3 innovations that will fuel the evolution of customer service

With each passing day, customers demand even more from the brands they consume. They expect companies to match their pace of innovation and serve them at their preferred time and place via their communication style of choice.

Service professionals are no different; they demand innovative modern tools that make their work easier. Oracle understands this dynamic and has made it its mission to deliver the next generation of service technologies to meet the needs of these global trends. As a result, I’m excited to share three highlights from our 21B release that will fuel the evolution of customer service.

Want to hear about all our latest innovations? Watch the replay of our Quarterly Update on Innovations for Advertising and CX.

Asynchronous messaging: run at the same pace as your customers

Go to your phone right now and find a text from one of your best friends. Now scroll up. How long has your digital conversation been going? Days? Weeks? Years? Every time you text that person, you’re able to pick up right where you left off. Wouldn’t it be nice to communicate with a brand in the same way when you need customer service? Welcome to the world of asynchronous communication!

Unlike voice and live chat sessions, asynchronous messaging enables more complex, long-running interactions. This capability allows agents and users to have a dialogue, provide updates, and continue a conversation with periods of inactivity, elevating the service experience and building a longer-term relationship with the customer.

With this recent release, Oracle has enabled asynchronous messaging to complement the many digital channels we support. Use it to communicate with customers in the style they prefer and exceed their customer service expectations.

Oracle Field Service: Now available in one consolidated application

Do you know anyone who works a field service job? In the last year, was that person designated an “essential worker”? Odds are, they were. I have yet to meet a field service worker who wasn’t (and I know a lot of them). While the pandemic has forced many of us to shelter in place, field service workers helped keep our world running.

Field service has become more critical than ever, and it’s up to us at Oracle to offer the most flexible and agile solution on the market, allowing organizations to adapt to changes in their business quickly and easily during uncertain times. We do this by focusing our development efforts on flexibility, optimization, and usability.

What’s new in Oracle Field Service? We have fully transitioned to one single “core application.” From now on, Oracle Field Service can be used from anywhere on any mobile device, no matter the role. Users can easily align with their teams, jobs, and other resources on the go. They can also make configurations and changes to their field service management tools from any device, improving operational agility without relying on third parties for assistance. They can even implement, configure, and deploy an entire field force in their pajamas while binging their favorite show.

Also, Oracle Field Service now utilizes the Redwood experience, our user experience design language, which makes the application more intuitive to navigate and easier to use.

Regardless of the uncertainty the future holds, rest assured your most essential workers will have the tools they need to do their jobs well.

B2B Service knowledge management: the next generation

Parents, what happened in the last 12 months when your kids asked for help with algebra? You knew the quadratic equation off the top of your head, right? Or did you spend a lot of time on the web trying to re-learn information you hadn’t seen since the 8th grade? Fortunately, there are a million places to go to find easy-to-use curated knowledge.

This same concept of finding accurate, consistent answers the moment you need them drives amazing assisted and self-service experiences in every industry. Knowledge management is critical, and that’s why Oracle is excited to release the next generation of our B2B Service knowledge management system with an innovative new user interface to create and surface knowledge articles. It offers a visually intuitive and simplified approach to creating knowledge that blends into the service process by contextually delivering accurate answers for customers, employees, and agents.

With this next generation of B2B Service knowledge, we’re setting the stage for future innovation by leveraging the power of the Fusion suite and artificial intelligence (AI) to help businesses revolutionize their service delivery.

These are just a few of the enhancements in the latest release from Oracle Service. We’ll be back in a couple of months with even more. Stay tuned!

To learn more about the latest product enhancements and releases across Oracle Advertising and Customer Experience, visit oracle.com/cx/innovations.