IBM has won a $240 million technology services contract from devices maker Lenovo to supply field services and call center solutions to increase the commercial customer experience in its North America, EMEA, and Latin America markets.
New business deals are important for IBM as IBM’s Global Business Services revenue from consulting, application management and global process services rose 1 percent to $4.1 billion in Q3 2018.
IBM yesterday said its Technology Services & Cloud Platforms business revenue from infrastructure services, technical support services and integration software fell 2 percent to $8.3 billion in Q3 2018.
IBM’s innovative services
IBM’s Virtual Assistant for Technical Support uses its natural language capabilities and contextual recognition, to personalize the conversation with Lenovo customers by asking the right questions about service issues and obtaining solution advice.
“We are increasing our service capabilities through IBM’s Virtual Assistant for Technical Support, Augmented Reality and weather technology, helping us deliver the personalized and consistent care,” Jammi Tu, senior vice president and chief operating officer of Lenovo Intelligent Devices, said.
The solution, facilitated by IBM, is designed to decrease service costs for Lenovo, the #1 PC brand globally, while growing profitability by integrating the global coverage and capacity of IBM’s Customer Engagement Centers (CEC) and field service solutions.
IBM Virtual Assistant for Technical Support analyzes history and preferences of Lenovo customers, Lenovo product manuals, technical documentation, and any other available content like FAQs, forum postings and social media Q&A which can be at the fingertips of a call center agent.
Weather Alerting technologies which, along with IBM schedule optimizing tools, alerts call center agents and field technicians of weather conditions in real time, up to 72 hours in advance and, based on their GPS locations, can predict their accessibility to Lenovo’s client’s location to set expectations on service windows.
Augmented Reality enables more than 19,000 field agents to deliver a consistent client experience by allowing Lenovo customers to video share, in real time, the machines needing repair to IBM’s experts who can draw on top of the video and explain the repair steps.
“Data is having an unprecedented impact on call centers with artificial intelligence taking customer service to a whole new level of personalization,” said Martin Jetter, senior vice president of Global Technology Services, IBM.
IBM Technology Support Services delivers service with presence in over 200 countries, speaking 127 languages, 57 remote support centers, managing 6 million service requests, with more than 19,000 support professionals and services over 30,000 products.
According to IBM’s research, more than $1 trillion is spent on 265 billion customer service calls each year industry-wide, with 50 percent of those calls going unresolved. Another recent report revealed that poor customer service is costing businesses more than $75 billion a year – up $13 billion since 2016.
