July 11, 2016
MCLEAN, Va. and AUSTIN — During the next five years, messaging will become the preferred path for customer and stakeholder interaction, ultimately displacing call centers and replacing or augmenting mobile apps. For commercial brands and government programs looking to extend and expand their customer base, they must satisfy this customer demand for next-gen messaging channels and rapid response. Booz Allen Hamilton (NYSE: BAH) and Conversable announced today a joint strategic focus to advance, test, and deliver world-class automated interactive messaging, tools, services, and experiences that fundamentally enhance and transform customer care in all channels. The joint endeavor will drive client and customer value in two core areas:
- Integrated and Tailored Customer Service | Resolving requests and offering more adaptive self-service through automation to better serve customers within their preferred channels, while reducing complexity, time, and cost.
- Instant Access to Content, Products, and Services | Creating interactive experiences that deepen engagement with consumers and stakeholders, while providing on-demand access and fulfillment through conversational interfaces.
The collaboration between Booz Allen and Conversable will leverage and capitalize on several exciting disruptions occurring within and across messaging, natural language processing, machine learning, and AI:
The days of commercial brands and federal programs spending millions of dollars and many years to launch an essentially single-use mobile application are coming to an end. Leading brands and programs will increasingly look to bots and automation in messaging to better analyze and understand customer requests, and reach out to new consumers who are rapidly becoming more adept and comfortable with executing commerce through more robust, tailored, responsive and secure messaging platforms.
Conversational platforms will allow companies to securely tailor interactions between their customers over any messaging interface, while deeply integrating an organization’s legacy and business-critical enterprise systems. This integration includes authentication, ordering, customer service, inventory management, and more. The interactions can be general, such as, “Are you open?” or powered by an integrated back-end system, such as, “What is the status of my flight?” or even authenticated for conversational experiences with account info, order status, and commerce.
Michael Farber, a Senior Executive Advisor within Booz Allen’s Strategic Innovation Group notes that, “improvements and analytics surrounding how people interact with companies and government organizations when they have a need or issue haven't kept pace with recent and considerable advances in technology. Social media, messaging, and advanced analytics are helping to change that. We recognize that for certain customers and situations, human powered and intensive customer care may be necessary; however, we also note that it can be difficult and costly to scale. At Booz Allen, we are excited to join Conversable in helping to create new standards for automated, super responsive, and scalable customer care.”
“We are excited to bring the Conversable messaging platform to support Booz Allen’s commercial and federal clients. The platform when combined with Booz Allen’s digital and next-gen analytics capabilities will enable organizations to more quickly, seamlessly, and dramatically improve their customer interactions, understanding, and responsiveness. The Conversable platform will allow brands and programs to operate within and across their customer’s preferred messaging channels with little or no wait times, and without needing the customer to dial a call center or find and download a mobile app,” said Ben Lamm, Co-Founder and CEO of Conversable.
Rob Ruyak, Principal also with Booz Allen’s Strategic Innovation Group states, “This strategic focus combines our rich legacy of innovation and market pacing next-gen analytics capabilities with Conversable’s automated enterprise messaging platform to expand Booz Allen’s digital and analytics capabilities across the burgeoning messaging space.”
“Messaging and social media have changed how people communicate and share information which each other. Businesses and government agencies have started to respond to these changes in how people communicate by embracing social media. Messaging is the next wave and it will represent a much bigger change. Conversable helps large enterprises interact with their customers on any messaging platform to meet that customer demand,” says Andrew Busey, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Conversable.
