Serving customers

over messaging
channels
CASE

Laurane Potie Sales Sparkcentral

Version March 4. 2020
SPARKCENTRAL MISSION
Change the way
customer service is
delivered globally
Change the way customer service is delivered globally

We provide Enterprises with a Digital CS

platform and expert Consulting

✔ enable B2C and B2B brands to engage with businesses on all

relevant asynchronous messaging channels

✔ operationalize sophisticated routing and a highly efficient agent

and bot workflow

✔ integrate into existing enterprise data, applications, and

processes

✔ massively scalable, secure and industry standard compliant

 Innovation
Partnerships
with Brands
across the
globe
Key takeaways
1. By 2022, 70% of
customer interactions
will involve machine
learning, chatbots or
mobile messaging

2. The proportion of
phone based
communication will
drop to just over 10%

3. 20% of all customer

service interactions will
be completely
handled by AI

4. A human agent will

still be involved in
more than 40% of all
interactions
 e
10% let

70%
o
o bs

40% 20%
Virtual Agents Consumer Messaging Apps Proprietary Messaging
SDKs
and Live Agents
Collaborating

Sparkcentral UI

Adapter*
HANDOVER:

Virtual-to-Live Agent
Live-to-Virtual Agent
*Adapter and VAs developed by customer
WhatsApp
 Sparkcentral is an official
WhatsApp Business Enterprise API provider
Sparkcentral’s WhatsApp Business Account

Try our verified

WhatsApp Business
Account by using your Message us
iPhone camera or QR
code reader

Receive a pro-active
WhatsApp notification
on your phone and say
YES if you want talk to
one of my colleagues
right now !!!
 Power reactive and
proactive messaging
communication flows

Reactive: Proactive:
customer sends inbound brand sends outbound
message to brand message to customer
Improve your CSAT by preventing
your customers from waiting in line

Facilitate consumers who Instead of queuing for

have already dialed your
service number with the
option to move their
interaction to WhatsApp.
service I can continue
the conversation in
WhatsApp by just
pressing 1.

Let’s try it !!!

Call: +32 460 20 60 07
Example Engie:
Direct messaging provides >30% cost saving + higher NPS
 Jeremy Walder
Head of citizenConnect
citizenM

“WhatsApp is definitely the

right channel to enable us to
offer an intimate and
convenient service.

Together with Sparkcentral,

we prove the way in how we
manage messaging
conversations at scale for the
benefit of our mobile first
citizens.”
 Example: Payment Reminder Journey via WhatsApp
Receive a proactive message Select your payment Enter payment Finalize payment Receive payment confirmation
with a payment link method method details
In-Web & In-App Capabilities

● Sharing Location
● Include Pictures /
Documents
● Pro-active notifications
(authenticated)
● Date picker (calendar)
● Buttons
● Carousels
 Why a Messaging First
strategy makes sense for
your brand?

● Service your Clients conveniently

on Asynchronous Channels

● Reduce the TCO of your

Customer Service Operations
Agent experience
 Channels Auto Topics & Audit Notes Cross channel
Queue customer trails conversation history
Priority segments

Search
Knowledge
Queues base
Contact profile
Unified queue
GDPR, VIP, BLOCK
Tags
Contact
Automations
attributes

Virtual Agent CRM integration

response

Human Agent
response

Medium specific
attributes

Team chat

Extensions Ownership Reply box Boomerang

Example dashboards

SLA Sentiment Volumes

Unique customers helped per First response time Messages per conversation
month
Integration opportunities (APIs)
Proactive API:
● Send proactive messages to your customers (for example appointment reminders, case status updates and
IVR deflection).

Virtual Agent API:

● Connect any chatbot platform of choice to your Sparkcentral platform. Virtual Agents can help in several
ways:
● Reducing the number of repetitive tasks for your human agents
● Fully handle conversations (e.g. FAQs) and therefore, taking away some volumes from the human agents.
● Take care of routing or customer identification.

CRM API:
● Pull in extra customer information from your CRM system and display it in the Contact Attributes pane in
Sparkcentral. The information will help your agents to help the customer in a better way

Event writeback API:

● Push data (Conversation history/Contact Attributes/Topics/Notes/…) from Sparkcentral to an existing
external system. This could be used to keep track of the customer information in your CRM system, but also
to create tickets/cases.
Implementation
approach
 Messaging first
Maturity strategy
% of total customer interactions

Messaging as Conversational
new contact CRM brand
channel integration Replace traditional
Automation channels, advanced
Store all conversational bots,
Proactive Add virtual agents
messaging real time
to your team
Channel messaging answering conversations in translations, AI
frequently asked your CRM for a based routing
Inbound deflection Send order questions. Have 360-degree
confirmations, your live agents customer view.
messaging Promote payment focus on more Pull data from
messaging reminders, case your CRM system
Introduce channels. Deflect complex
updates, use-cases. for a more
messaging as a phone calls to reservation efficient and
new customer messaging confirmations, personalized
service channel channels. shipment details, messaging
appointment experience.
updates

Operational Strategic Transformational

Business impact
Customer Satisfaction, Employee Satisfaction, Cost-to-serve
Intelligent virtual assistants for customer service
Intelligence
Scripted Bot
Bot follows a predefined script,
often used at the beginning of a
conversation. It detects intents
based on keywords or button
input. The bot will handover
conversations to human agents if
needed. Bot can resolve
conversations if customer inquiry
is fully resolved.
Examples:
● Routing
● Data collection
● Frequently Asked Questions
Integrated
Provide a more personal
experience and extend use-cases
by integrating your bot with other
business systems.
Examples:
● Customer identification
● Update booking
● Login support
● Request customer specific data
Requirements:
● IT involvement for integrating
with backend systems
Self learning
Bots gets smarter over time by
learning from previous
conversations and customer
feedback. By better understanding
the customers, quality of
conversations and resolutions is
improved.
Examples:
● Flow optimization
● Automatically add use-cases
over time
Requirements:
● NLP training
Smart AI
AI used to detect moods or
intelligently resolve business
cases.
Examples:
● Sentiment analysis
● Mood detection
● Bot initiates conversation
(proactive)
Requirements:
● Advanced analytics
● Advanced System integration
● Queries to multiple systems

Requirements:
● Business analysis to start
● Continuous improvement
Automation level

15% 25% 50% > 70%

Project phases
Discovery workshop
● Business goals: What does success look like?
● KPI’s: How will we measure results?
● Use-cases: What use-cases do we foresee?
● Agents: What is needed to operationalize the channel?
● Channels: Which messaging channels make most sense in your market?
● Integrations: Are any technical integrations required before initial go live?

Project kickoff
● Why – Why are we doing this project in the first place? What business need does it satisfy? How does this
project meet a consumer need?
● What – What’s the solution?
● How – How are we going to work together?
● When – When are we going to do it?
● Where/Who – Where is the starting point for kicking things off? Who’s going to do what

Use-case workshop
● The goal of this workshop is to plot the different use case possibilities in the impact vs. effort matrix.

Setup and configuration

Training
Go live
Use-case workshop example
Setup and configuration
● We will create your Sparkcentral instance and create logins for your administrator. The administrators will
receive and have to activate their account within 24 hours. After activations you are ready to further install
your company’s instance.
● We will support you with the following configuration items:
○ Connecting messaging channels and implementation support and guidance
■ WhatsApp has a specific approval process we will guide you through.
■ For In-App implementations we can provide an additional implementation support package.
Your mobile app development team will get direct support from iOS/Android developers.
● User management and access restrictions
● Adding topics and tags for routing and reporting purposes
● Automations for routing and automatically tagging or resolving incoming messages
● Bot configuration (auto responder)
● Populating the knowledge base with canned answers

If integrations are required we will send you the necessary documentation and code samples to help you
get started. Additional implementation support packages are available.
Training
The success of messaging, just like any customer service channel, largely depends on the quality of the contact
center employees. That is why we strongly recommend that you carefully select these employees. We have found
contact center staff is typically eager to participate in the pilot, but your best employee on the phone is not always
the best employee for messaging.

We advise you to prepare an instruction for employees in which topics and concrete examples are
discussed, related to:
● Messaging strategy & scope
● Customer Experience
● Messaging guidelines

To make your organization work as efficiently as possible with the Sparkcentral platform, we take care of a 1,5
hour platform walkthrough for the team. The team will be ready to work with our platform after this training.
Once your live working on the platform we focus on helping the administrators of the team and strive for
self-reliance.
WhatsApp
on-boarding
Vertical Guide (may be onboarded)
Businesses in the following verticals are currently considered, for using the WhatsApp Business API.
In all cases businesses need to go through the WhatsApp onboarding process for a final decision.

May be onboarded May be onboarded, but additional review, screening and exclusions apply

● Retail Approval pending additional review/screening:

● Ecommerce ● Digital subscriptions

● Financial services ● News publishers

● Insurance

● Travel Approval only by explicit WA direction:

● Logistics ● Fact checkers

● Telco ● Governments
 WhatsApp

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

WhatsApp phone
number, Facebook Highly Structured
Agree to terms of New WhatsApp Business Official WhatsApp
Business Manager Phone verification Message
service account creation verification business badge
ID and display templates
name
Facebook approval Facebook approval Facebook approval Facebook approval
Customer care window

Customer Service Window

● If a person initiates a chat with you, you may continue that conversation via WhatsApp for up to 24 hours after the last
message sent to you by that person without charge (“Customer Service Window”). Outside of the Customer Service
Window, you may only send messages via approved Message Templates, for which we will charge the applicable rate.
● You may use automation when responding during the Customer Service Window, but must also have available prompt,
clear, and direct escalation paths to human agents.

Outbound messages
● You may only initiate chats if you are sending a transactional notification, and only via approved Message Templates,
subject to applicable pricing. Any Message Templates must comply with our terms and these policies, and only be used
for their designated purpose. We have the right to review, approve and reject any Message Template at any time.
WhatsApp and Virtual Agents (bots)

We've always strongly recommended businesses using user-initiated messages, or customer care, have some form of
human escalation available if they choose to use automation (bots). While automation can assist users, there are times
where automation cannot resolve a user's issue. We care about making sure users can have a satisfying experience with
businesses on WhatsApp.

Starting November 1, 2019, we'll make direct human escalation a requirement in all user-initiated messages, when a business
chooses to use automation. Businesses should have a direct and prompt human escalation path available for customers in chat
threads.

Examples of direct human escalation paths include human agent handoff, phone number, email, web support form, and in-store
visits. Businesses should share information over user-initiated messages that human agents at their company could also
support answering.

Sparkcentral natively supports bot to human agent handoff. The agent will see the full conversation history and can continue the conversation where the
bot left off. Making it a seamless experience for customers and increasing customer satisfaction.
Send proactive messages

● To send outbound messages to customers, you will need to make use of message templates. These messages can need
to be offered to WhatsApp for approval. Customers will receive the message in the language they have selected in their
phone OS. This means you will need to translate these templates to all languages your customers likely will use.
Messages can contain {variables} which can be populated later, such as a first name, track & trace link or order number.

● WhatsApp will approve or reject the template in 24-48 hours. Once approved, you can start using it immediately.

● WhatsApp will charge per outbound message you send. The price depends on the recipients country code.
Customer references
#CHSA Awards 2019
Careem has been awarded for Best Social Media team and
Best implementation of AI & Chatbot to enhance Customer Happiness!

Customer happiness has been at the core

of all our decisions, and we're excited to
announce that our Social Media and
Community Management teams have won
two hashtag #CHSA awards for "Best
Customer Happiness Center" and "Best
Implementation of VI, AI & Chatbot" to
enhance Customer happiness.

This is a proud moment for all of us at

Careem, as we step closer to our
commitment towards making lives easier
and inspiring people along the way.
Examples of customers using In-App messaging

citizenM Argenta
citizenM is servicing customers on various messaging channels, such as In-Web, In-App, WhatsApp
and social media. To deflect calls to the more efficient messaging channel they have implemented
IVR deflection to WhatsApp. A bot is helping visitors on the website with FAQs and if needed
human agents step in.

WhatsApp is definitely the right channel to

enable us to offer an intimate and
convenient service.

Together with Sparkcentral, we prove the

way in how we manage messaging
conversations at scale for the benefit of our
mobile first citizens.

Jeremy Walder, Head of citizenConnect

meet the citizen
on their preferred
channel

web fb messenger voice

assistance
app whatsapp sms
scalable
through a mix
of human
and bot
Bidfood customers can message from the MyBidfood website.
By integrating with CRM customers are routed to the right support team.
The customer profile is available on the agents screen helping to deliver a more personalized
service experience.
AXA becomes the first insurance company and assistance provider in Belgium
to offer the possibility of communicating via WhatsApp.

The continuous analysis of customer

requirements shows that people attach
great importance to simplicity, comfort and
ease of use. A messaging feature was the
logical next step alongside existing
communication channels in our Customer
Journey. This became apparent from
explicit demand from our customers.

Jef Van In, CEO AXA Belgium

In-Web experience Start live demo

Use incognito mode

for demo

Add a WhatsApp button

on the Contact Us page

Need help? Chat now!

Add a messaging button

on your website
In-App experience