Pega Launches Customer Empathy Advisor, AI Connectors at PegaWorld

Pegasystems today at its PegaWorld user conference in Las Vegas introduced Customer Empathy Advisor, a new capability for its Pega Customer Decision Hub that helps companies use artificial intelligence to build more sustainable customer relationships.

The feature allows companies to increase the level of empathy in AI-assisted conversations with customers and provides businesses with an ethical framework to instill empathy in all customer engagements and measure the effect.

At its core, the AI-powered Pega Customer Decision Hub analyzes customer data to guide customer-facing agents and virtual assistants to take the next best action with each customer. Its Customer Empathy Advisor feature takes this analysis one step deeper by examining how empathic these recommendations are and offers a more compassionate approach – which, contrary to popular belief, is often the most profitable strategy as well.

Pega Customer Empathy Advisor takes a three-step approach to integrating empathy into enterprise decision-making:

1. Analyzing empathy in any engagement. First, Pega's machine learning analyzes marketing, sales, and service strategies to assess the current level of empathy. The Customer Empathy Advisor dashboard breaks down the elements of empathy applied within each strategy according to relevance, suitability, value, context, intent, and mood. From there, engagement analysts can pinpoint which actions engender the most trust from customers and which repel them farther away from the brand. Using a slider, stakeholders can adjust empathy levels and see the impact the change has on relevant KPIs.
2. Predicting the Return on Empathy (ROE). Before putting empathy into action, Pega can predict the effect more empathetic strategies will have on their bottom line in real currency terms. Businesses can then simulate scenarios at different empathy levels to see how that number changes. From a profitability perspective, the system analyzes factors such as value and risk to the company and regulatory compliance.
3. Putting empathy to work. With the right balance of empathy in place, businesses can automatically deploy these strategies through Pega Infinity and its suite of customer engagement software, all powered by the same centralized AI from Pega Customer Decision Hub.

The Customer Empathy Advisor will be available for all Pega Customer Decision Hub clients near the end of this year.

"Most businesses are conditioned to try and squeeze every last drop of profit from each customer. But this predatory mentality distorts the fact that practicing a little empathy is not only good for the customer, it's good for business," said Rob Walker, vice president of decisioning and analytics at Pegasystems, in a statement. "We've always believed that the only way to win a customer's heart is to first walk a mile in their shoes. Today we're taking a step closer in this pursuit by instilling empathy in customer interactions, which is ultimately the right way to do business for everyone."

Pegasystems also used the conference to introduce Real-Time AI Connectors, a new set of APIs enabling Pega clients to plug in third-party AI engines to their Pega AI, allowing companies to enhance their Pega customer experience software with other AI services, such as Google Cloud Machine Learning Engine, Amazon SageMaker, and Google DialogFlow Text Analyzer.

With machine learning, decisioning, and natural language processing (NLP), Pega Customer Decision Hub serves as a centralized AI brain to optimize customer touchpoints on each channel along the customer journey. Real-Time AI Connectors will let users complement Pega AI with even more AI power, including deep learning, machine vision, alternative machine learning, and NLP services.

Real-Time AI Connectors tap directly into the global ecosystem of the latest AI algorithms from outside organizations. Pega seamlessly integrates with these third-party AI engines by initiating service callouts with Pega's native AI capabilities, giving clients the power of both services at the same time. Modeled on Pega's open architecture, these connectors build off existing APIs for optical character recognition and speech-to-text processing that bring other capabilities into the Pega environment.

"It's such an amazing time to be part of the global AI ecosystem that's continually testing the limits of what great customer experience looks like," Walker said. "With an open approach to our architecture, Real-Time AI Connectors help bring these advancements to our clients so they can infuse the latest AI algorithms into their proven Pega AI engine."