Today we have special guest Aarde Cosseboom, Senior Director of Technology and Product for Global Member Services for an E-Commerce company called Textile, and Vikas Bhambri, SVP, Sales and CX at Kustomer, 20 year CRM Contact Center Lifer. We discuss how AI and self-service bots can be utilized to solve issues in customer service. Bots are evolving and they need to be able to move from one platform to another, such as from your website to email, whatsapp, facebook, etc. The new term for this type of bot is IVA, Intelligent Virtual Assistant, which is an omnichannel bot experience. We discuss the importance of letting your customer know they’re talking to a bot so they don’t get frustrated when they ask more complex questions, and when to hand off the customer from a bot to a live agent. We wrap up the conversation with the role agents play in helping improve this technology. Listen to the full conversation for more insights. https://www.kustomer.com/guides/how-pandemic-affects-customer-service-organizations/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=coronavirusAarde and Vikas intro 0:31 What do AI and Self-service bots solve? 1:05How should one acquire an IVA? 7:01What are best practices for a hand off from a bot to a real person? 14:17“People will say ‘Look, AI’s gonna put everyone out of a job. We won’t need sales people, we won’t need marketers, we won’t need customer service people.’ No, because the role will change. Because the technology is great, but you still need people that will go and will optimize the program behind it.” 17:51Find Aarde Cosseboomhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/aarde-cosseboom-99755546/Vikas Bhambrihttps://www.linkedin.com/in/vikasbhambri/https://www.kustomer.com/leadership/vikas-bhambri/