In the past, SEO has not been a top priority for customer service departments, but with its ability to extend customer service’s reach to the major search engines, many organizations are putting plans in place to realize its full potential.

1. SEO: The New Competitive
Advantage of Online
Customer Service
6 Steps for Deploying Virtual Agents
to Maximize SEO
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2. 6 STEPS FOR DEPLOYING VIRTUAL AGENTS TO MAXIMIZE SEO
SEO: New Key Strategy for Online Customer Service
According to Wikipedia, “Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of
improving the visibility of a website or a webpage in a search engine’s “natural,” or
un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”), search results. In general, the earlier, (or higher
ranked on the search results page) and more frequently a site appears in the search
results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users.”1
There is no doubt that the discipline of Search Engine Optimization has quickly
grown from being a marketing tactic often left solely to the webmaster, to becoming
a mission critical, integral component of an organization’s overall online identity.
Organizations compete on a daily basis to show up in the top search results in an
attempt to be found, and effective SEO strategies help make that possible.
In the past, SEO has not been a top priority for customer service departments, but
with its ability to extend customer service’s reach to the major search engines, many
organizations are putting plans in place to realize its full potential.
SEO, or “search engine
optimization” is the process
of optimizing web pages for
online search, making these
pages visible via “organic”
(non paid) listings on search
engines.
Keep SEO in mind as you continue reading through this report as we uncovered a
real competitive advantage that customer service, contact centers, and customer
experience professionals can attain by combining the latest SEO tactics with robust
online self-service solutions, such as Virtual Agents.
Virtual Agents: A Partner for Enabling Customer Self-Service
Now more than ever, customer service professionals must focus on delivering an
outstanding customer service experience to website visitors. A highly effective and
scalable solution organizations are turning to in their effort to achieve this goal is
Virtual Agents.
At their core, Virtual Agents are software services that engage in automated
conversations with customers in self-service environments. They empower customers
through their journey for answers and task completion by simplifying the process
of delivering information across multiple interaction channels. In short, they help
customers get immediate answers to their questions at a time that is convenient
to them.
What’s Your Question?
Enter your question here
Ask!
© 2012 IntelliResponse Systems Inc.
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3. 6 STEPS FOR DEPLOYING VIRTUAL AGENTS TO MAXIMIZE SEO
Threat or Opportunity?
Gone are the days when customers had only a few options for customer service such as phoning into the call center
for support or physically visiting your location. Today, many organizations are extending their customer support to a
number of service channels such as their corporate website, mobile, social media as well as traditional contact center
agents. Multi-channel, online customer service has become a business imperative, driven by customer demand for
24X7 online access to information and the desire to get answers to their most frequently asked questions without
having to engage the contact center or a live chat agent.
But what if all of your prospective and existing customers don’t begin their search for their answers in one of these
support channels? What if your website is not always the first place they turn for online service information? What if
they turn to the world’s largest and most accessed online search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo for answers?
Will your organization’s support channels reach these prospective and existing customers, or will your competitors
get to them first?
A New Mission for Virtual Agents
Bridging the Customer Service Gap with Search Engine Optimization
Many organizations have come to recognize that a significant gap exists between connecting customers and prospects
who have questions, with an organization’s customer service channels, even those that are online. If your company
does not appear in the top search results on the major search engines, then unapproved company messaging, or your
competitor’s messaging, can easily creep into the top spot, redirecting customers and potential customers away from
your organization. This represents a real threat.
As a result, there’s a growing desire to combine Search Engine Optimization (SEO) with Virtual Agents or other web
self-service technologies in an effort to bridge this customer service gap and prevent competitiors from stealing
customers before they even get close to your customer service channels. If done correctly, your organization can even
drive new revenue opportunities, and capture not just “share of wallet” but “share of mind”.
When combined with traditional SEO techniques for helping your organization rank better, Virtual Agents can and
do provide a distinct advantage in extending the reach of your organization’s customer service by improving your
organization’s rank on web pages. Today, there are real benefits that companies can realize by using a Virtual Agent
solution in this way. Virtual Agents can help your organization engage with customers and deliver one right answer to
commonly asked product, service and corporate questions, increase the reach of your organization’s customer service,
and derail your competitor’s attempts at stealing away the customers you work so hard to keep.
© 2012 IntelliResponse Systems Inc.
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4. 6 STEPS FOR DEPLOYING VIRTUAL AGENTS TO MAXIMIZE SEO
Extending the Benefit: Scaling Virtual
Agent Technology to Other Channels
When the latest Virtual Agent technologies are deployed correctly, search engines can view and index an organization’s
approved, public knowledge base of content, enabling their customers, prospects and stakeholders to find relevant
answers through the world’s largest online search engines.
Best of all, Virtual Agent knowledge bases are loaded with keyword rich data that search engines love. After all, an
organization’s online knowledge base reflects true voice of the customer data and the information that matters most to
stakeholders.
Leveraging this knowledge base for SEO purposes can provide organizations with a tremendous advantage over
competitors as the questions or keywords that customers and prospects type into search engines align very well
with voice of the customer data stored in an organization’s knowledge base. This helps you get the leg up on your
competition and brings prospective and existing customers one step closer to your organization’s customer service
channels.
The good news is that many organizations who rely on Virtual Agents for web self-service already receive some of
these benefits. The GREAT news, is that organizations can realize significantly greater results by implementing the
suggestions outlined in this whitepaper.
TD Bank utilizes the IntelliResponse Virtual Agent solution across their online and mobile channels
for groups such as retail banking and discount brokerage as well as property and
casualty insurance. TD leverages the IntelliResponse Virtual Agent for SEO.
© 2012 IntelliResponse Systems Inc.
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5. 6 STEPS FOR DEPLOYING VIRTUAL AGENTS TO MAXIMIZE SEO
6 Steps for Using Virtual Agents to Maximize SEO Benefits
As you’ve discovered, delivering online service excellence doesn’t have to be limited to your company’s corporate
website, social media or mobile channels. Delivering online service excellence can begin on the major search engines
like Google, Bing, and Yahoo and a Virtual-Agent-based SEO strategy helps to maximize this opportunity. Below, we’ve
outlined 6 key steps to get you started on the road to SEO dominance, using Virtual Agent technology.
1)
To Crawl or Not to Crawl - Google uses a “crawler” to automatically discover and scan websites by following
links from one webpage to another.2 Organizations must first decide whether they will want Google to crawl the
publicly available answers that are available via their Virtual Agent. If so, Google will index these answers as
part of the content that is available through the Google search engine. Note: Google will actually crawl answer
pages automatically, but if the decision is made to intentionally have Google crawl the answers pages, there are
techniques that we’ll explore which can make this even more effective.
2)
Controlling your content - In these early planning stages, it will be important to take note of those answers that
you might not want to be picked up by Google search results. Since this is done at the page level, those answers
can simply be excluded. Depending on your Virtual Agent provider’s expertise, they will be able to help advise
you in this area.
3)
Creating A Dynamic Webpage - Next up, you will want to create a dynamic webpage that includes the unique
URL of each answer in your organization’s knowledge base that you wish Google crawlers to pick-up and index.
Either your organization or your Virtual Agent
provider can create this page.
TD uses IntelliResponse Virtual Agent for SEO. TD created a dynamic webpage based
4)
Host & Point - Organizations will then host
this newly created dynamic webpage and then
point Google crawlers to it, allowing the crawlers
to discover each page with the answer URLs.
Your Virtual Agent can provide further guidance to
your webmaster if required.
5)
Crawl, Index & Serve - The URLs from your dynamic
webpage will then be used by the Google crawler to
access each specific answer in your Virtual Agent
solution knowledge base. Over time, Google will
include these webpages in their results when end
users ask questions that match with the answers
contained in your knowledge base.
6)
Enhance with Marketing - Further improvements
can be made when an organization’s customer
service, contact center or customer experience
group works with their marketing team. Marketing
can tag answers that are relevant to your
organization’s brand that can assist in improving
the delivery of results as these tags are also
indexed during the process. These tags do not
appear when the answers are rendered within an
answer page in mobile, web or social mediums.
Your marketing department can offer further
suggestions for optimizing your knowledge base
that perhaps fall in line with your organization’s
SEO strategy.
© 2012 IntelliResponse Systems Inc.
on their knowledgebase. The result was that this created an index in Google that had
all the content (including tags which can further aid in an organizations SEO). When
customers search for TD transit number for example (as seen in previous screen
shot), the IntelliResponse answer appears in the first page of results on Google. If the
individual clicks on the link in Google they will land on the fully rendered answer page.
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6. 6 STEPS FOR DEPLOYING VIRTUAL AGENTS TO MAXIMIZE SEO
Virtual Agents and SEO: Benefits
Here are some benefits you’ll receive when Virtual Agents are deployed for this purpose in your organization:
Extend the Reach of Your Customer Service
Using Virtual Agents, your organization can experience the same great customer service
across multiple interaction channels, like the corporate web, mobile, social and even the
agent environment. Implementing these Virtual-Agent based SEO techniques can extend
your customer service reach to the major search engines too. Since customers might choose
to look for answers from any number of locations, these techniques can help bridge this
gap that exists between connecting customers and prospects who have questions with your
organization’s official customer service channels.
Block Unofficial Product Information and Bad Customer Reviews
When unofficial messaging about your company or bad (and sometimes inaccurate) customer
reviews appear at the top of the search results, it can be incredibly confusing to customers
or prospects who are simply looking for the correct answer to their question. Virtual Agents
can help. By utilizing some of these Virtual Agent-based SEO tips, your corporate approved
message or answers can appear in the top search results of the major search engines and
guide prospects and customers to the service channel of their choosing.
Build Customer Loyalty
A great customer experience often translates into customer loyalty and repeat purchases.
When end users search for a question, or a keyword, you want your company’s name to be
associated with it. When your company’s name naturally and consistently appears at the top
of the search results on Google, Bing or Yahoo, customers and prospects will associate your
organization with that topic. Over time, this will build mind share within your target market and
reaffirm to your existing customers that your organization truly does provide the best product or
service.
Minimize The “Silent” Competitive Threats
As previously mentioned, the major battle your customer service will face will be online and
it will begin on the major search engines. When prospects and customers are looking for
information about your organization, you risk competitive search results ranking higher than
yours and missing the very best opportunity to connect prospective and existing customers
with your service channels. A Virtual-Agent based SEO game plan will help minimize these
competitive threats.
$
Increasing Sales
They say the best defence is a strong offence. In this situation, it is absolutely true. It’s not just
your customers who are looking for answers. Prospects are looking too and more often than
not, they’ll begin their search on Google, Bing, or Yahoo. A Virtual Agent knowledge base is rich
in voice of the customer questions and answers. If this can be optimized for search engines,
your organization can appear at the top of the search results, and help direct prospects back to
your website with the goal of converting to customers.
© 2012 IntelliResponse Systems Inc.
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7. 6 STEPS FOR DEPLOYING VIRTUAL AGENTS TO MAXIMIZE SEO
GO
Getting Started
All IntelliResponse customers can take advantage of this method to improve their organic search results while
extending one right answer into public search environments like Google, Bing or Yahoo.
For questions about Virtual Agent-based
SEO techniques discussed in this paper,
for help getting started, or for information
on IntelliResponse Virtual Agents,
contact IntelliResponse at 1-866-454-0084
or info@intelliresponse.com
FREE EVALUATION OF YOUR WEB
SELF-SERVICE CAPABILITIES
Get a FREE evaluation of your
organization’s web self-service
capabilities with the Forrester/
IntelliResponse Online Self-Service
Assessment Survey.
Send an email to:
eval@intelliresponse.com
SOURCES:
1
2
Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization
Google - http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1061943
About IntelliResponse Systems
IntelliResponse is the leading provider of virtual agent technology solutions for the enterprise. We create profitable online
conversations for our private and public sector customers around the world.
With our patented Enterprise Virtual Agent (EVA) solutions, corporate websites, mobile applications, social media channels and
agent desktops can all be transformed by an engaging virtual concierge, empowering customers to ask questions using natural,
conversational language and delivering an effective and engaging online experience.
Some of the worlds most recognized corporate brands and public institutions trust their customer experience management needs to
IntelliResponse including CIBC Bank, ING Direct, Charter Communications, Progress Energy, Copa Airlines, Kobo Books, Penn State
University, Yale University and Harvard University.
For more information about IntelliResponse, visit www.IntelliResponse.com.
Twitter.com/IntelliResponse
Facebook.com/IntelliResponseInc
YouTube.com/IntelliResponseInc
© 2012 IntelliResponse Systems Inc.
To learn more about taking online self
service to the next level for your customers,
visit www.IntelliResponse.com.
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