Converged service opportunities supporting the multi-site corporate enterprise

Convergence in the world of telecommunications offers an excellent opportunity for new context-aware services to serve customers better. Customer service is one of the most expensive corporate investments due to the fact that call centres are costly, service is often labour-intensive, and customer representatives require continual training to handle a broad diversity of service issues. Nevertheless, an emerging class of technologies offers the promise to decrease the cost of offering information and services and to improve service consistency. Examples of these technologies include instant messaging (IM), personalisation tools, case-based reasoning systems and intelligent agents or robots (bots) that effectively mimic human interaction. The popularity of IM has increased considerably in recent years. No longer the province of chatty teenagers, it is currently part and parcel of advanced communications networks at many corporations. IM capabilities can help corporate communications with customers in real time, to solve problems, answer questions, and increase sales and customer satisfaction. This paper investigates the use of IM bots in serving corporate customers on the move, the potential value they offer, as well as forecasting how they may deliver the promised benefits. The paper also discusses a prototype demonstrating the extension of a desktop IM to the mobile platform, coupled with context enablers to provide context-aware information and services delivery.