Looking to create a point of difference on customer service, health fund, Bupa, has launched a WhatsApp messaging channel that customers can use instead of waiting on hold.

​A virtual agent going by the name of ‘Zoe’ has been launched by the South Australian health department in response to a surge in COVID-19-related queries to the state’s hospital switchboards and the 000 line.

The University of Sydney has developed a chatbot utilising artificial intelligence (AI) to help it handle the raft of COVID-19-related student inquires it’s fielding as a result of the pandemic, which has seen classes move online, facilities closed and students unable to attend university.

The Art Gallery of NSW is looking to bring more engaging mobile capability to future exhibitions following the use of a chatbot that put its Japan Supernatural exhibition right into the hands of potential visitors.

These days, most marketers recognise customer experience (CX) is vital for a healthy, profitable brand. But while most marketers want to offer good CX, how best to go about it seems to be the sticking point.

Consumers globally are demanding brands offer them direct messaging as a way of communicating, a new report claims.

A new study has found, by 2030, 67 per cent of customer engagement will be handled by smart machines. However, will this simply be trading empathy for efficiency?

Picture a Venn diagram containing the words ‘fast’, ‘cheap’ and ‘good’ in three separate circles. Conventional wisdom suggests the best any organisation can hope to achieve when designing a product or service is two out of three. If you want something fast and cheap, it won’t be good, or if you want something good and fast, it won’t be cheap, and so on.

Australian consumers are known for their love of sport. But for any new team that wants to build an audience, establishing a brand among so much competing noise can be a difficult challenge.

Few people have successfully dragged a sport that was popular during the Parthian Empire into the heart of one Asia-Pacific’s most modern cities.

​Account-based marketing is front and centre for Marketo under its new owner, Adobe, and the group is claiming a world-first on conversational ABM to prove it.

Brand owners often talk about their brand having a personality. Some are sassy, others are authoritative, and a few are cheeky. But when it comes to bringing the brand to life through a chatbot interface, focusing in on the personality might be the last thing you want to do.

Setting clear expectations and building trustworthiness are two vital ingredients every organisation should be paying close attention to as they start to transform their customer approach using artificial intelligence (AI).

UBank has launched its third artificial intelligence-based customer assistance offering and what it claims is the first digital human home loan application assistant.

Being able to deliver a virtual personalised assistant to every staff member and student on campus is a step closer to reality for the University of Canberra after it signed up to a new artificial intelligence-powered chatbot platform.

How to successfully combine automation and AI with human intelligence to optimise customer interactions digitally took centre stage at the latest CMO and Bold360 roundtable series in Melbourne. Here are pictorial highlights from our marketing and customer engagement leaders event.

In an era where making things easy for the customer has become paramount, it is not surprising to see many brands turning to chatbots to resolve customer queries quickly.

Chatbots are the customer-experience (CX) buzz technology of 2018, and there is no doubt that when implemented properly, they can improve CX for thousands of consumers, freeing up call centre staff to focus on higher-value conversations.

Increased sales conversion, more efficient customer service support and better business decision making are just some of the benefits Progressive Direct claims it’s experiencing after overhauling customer management systems internally.

No one would doubt it’s been a tough decade for retailers, and many have failed in the face of digital disruption and transformation. But for Salesforce senior VP of retail and consumer goods, Shelley Bransten, the rise of relationship-based engagement is offering up reasons to be increasingly optimistic about the retail market moving forward.

Companies looking to automate all their customer experience using artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning are likely to fail at delivering the seamless, post-channel CX experiences customers want.