Self Service with Chatbot

August 7, 2021August 7, 2021 ~ Danny Kwok ~ Leave a comment

Self service technologies are getting popular with COVID-19 pandemic. This is due to a demand on contactless services. Imagine calling customer service and being put on hold for a long time “Customer service is busy…”. This brings a lot of dissatisfaction to customers. This is why many business are moving towards a self service approach using Chatbot.

How to Self Service with Chatbot

In face to face customer service, there are usually a few types of intentions. Enquiries, service requests and complaints are the key ones. Thus, you can implement such intents into your Chatbot. FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) can be supplemented for enquiries. Preliminary input gathering can be done for services requests and complaints before engaging live chat.

Advantages

Chat application is user friendly and intuitive for all groups of users. You can reduce costly complaints page and focus on developing complaint Chatbot. Subsequently, majority of common enquiries can be handled by your FAQ Chatbot. This improve your customer service responses with specific requests.

The time is ripe to invest in your Chatbot and reduce reliance in your old complaint web page or feedback form. The Chatbot will enhance your customer service with self service. Overall, this will greatly improve your customer satisfaction.

Panademic Rollback

July 20, 2021July 20, 2021 ~ Danny Kwok ~ Leave a comment

Our lifestyle is like a big system deployment. The Covid-19 pandemic has created another rollback to Phase 1.5 (aka Phase 2 Heightened Alert) in Singapore. It is time we get used to the roller coasters effect from the pandemic. What can these effects teach us?

Industry Channel Calibration

Single channel industry needs to undergo massive flexi calibration to multichannel. A major shift will be high touch industry. These roles will need to toggle between face to face services to digital services. It is no surprise that our feedbacks and emails suddenly get answered with slower responses due to overwhelming surge in online services. This lead to very poor satisfaction with online customer service. On the other hand, physical stores have to layoff staffs because there are no customers to serve.

Digitalisation Gap

The digitalisation effects create a huge gap in consumers due to the toggle measures of the pandemic. These gaps include IT savviness, vaccinated vs non vaccinated or even capabilities to provide digital presence. Sadly, those that fall behind will soon be forgotten as we get used to the pandemic effects or the new normal. It lends an important lesson to incumbent industries that pandemic can be a nasty disruptor for some or opportunities for others.

The roller coasters measures of pandemic will be anticipated. Meanwhile, the casualties will be tough to handle and damages be done. We can only calibrate our mindset forward to avoid the bottom end of the digitalisation chasm that comes with it.

Digital Supply Chain 101

July 7, 2021July 7, 2021 ~ Danny Kwok ~ Leave a comment

Digital Supply Chain (DSC) will be gaining a big leap due to COVID-19. As part of social distancing, there is a huge reduction in physical transfer of goods. This leads to various digitalisation outcome. Many of goods and services emerge and evolves into Digital Supply Chain. These industries are involves high touchpoints like media, publishing and education.

Parts of DSC

Digital Supply Chain have similarities to Supply Chain. The key parts will be the focus on digital components. These main parts comes together to form the Digital Supply Chain.

Content Providers
Content Delivery
Content Security
Content Storage

What it Means for Consumers

Goods that can be provided in digital format can be sold quickly via online platform. Consumers will need somewhere to store and access their digital goods securely. Suppliers can extend its reach to get digital goods via supply chain network. A major breakthrough is the usage of NFT (non-fungible token) for Digital Arts, games, music or even collectibles.

We will see more of digital supply chain as I look forward to buying more digital goods. This helps save physics storage space and digital goods can be easily shared to my family.

Pandemic is Endemic

July 4, 2021July 4, 2021 ~ Danny Kwok ~ Leave a comment

Moving a pandemic to endemic is a model that will be done for COVID-19 in Singapore. Being a port city, trade and travelling is most important and sustain isolation will do more harm than good. While I look forward to this, there are many things we are learning from pandemic.

Mindset Adaption

There are a few mindsets that needs to be recalibrated for us to be adaptive. Work From Home (WFH) will stay and jobs are no longer constrained to office space. Many jobs also cannot be totally relied by external workers. Food security have been accelerated to reduce dependency of food imports when borders are closed. Digitalisation have also been ramped up to enabled automation.

Mask and Hygiene Culture

Have everyone realise that flu is lower as well? Seems the mask culture will be here to stay if anyone fall sick. Tray return is also mandatory as we move to a hygiene approach to keep the country clean. This also helps to increase focus of cleaning to sanitise instead of picking your trash.

The announcement to endemic will come soon as vaccination gain momentum. We will likely continue to practice what we learn during the pandemic. Have an open mind to continue the goodness learnt during COVID-19.

Vaccination in Progress

July 2, 2021July 2, 2021 ~ Danny Kwok ~ 1 Comment

COVID vaccine seems to be a norm now. At the rate the virus is mutating, it also seems that booster shot will be required at a yearly basis. The Covid pandemic have accelerated the development of vaccine at a tremendous pace. How will this impact technologies in future?

Vaccinated Society

Technology are now in place to identify the vaccinated. This will soon creates a divided view on those who choose not to be vaccinated. These technologies also help to automate the access to certain areas. You can view vaccination as a criterion for many activities. Thus, technology will play a key part in the identity of vaccinated person status.

Herd Immunity

Covid will continue to be persistent. Lockdowns will not continue for long at the expense of economy. The aim of vaccination is to achieve herd immunity. Soon, technology can easily profile regions or even countries populated by vaccinated people. Humans may even evolve from vaccination.

The technology to identify vaccinated people are already in place. The push to remove lockdown will speed up the development of these technologies. This gives you a choice to where you may want to visit or travel.

Alternate TMS Transport Mode

June 5, 2021June 5, 2021 ~ Danny Kwok ~ Leave a comment

The transport mode for TMS (Transportation Management System) is getting diversified due to demand of delivery services from the COVID-19 pandemic. Beside the usual truck, vessel or rail, you will see specialised last mile TMS delivery mode like motorbikes bicycles, or even walking. How do you cater to this alternate transport mode?

Extension or Transform

A way to relook into these alternate transport model is to extension or transform your business model. Extension is a classic method that involves leveraging existing product platform by upgrading and tweaking existing model. The pros are lower cost and lesser change impact. However, you will be constraint by your existing TMS technological landscape. The trending way in 2020s is digital transformation of your TMS. This involves relook of your TMS platform in the face of pandemic with these transport mode.

Masterdata Impact

The organisation business model will change to cater to these transportation services. One of the major change is masterdata setup. The default product model will be different from the conventional setup. Can you apply the same masterdata method for the new transport mode? The answer will be yes and no. Yes, some of masterdata model can be applicable with standard capacity like your truck or rating model of parcel with weight or trips. A major no will be related to the relevance of some masterdata type like location. Location becomes more transaction based at address level more than a masterdata.

COVID-19 pandemic creates new opportunities for digital transformation for TMS with alternate transport modes. Contactless deliveries are driving the logistics and TMS vibrantly. We will expect to see more changes in TMS.

Normal is New

May 31, 2021May 31, 2021 ~ Danny Kwok ~ 4 Comments

A pandemic world is something we always watch in movies. Now, we are living in an “enclosed isolated” way of working and minimising human contact. Normal is new and some even called it the “New Normal”.

Change for the Better Good

Our “normal lives” are a thing of the past now. Looking forward, organisational changes and digital transformation must continue to permeates. If not, many of such “normalities” are proceeding at a snail pace. The “ability” to work from home and necessity to “face time” becomes the old norm of Asia office culture. Digitalisation gets a surprise push from pandemic and the switch to digital front surge in demand.

Extinction

Like all evolution, extinction occurs with each phase. Industries with high touch interaction and cross borders dependencies faces extinction and goes out of business with massive lockdown and borders closure. Many small business are forced to go digital or to close down with the unrealistic cost of rentals and near zero crowds from constant lockdowns. Digitalisation finally emerge the victor from the extinction of pure traditional brick and mortars.

Our kids will be surprise at this part of the history. I can imagine how the “kings” lived in their high walls of castle surrounded by moats for protection. Regardless of how this pandemic turns out, skills resilience is key to survival. Stay Positive!

Work On Holiday

May 26, 2021May 26, 2021 ~ Danny Kwok ~ Leave a comment

Work from home (WFH) is the new norm. However, I realise that Work On Holiday will arise as a direct effect from WFH and Singapore Phase 1.5. The COVID-19 restrictions have blurred the holiday mood. There are little differences of being on holiday and working on holiday. How many of you got bored at home and work on holiday as well?

Thin Red Line

It is surprising to see a quiet 9pm in Singapore on this holiday. The current situation reminds me of thin red line where boundaries and time blurred one another. Luckily, I will not be exposed to space travel where we will be in similar situation of isolation. You can catch the series The 100 on Netflix to see how it will be.

Pros of Work On Holiday

The good part of working on holiday is less distraction. Usually, there will be no meetings or discussion leaving you time to clear your backlogs. After all, you have nowhere to go as well during the COVID-19 restrictions. Thus, you will end up more productive working on holiday for the COVID-19.

Although you are working on holiday, do time out to take a breather. Soon, we will have no preference over holiday, long weekend or school holidays. After all, the days are similar at home.

Singapore Phase 1.5 Day 2

May 17, 2021May 26, 2021 ~ Danny Kwok ~ Leave a comment

Just when everything looks rosy, life going to be normal. Singapore is hit with another wave of COVID-19 outbreak. This time, the variant or mutant virus is contagious and affect kids more. Sadly, dinner out is not allowed as you need to mask down when eating or drinking. This time, my kid is more adaptable to Home Based Learning (HBL). However, more still need to be done to educate online effectively.

Usage of Physical Textbooks

Singapore education is still very textbooks based. Yearly, the kids have to buy 10kg of books yearly. My son is already training to carry 5kg of books daily! It is no wonder there is a disconnect between HBL and physical books. It is also time consuming for teachers to manually convert learning material digitally from textbooks.

Digital Tools

Camera, lights and action! Another common issue is the digital tools like laptop and internet connection. Not all students have these tools at their disposal. Thus, schools have to remain open to cater for these students. I also rush to download the various applications for my son like Zoom, Google Meet and login to more than 3 teaching platforms. It will take some time before schools realise the need of a unified collaborative learning platform.

There is still room for improvement on HBL in Singapore. The pandemic have presented a good push factor towards eLearning model.