, you have to build systems that can listen well.

Vince Jeffs

What is selfish automation? 

Jeffs: “Selfish automation is when automation is only centered around cost efficiency and effectiveness for the company. You are not thinking about how the customer is viewing, reacting to, and potentially suffering from this automation. Sometimes, customers are not prepared for automation. You need a period where customers are still getting used to automation and can fall back to the agent experience. So, to understand the process of automation through the customer’s eyes is really important.”

What is the alternative from selfish automation? 

Jeffs: “I like to think that personalized treatment is the alternative for selfish automation. We have a broad spectrum of people and everyone’s an individual. As an organization, how do we treat this broad spectrum of customers? Everyone can have a slightly personalized customer experience to the extent that your system can deliver that. Ultimately, organizations that view the customer as individuals, look at how they react to the solutions implemented, and can deliver personalized experiences for customers are the ones that will succeed.” 

When does Artificial Intelligence come into the CRM and add value for the customer? 

Jeffs: “The intelligence interplay between sales and marketing is important. Marketing is trying to nurture the customer with experiences - maybe host an event that customers come to that helps sales progress deals. Marketing can use AI to determine the right customers to invite. Another area where intelligence comes in is when the customers progress further along in the buying opportunity. AI can be used to identify key contacts, which becomes opportunity intelligence. Essentially, the AI-enabled CRM system functions as a coach and provides the recommended actions and insights to empower and focus the sales, marketing, and customer teams to do their jobs better.”

What is the empathetic loop that can be created for customers?

Jeffs: “When the marketer or salesperson engages with the client, what he or she delivers should be a very customized solution enabled through empathetic data gathering. For example, when the customer calls the contact center, customer service can use the information to solve the customer’s problem in a very targeted way. In turn, the agent can feedback on any new customer preferences learned during that interaction. This is the empathetic loop that pinpoints to the customer’s needs in a specific way to help the customer. I like to use the example of going to a car dealership. If I walk in and look for a “safe car” for my family, I wouldn’t engage with a salesperson who recommends a Mustang to me. But, I’m inclined to continue the conversation with the salesperson who helps me find a “safe car.” On the other hand, I could walk into a dealership and not know what I want to buy. In this case, my conversation with my salesperson should be a dialog around what I want. Through the process, based on feedback, recommendations can get more specific and customized as the relationship progresses. This way at the end, there’s a tailored recommendation for me.”

Through the process, based on feedback, recommendations can get more specific and customized as the relationship progresses. This way at the end, there’s a tailored recommendation for me.

Vince Jeffs

What is the basis of creating an empathetic AI solution?

Jeffs: “So the basis of an empathetic AI solution really lies in being able to start and maintain an on-going dialogue with your customers. If you have a website, when your customers click something on the website, that’s starting a dialogue between the customer and your company. If your customer called your customer service department yesterday, you want to remember this conversation for when the customer calls again a month from now. Maybe the customer wasn’t ready to buy from you yesterday, but perhaps your customer will be ready to buy a month from now. Your goal is  to seamlessly carry on the conversation a month from now.” 

How does Pega manage the aggressive timeline of 3 months onboarding of new clients? 

Jeffs: “We use the micro journey approach. We look at what channel, what use case, what outcome and what area of struggles are top of mind for the client.  We help clients pick the issues that are least costly but have the most impact on value. Usually, it falls within the 3 months timeline. The beauty of the Pega Platform is that it is quick to install and integrate. Once you finish the initial micro journey, then you’ve laid down the foundation for your CRM house. After that, you just continuously identify high-priority micro journeys. Each time your client implements another micro journey, they realize incremental benefits. Often, after just a few micro journeys, they see huge benefits.” 

What would your advice be for business leaders who want to implement workflows into their organization to be more customer centric and incorporate more empathy? 

Jeffs: “I would say to always think about your customer’s journey. Think about how you would handle customer product needs, disputes, warranty issues, customer returns, and even collections. Think about fulfillment. Are you fulfilling your customer’s orders as promised? When you try to automate a part of their journey, think about whether there is friction and you can remove it. But also consider whether  the change disrupts your customer’s life? Will it be worth it? There’s a balance between your customer’s needs and your needs for efficiency. No organization can fix all of these issues at once. It’s about prioritizing high impact issues and balancing the experiences and adjust for them in increments.” 

Think about how you would handle customer product needs, disputes, warranty issues, customer returns, and even collections. Think about fulfillment. Are you fulfilling your customer’s orders as promised? When you try to automate a part of their journey, think about whether there is friction and you can remove it. But also consider whether  the change disrupts your customer’s life? Will it be worth it?

Vince Jeffs

How does an organization decide on whether to stay with robotic automation of their workflows or move to implement a more comprehensive AI solution?

Jeffs, “I think the decision is often very simple. Are you going to just put a band-aid on it or fix it for good? There are often illusions of improvement along the way. But, what often cues you into the need for a comprehensive solution is when your employees are still stressed out working with a band-aid solution. This is when you need a more intelligent backbone that can deliver the processes to empower your employees. Ultimately, you want your employees to be able to use the AI solutions to do their jobs more effectively. In the end, you want both your customers and your employees to be happy. What does that solution look like for your organization? Delivering a fully digital AI solution is great, but ultimately, you want that solution to deliver both great  customer experience and great employee experience. At Pega, we really try to provide business excellence. This means that we bake best practices from our consulting work with clients into our products. This way, we can deliver more continuous value for all of our customers.” 



About Vince

Vince leads product strategy for Pega’s Marketing, AI, and Decisioning solutions, and has spoken at numerous conferences and written extensively on the subject.  

Prior to Pega, Vince was with Unica, SAS, Rapp Collins / Omnicom, and UPS. He has over 30 years of experience with product management, consulting, marketing technology, strategic planning, and customer analytics, and has helped implement customer engagement solutions across a variety of industries.  

Vince has a BSBA in Marketing from Georgetown (Washington DC), an MS in Database Systems / Operations Research from Univ. of MD, is a certified Professional Direct Marketer.

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