Presently, Software as a service has attracted plenty of attention in terms of business and academic spheres. It is easily accessible via networking and Internet standards since AI and ML have made web-based applications more powerful and effective as a technology. This architecture mainly runs in a distributed network using virtual resources. Due to the increased demand for this technology, various companies offer cloud computing and SaaS solutions.
Ashutosh Sharma, Founder of Aselector laid the foundation of the company to present an intelligent knowledge management platform. This platform offers customers self-help, chatbots, full-cycle decision support, and knowledge management. This helps the staff follow the standard operating procedure, ensure consistency for customers, and reduces the burden on expert attrition which helps Aselector’s clients serve their customers better and faster. This is a candid interview featuring Ashutosh Sharma,
Brief us about Aselector.
Aselector is a SaaS-based technology company, which provides an intelligent knowledge management platform implemented as an interactive decision tree.
Aselector provides No code, interactive decision tree platform for customer self-serve as well as agent support. This platform can help achieve a significant reduction in support costs and improve customer satisfaction and first contact resolution. It is especially suitable for startups and mid-size companies that seek to improve customer service and reduce service costs at the same time.
The product includes a built-in workflow and a real-time queue status to effectively manage various work queues. The platform has built-in AI to take automated decisions for customer requests based on various environmental (device. location, OS, local time, etc.) and supplied data sets. This helps achieve the most accurate and fastest resolution to queries, making it a highly effective tool.
The interface is based on minimalist and just-in-time principles. It is also customizable to align with client branding and website guidelines. It can be set up and published in as little as a day with a no-code creation.
Key distinguishing features include:
- Automatic decisions by the platform based on environment variables (device, time, location, etc.), user input, and API inputs.
- Keyboard navigation, which is a first for web-based applications.
- A judicious mix of front and back-end technologies to provide a superfast user interface.
- Very strong reporting with drill-down functionality in charts.
- Responsive end customer view, agent view as well as setup view. The whole application can be developed, configured, and set up from the mobile or tablet if the customer chooses.
- Strong state and time tracking for agents across queues. The application can also automatically change the skills of agents and perform line balancing across queues without manual intervention.
- Multiple displays and design options to configure the front end as per the client’s preference and requirements.
What were the initial challenges you faced?
The initial challenge we faced was to build a powerful effective platform that is easy to set up and customize; with help of AI technology and years of cumulative experience, we have successfully overcome the challenge and found the way to be a more agile, powerful, affordable and stable solution for customer support which helps organizations deliver world-class consistent service at a lower cost.
Which was that point that triggered the growth of Aselector?
With the pandemic impacting all industries, most companies had an impact on their customer service and shifted to work from home models. This creates a unique opportunity for digitization of customer support and a shift towards customer self-serve. As per a recent report, up to 81% of customers try to look for a solution online before contacting Aselector via traditional channels. Supporting agents in a non-office environment have also become a pressing need with reduced face-to-face pieces of training and coaching, highlighting the need for a more robust online knowledge management system.
What is the reason behind Aselector’s long-standing success?
Our vision is to enable organizations to achieve world-class customer service to their customers. Our platform enables our clients to deflect customer requests to online channels and reduce the interaction in traditional channels resulting in improved profitability while maintaining or improving their customer satisfaction scores. Aselector aims to be at the forefront of the technological revolution in the customer service space across industries and emerge as pioneers in the field by establishing online self-service as a preferred mode of accurate and low customer effort resolution.
What are the products/services Aselector focuses on? How are your services different from those in the market?
Aselector focuses on customer self-service and agent support to provide consistent resolution for customers irrespective of the channel they use. Aselector has a decision tree Chatbot and a full knowledge management platform with a built-in workflow for follow-up resolution to customer queries. We are uniquely positioned to support the full resolution cycle and don’t just leave off after handling the initial request.
How do you decide to take Aselector a step further in terms of your products/services?
The features development on the platform will be guided by client and end customer feedback and requirements. The objectives will be set by the clients, and we will apply our technology, AI, ML, and data science expertise to help achieve the objectives efficiently and intelligently.
Aselector believes omnichannel consistent experience with low customer effort is the way forward. Customers deserve to get the same resolution across any channel, and they should get the same resolution that is accurate and compliant. Our efforts are on creating a minimalist, efficient, and superfast interface which reduces clutter on screen and avoids confusion. The platform is built on a lean framework and just-in-time principles which are efficient and reduce unnecessary effort.
Through data analytics, organizations can understand the reasons customers contact them and reasons for dissatisfaction. We can quantify the effort and therefore the cost to the organization of various issues in their processes and a clear line of sight into what needs to be worked upon to reduce the need for customer contact. The objective is that the client product and processes should be so clear and error-free that customers do not need to contact Aselector – except for giving compliments hopefully.
Is there any new addition to the list of products/services? Anything exciting you would like to share?
There is a potential for the platform to grow into consulting and to add more future-looking features into the application with predictive analytics, voice recognition, and proactive actions based on expected failure points. These will be driven by how technology develops in these areas as well as which features would be preferred by the customers in the future.
Can you please brief us about your professional experience?
Ashutosh Sharma, the Founder, comes with a vast experience of 25+ years in customer services across Telecom, financial service, and manufacturing industries. He has led six sigma quality, analytics, transformation, and re-engineering teams. His expertise is in improving processes using data science, process design, statistical and lean tools for increasing end-customer satisfaction. We are also supported by very experienced consultants who can support client organizations based on their global customer service experience across industries.
How do you look after your employees? What makes your team unique?
Aselector believes that happy employees make happy customers. We focus on constantly upskilling our employees and encourage them to be involved in areas outside their main area of work. Our values of fairness, transparency, inclusion, and excellence in a boundary-less culture enable us to value everyone’s opinions and allow them opportunities to develop new skills.
Which is the one person that you admire the most?
M K Gandhi is a guiding light, not just due to leadership qualities of bringing along everyone, but also coming up with an out-of-the-box, creative way of protest. Many countries have struggled for freedom, but he showed that a non-violent way can be equally or more effective as a solution.
Constant vigilance- a need or a strategy? Please share your views.
I believe vigilance should be as little as possible. The processes should be so reliable and consistent that audits or quality checks can be reduced. Quality control is a pure non-value-added activity for the end customer. If the product works fine every time, it is up to the company to do quality checks or not. Vigilance and checks are built in to take care of errors, if you take care of errors, the need for quality checks can be reduced. Vigilance should be more on inputs rather than the output when processes are consistent. It is a need to ensure compliance in some areas, but the strategy should be to reduce it with effective controls.
It’s a rat race out there. How do you cope with that?
We will work on creating value for the clients and hopefully the rest will take care of itself.
“If you don’t change anything, nothing will change.”
