Microsoft Engaging Customers Award: finalist for second year running

Microsoft Engaging Customers Award: finalist for second year running

​Microsoft NZ announced its Partner Awards finalists this week, with FAQ Bot again making the shortlist in the Engaging Customers category.

Says product owner Andrew Taylor:

​It’s great to get this recognition from Microsoft for FAQ Bot. The product is constantly evolving to meet the needs of our customers (and their customers), with increasing focus on  customer engagement through chat. FAQ Bot delivers a unique, lightning fast, always-on engagement experience, and that’s proving attractive to organisations large and small throughout New Zealand.

FAQ Bot is now handling more than 10,000 messages a month for our customers, on websites, Facebook Messenger, intranets and on Microsoft Teams. That’s 10,000 questions that don’t need to be answered by support or customer service staff, freeing up their time. 

​Our primary target audiences – Generation Z and Millennials – expect an immediate response, and with Tohu [Education New Zealand's chatbot], we can deliver that…. so the team can spend time answering the specific questions, and doing more of the strategic things for our Facebook channel rather than answering the same straightforward questions repeatedly.” Jamie Crump, Director of Business Planning, Education New Zealand.

FAQ Bot also saves time for those asking the questions – they don’t have to wait on hold, search, or wait for a person to email them back or be available on live chat. Instead, they get an instant response, 24/7.

Chat provides new customer insights As well as handling customer support across a range of sectors, from tourism, utilities and education to transport, FAQ Bot is enhancing our customers’ understanding of their customers. Analysis of chat data - direct feedback from customers, in their own words, brings customer voice to the fore. This can reveal user patterns and preferences, and highlight opportunities to do things differently.

The chat analytics and user-friendly dashboards built into FAQ Bot make this easy. No sifting through raw logs to spot patterns, the data is there, clearly presented and ready to analyse.

FAQ Bot can also be used to capture customer data – like leads, contacts, loyalty program signups, bookings and more. Beyond the simple FAQ value proposition, our customers are looking to integrate FAQ Bot with their CRM, booking systems, and build it into new campaigns – it’s becoming part of their customer journey.

Chatbot features to support customer engagement

To support those customer journeys, we’ve developed a range of new FAQ Bot engagement features, including tailored and context-specific welcome messages, engagements and prompts triggered by customer actions in chat, data capture via API and in-chat video features.