ARMONK, N.Y., Oct. 18, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM)
today announced that it will supply field services and remote call
center solutions to enhance the commercial customer experience
for Lenovo in its North America,
EMEA, and Latin America
markets.
The $240M USD multi-year agreement
continues to build on the success of the IBM-Lenovo relationship
that began in 2005.
Today's customers' expectations for service are changing, and
they want to have everything inter-connected, 24x7 with one swipe
at a high level of speed and accessibility. In fact, according to
IBM's research, more than $1 trillion
is spent on 265 billion customer service calls each year
industry-wide, with 50% of those calls going unresolved. That data,
compounded by a recent report, revealed that poor customer service
is costing businesses more than $75
billion a year – up $13
billion since 2016.
Meanwhile, information overload is a huge issue, with support
agents sorting through a deluge of technical documentation on the
spot like new product releases, updated technical info, machine
data, service history and client-specific instructions. The
pressure is on to fix issues quickly and accurately and to improve
customer experience and evolve the call center to one that is
faster, better quality, cheaper and more predictable.
This agreement takes customer care to the next level. Now, when
a customer connects with an agent for Lenovo Think-branded PCs and
monitors, not only does the agent already know who they are talking
to and the issue they are calling about, IBM's Virtual Assistant
for Technical Support uses its natural language capabilities and
contextual recognition, to personalize the conversation by asking
the right questions about service issues and obtaining solution
advice, while also accessing key customer information.
"Providing customers with leading edge technology solutions and
offering great support services go hand-in-hand with the customers'
total experience," said Jammi Tu,
senior vice president and chief operating officer of Lenovo
Intelligent Devices. "Through our work with IBM, we are increasing
our service capabilities through IBM's Virtual Assistant for
Technical Support, Augmented Reality and weather technology,
helping us deliver the fast, personalized and consistent care
customers expect from their trusted technology brand."
The solution, facilitated by IBM, is designed to decrease
service costs for Lenovo while growing profitability by integrating
the global coverage and capacity of IBM's Customer Engagement
Centers (CEC) and field service solutions around the world, with
its standard package of cognitive solutions
including:
- Virtual Assistant for Technical Support
which harvests and analyzes customer history and preferences,
product manuals, technical documentation, and any other available
content like FAQs, forum postings and social media
Q&A which can now be at the fingertips of a call center
agent.
- Weather Alerting technologies which, along with IBM
schedule optimizing tools, alerts call center agents and field
technicians of weather conditions in real time, up to 72 hours in
advance and, based on their GPS locations, can predict their
accessibility to a client's location to set expectations on service
windows.
- Augmented Reality that enables more than 19,000 field
agents to deliver a consistent client experience around the globe
by allowing customers to video share, in real time, the machines
needing repair to IBM's experts who can virtually draw on top of
the video and explain the repair steps.
"Data is having an unprecedented impact on call centers with
artificial intelligence taking customer service to a whole new
level of personalization," said Martin
Jetter, senior vice president of Global Technology Services,
IBM. "This global collaboration with Lenovo further strengthens our
long-standing relationship, empowering every single call center and
field service agent at Lenovo to deliver service excellence using
the power of Watson AI."
IBM Technology Support Services delivers world-class service
with presence in over 200 countries, speaking 127 languages, 57
remote support centers, managing 6 million service requests, with
more than 19,000 support professionals and services over 30,000
products.
LENOVO™ is a trademark of Lenovo
For more information on IBM Services,
visit https://www.ibm.com/services
Follow @IBMServices on Twitter
Media Contacts
Kaveri Camire
IBM Media Relations
kcamire@us.ibm.com
+1 (914) 766-2239
Tricia Vuiton
IBM Media Relations
tavuiton@us.ibm.com
+1 (914) 765-4980
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SOURCE IBM