Real-Time Interaction Guidance for Administrators

This overview is for administrators. If you're an agent, see the Real-Time Interaction Guidance topic for MAX or Agent for Salesforce.

Real-Time Interaction Guidance is like a coach who's always available and ready to provide agents with direction at the exact time it can make a difference. Real-Time Interaction Guidance uses NICE Enlighten AI A comprehensive AI framework for customer engagement, with models trained on billions of real-life consumer interactions. to provide real-time suggestions to agents for how to improve their performance during each call.

Real-Time Interaction Guidance can offer agents two types of guidance:

Phrase-based guidance—Listens for certain words or phrases during the conversation. It can display alerts based on whether the words are spoken or not spoken during the conversation. It can listen to the agent, the contact, or both.
Behavior guidance—Requires an additional license. Listens to the conversation and measures soft-skill behaviors such as empathy and rapport building. It displays visual score gauges for each behavior. If you configure it to, it will show agents alerts when the measured score falls below a certain level.

Each type of guidance is fully customizable. You can choose the behaviors to monitor, specify the words and phrases, and define the alert messages. If you want to monitor different behaviors or phrases for certain teams, you can create additional profiles.

Real-Time Interaction Guidance supports both inbound and automated outbound (Personal Connection) voice interactions.

Classics, Inc. has decided to add Real-Time Interaction Guidance agent assist bots to its call center to increase the coaching all of its agents receive. With Real-Time Authentication, Classics, Inc. can choose from a list of 11 soft-skill behaviors to have their agents coached on. They can use phrase-based guidance to help ensure script compliance. They can also use it to advise agents when handling tricky situations by adding alerts for phrases such as I'm frustrated or cancel my account.

Anne Shirley, the call center administrator, creates Real-Time Interaction Guidance profiles for the Support, Sales, and Customer Service teams. She sets all three profiles to offer guidance for three behaviors: empathy, speech velocity, and promoting self-service. The plan is to change the behaviors each month so agents can focus on building their skills over time.

When she sets up phrase-based guidance, Anne configures different words and phrases for each team. She makes sure that the words and phrases are in line with the scripts that each team follows. She also adds words and phrases that are specific to the types of situations that each team handles. For example, she adds cancel my account to the Customer Service and Support team profiles, and take me off your list to the Sales team profile.

Real-Time Interaction Guidance Management

Real-Time Interaction Guidance is an agent assist bot, which you can manage in Agent Assist Hub. To access Agent Assist Hub, you need to use CXone Studio. If you don't have Studio installed, you can download and install it.

You can also work with your organization's CXone workflow designer or with your CXone Account Representative to configure this feature.

Multiple Profiles and Spoken Language Support

Real-Time Interaction Guidance supports multiple profiles for teams. This allows you to customize the kind of guidance and alerts that each team receives. Each Real-Time Interaction Guidance profile requires a separate script in Studio.

Real-Time Interaction Guidance supports different spoken languages. When you add a profile in Virtual Agent Hub, it defaults to the appropriate language based on your CXone region. Real-Time Interaction Guidance currently supports North American English and International English.

Agent Experience with Real-Time Interaction Guidance

Real-Time Interaction Guidance works in MAX and Agent for Salesforce. It displays information on a slide-out panel in the agent application. Agents cannot interact with the panel. It only provides suggestions to agents on how they can improve their performance during calls.

The panel shows:

The live sentiment score for the interaction.
The current guidance alerts triggered by the agent's performance during the interaction. This includes alerts for measured behaviors and phrase-based guidance.
A set of gauges that show the live performance for each of the configured behaviors. The gauges help the agent stay on track during the conversation.

Agents can collapse the panel if they want to. Real-Time Interaction Guidance continues monitoring the interaction even when the panel is collapsed.

Phrase-Based Guidance

Real-Time Interaction Guidance can listen to agent conversations and offer alerts based on what is said or not said during the call. You can configure multiple sets of words and phrases for each Real-Time Interaction Guidance profile. Each set of words and phrases can have one alert message.

Phrase-based guidance is completely customizable. You can specify the words and phrases that Real-Time Interaction Guidance listens for and the alert messages it shows the agent. You can also configure the conditions for when Real-Time Interaction Guidance shows the alert message for each set of words and phrases. The conditions can include:

Words or phrases spoken by the agent, the contact, or both.
Words or phrases that the agent should have said but didn't.
Words or phrases said or not said at any point during a call.
Words or phrases said or not said within a configurable number of seconds from the start of the call.

Each set of words and phrases can have only one set of conditions. If you want the same set of words to have a second set of conditions, create an additional set.

The administrator of the Classics, Inc. contact center wants to ensure that agents are following the script and including certain statements at the beginning of every call. She configures Real-Time Interaction Guidance to listen for two phrases that are part of the required script, we're happy you chose Classics, Inc., and this call may be monitored or recorded. She configures the alert for this set of phrases so that if the agent doesn't say the phrases within the first 30 seconds of a call, they see an alert message that reminds them to include the required statements every time.

Behavior Guidance

Real-Time Interaction Guidance can measure 11 soft-skill behaviors. This feature requires the purchase of an additional license.

You can configure as many or as few as you want to for each profile, based on your organizational goals. During an interaction, Real-Time Interaction Guidance tracks and scores the agent's performance for the behaviors you select. When a behavior's score reaches a certain level, Real-Time Interaction Guidance displays the alert message. You can define the scores that trigger alert messages for each behavior.

Behavior	how agents can display the Behavior
Acknowledge Loyalty	Acknowledge the contact's history with your organization. Show appreciation for their loyalty.
Active Listening	Respond in the conversation and don't ask the contact to repeat themselves.
Be Empathetic	Acknowledge stated issues and how they impact the contact.
Build Rapport	Acknowledge the contact's request. Actively respond in the conversation and don't ask the contact to repeat themselves.
Demonstrate Ownership	Reassure the contact that the agent understands the issue and is ready and able to help.
Effective Questioning	Ask meaningful questions to explore the contact's experience, issues, or opportunities.
Inappropriate Action	Deny a contact's request to transfer, use inappropriate language, or other offensive acts. While all other behaviors are positive, this is a negative behavior. The gauge color will be green and the score will be high when the agent is not displaying this behavior.
Interruption	Don't talk at the same time as the contact.
Promote Self-Service	Promote the availability of self-service options (such as a website or app).
Set Expectations	Summarize actions and next steps. Inform the contact of what to expect or what to do next.
Speech Velocity	Speak slowly enough to be understood.

Alerts

Alerts provide guidance when an agent's performance starts to falter. Both measured behaviors and sets of words and phrases can generate alerts. You can use alerts to provide reminders, positive reinforcement, and even scripted statements.

For measured behaviors, you can configure the performance scale. The scale allows you to customize the score ranges for what's acceptable and unacceptable for each behavior. The score ranges correspond to the appearance of the gauges in the Real-Time Interaction Guidance panel in the agent applications.

Classics, Inc., has recently launched a new loyalty rewards program. The contact center administrator sets an alert on the Acknowledge Loyalty behavior. It reminds agents to thank contacts for their business and ask if they'd like to be signed up for loyalty rewards.