Risks Associated With Unregulated Use Of AI Chatbots In Healthcare

Top 12 ways artificial intelligence will impact healthcare

benefits of chatbots in healthcare

Called ELIZA, the chatbot simulated a psychotherapist, using pattern matching and template-based responses to converse in a question-based format. Dr. Liji Thomas is an OB-GYN, who graduated from the Government Medical College, University of Calicut, Kerala, in 2001. Liji practiced as a full-time consultant in obstetrics/gynecology in a private hospital for a few years following her graduation.

benefits of chatbots in healthcare

A symptom checker could also alert patients when they should seek urgent or emergency care. Google” has led many patients to seek out health information online when they feel symptoms. Online medical research has become more common, with 60 percent of doctors saying in a 2018 Merck Manuals survey that they have noticed more patients coming in with information about their symptoms that they got online. Table 1 offers a detailed explanation of the advantages of ChatGPT in transforming mental healthcare (Miner et al., 2019; Denecke et al., 2021; Cosco, 2023; Nothwest Executive Education, 2023). Black adults are especially likely to say that bias based on a patient’s race or ethnicity is a major problem in health and medicine (64%). A smaller share of White adults (27%) describe bias and unfair treatment related to a patient’s race or ethnicity as a major problem in health and medicine.

Are Online Symptom Checkers Accurate?

Yet some of the chatbot answers were off base from the question or contained factual errors. In the past, patients might call their family practice to list their symptoms and seek advice about how to proceed. That might still be the best option for extremely complex cases, but a symptom checker that leverages AI should be able to triage a patient exhibiting the common cold.

benefits of chatbots in healthcare

Some providers have already seen success using AI-enabled CDS tools in the clinical setting. By utilizing AI’s advanced pattern recognition capabilities, CDS tools can incorporate risk stratification and predictive analytics, allowing them to help clinicians make more informed, personalized treatment recommendations in high-value use cases like chronic disease management. This list details — in alphabetical order — the top 12 ways that AI has and will continue to impact healthcare. Healthcare AI has generated major attention in recent years, but understanding the basics of these technologies, their pros and cons, and how they shape the healthcare industry is vital. Unlike other performance measurement studies, we imitated the actual usage behaviour of inexperienced users.

One of the prevalent challenges in drug development is non-clinical toxicity, which leads to a significant percentage of drug failures during clinical trials. However, the rise of computational modeling is opening up the feasibility of predicting drug toxicity, which can be instrumental in improving the drug development process [46]. This capability is particularly vital for addressing common types of drug toxicity, such as cardiotoxicity and hepatotoxicity, which often lead to post-market withdrawal of drugs. AI can be used to diagnose diseases, develop personalized treatment plans, and assist clinicians with decision-making.

Facilitating patient education

Health chatbots are revolutionizing personal healthcare practices (Pereira and Díaz, 2019). Currently, health chatbots are utilized for personal health monitoring and disease consultation, diagnosis, and treatment (Tudor Car et al., 2020; Aggarwal et al., 2023). Further, “Tess” is a mental health chatbot that provides personalized medical suggestions to patients with mental disorders (Gionet, 2018), similar to a therapist. Remarkably, a personal health assistant aimed at preventative healthcare, “Your.MD,” has thus far been used to provide diagnostic services and solutions to nearly 26 million users worldwide (Billing, 2020). According to BIS Research, the global market for healthcare chatbots is expected to reach $498.1 million by 2029 (Pennic, 2019). The potential applications of AI in assisting clinicians with treatment decisions, particularly in predicting therapy response, have gained recognition [49].

The advent of high-throughput genomic sequencing technologies, combined with advancements in AI and ML, has laid a strong foundation for accelerating personalized medicine and drug discovery [41]. Despite being a treasure trove of valuable insights, the complex nature of extensive genomic data presents substantial obstacles to its interpretation. The field of drug discovery has dramatically benefited from the application of AI and ML. The simultaneous analysis of extensive genomic data and other clinical parameters, such as drug efficacy or adverse effects, facilitates the identification of novel therapeutic targets or the repurposing of existing drugs for new applications [42,43,44,45,46].

benefits of chatbots in healthcare

The report guides 10 stages of AI chatbot development, beginning with concept and planning, including safety measures, structure for preliminary testing, governance for healthcare integration and auditing and maintenance and ending with termination. ChatGPT Only about half of the respondents in the DUOS survey knew the difference between Medicare and Medicare Advantage. As chatbots become more sophisticated, they will empower patients to take a more active role in their health management.

Can chatbots improve medical education?

For both the intervention and control groups, pre-intervention surveys were sent to participants to determine their demographics. All participants were then asked to answer questions regarding COVID-19 vaccine confidence, including perceived importance, effectiveness, and safety, vaccine acceptance, and COVID-19 vaccine-related misinformation. For Hong Kong and Singapore, we designed D24H vaccine chatbot and implemented it on the WhatsApp platform (Supplementary Method 4). Both free text mode and FAQ-style browsing mode were employed in the chatbots to improve vaccine confidence and acceptance by promptly providing accurate and consolidated vaccine-related information. Questions and comments from the participants are presented in supplementary information as word clouds (Supplementary Figs. 4–7).

benefits of chatbots in healthcare

Guest Authors contribute insightful and knowledgeable articles to Techloy about a product, service, feature, topic, or trend. Like any technology, generative AI presents multiple potential pitfalls alongside its possibilities. Generative AI tools are also creating a buzz in revenue cycle management and health insurance.

TDM aims to ensure that patients receive the right drug, at the right dose, at the right time, to achieve the desired therapeutic outcome while minimizing adverse effects [56]. The use of AI in TDM has the potential to revolutionize how drugs are monitored and prescribed. AI algorithms can be trained to predict an individual’s response to a given drug based on their genetic makeup, medical history, and other factors. This personalized approach to drug therapy can lead to more effective treatments and better patient outcomes [57, 58]. In recent years, the rise of predictive analytics has aided providers in delivering more proactive healthcare to patients. In the era of value-based care, the capability to forecast outcomes is invaluable for developing crucial interventions and guiding clinical decision-making.

Brave (in a) new world: an ethical perspective on chatbots for medical advice – Frontiers

Brave (in a) new world: an ethical perspective on chatbots for medical advice.

Posted: Mon, 19 Feb 2024 02:35:29 GMT [source]

In the healthcare arena, patients may be tempted to tell their symptoms to a chatbot rather than a physician, and clinicians may be able to leverage these tools to easily craft medical notes and respond to portal messages. Healthcare organizations and other groups have also drafted guidelines to help providers and payers navigate these challenges. Recently, the National Academy of Medicine released its AI Code of Conduct, which brought together researchers, patient advocates and others to outline the national architecture needed to promote the responsible, equitable use of these technologies in healthcare. Alongside these issues, a March 2024 study in the Journal of Medical Internet Research revealed that generative AI poses major security and privacy risks that could threaten patients’ protected health information.

If innovation is likely to disrupt daily routines and conflict with established behavioral patterns and customs, individuals may refuse to utilize it and thus develop resistance behavior (Ram, 1987). Subsequently, Ram and Sheth (1989) revised the IRT by proposing that two particular barriers perceived by individuals when confronted with innovation, namely, functional and psychological barriers, result in their resistance behavioral tendency. AI algorithms can continuously examine factors such as population demographics, disease prevalence, and geographical distribution. This can identify patients at a higher risk of certain conditions, aiding in prevention or treatment. Edge analytics can also detect irregularities and predict potential healthcare events, ensuring that resources like vaccines are available where most needed.

This individualized approach aims to improve patient outcomes by providing targeted interventions that are more effective, efficient, and safe. AI has emerged as a valuable tool in advancing personalized treatment, offering the potential to analyze complex datasets, predict outcomes, and optimize treatment strategies [47, 48]. Personalized treatment represents a pioneering field that demonstrates the potential of precision medicine on a large scale [49]. Nevertheless, the ability to provide real-time recommendations relies on the advancement of ML algorithms capable of predicting patients who may require specific medications based on genomic information. The key to tailoring medications and dosages to patients lies in the pre-emptive genotyping of patients prior to the actual need for such information [49, 50].

The easiest way to avoid this compliance roadblock, the authors suggested, is to avoid entering any protected health information (PHI) into a chatbot. For example, if a physician wanted to enter a transcript into a chatbot, they would first have to manually deidentify the transcript according to HIPAA’s deidentification standards. “Clinicians may not realize that by using ChatGPT, they are submitting information to another organization, OpenAI, the company that owns and supports the technology,” the article stated. Providers and community health partners might be instrumental in building patient trust in generative AI and encouraging use. The history of generative AI spans decades, beginning with the development of ELIZA, the first chatbot, by MIT researchers in 1966. Basic chatbots of this nature continued to evolve well into the 2000s, but more advanced conversational agents would not be developed until 2010, when IBM’s Watson competed on the game show Jeopardy!

This post explores the opportunities and challenges of using AI chatbots for mental health. The chatbot from Antara Health is a prime example of the personalized care plan strategy. By analyzing patient data to monitor health progress, modify medication, and offer tailored recommendations, it aids in the management of chronic diseases. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. By doing this, it maximizes long-term health outcomes by ensuring that patients follow their treatment plans and aids in preventing complications.

benefits of chatbots in healthcare

With continuously increasing demands of health care services and limited resources worldwide, finding solutions to overcome these challenges is essential [82]. Virtual health assistants are a new and innovative technology transforming the healthcare industry to support healthcare professionals. It is designed to simulate human conversation to offer personalized patient care based on input from the patient [83]. Virtual assistants can help patients with tasks such as identifying the underlying problem based on the patient’s symptoms, providing medical advice, reminding patients to take their medications, scheduling doctor appointments, and monitoring vital signs. In addition, digital assistants can collect information daily regarding patients’ health and forward the reports to the assigned physician.

Securing Your Virtual Vault: Cybersecurity Tips for Online Gamers

By contrast, large shares of Americans say they would not want any of the three other AI-driven applications used in their own care. On balance, those who see bias based on race or ethnicity as a problem in health and medicine think AI has potential to improve the situation. About half (51%) of those who see a problem think the increased use of AI in health care would help reduce bias and unfair treatment, compared with 15% who say the use of AI would make bias and unfair treatment worse.

Prompt engineering65 significantly impacts the responses generated by healthcare chatbots, and the choice of prompt technique plays a pivotal role in achieving improved answers. Various prompting methods, such as zero-shot, few-shot, chain of thought generated with evidence, and persona-based approaches, have been proposed in the literature. The FLoating point OPerations (FLOP) metric quantifies the number of floating point operations required to execute a single instance of healthcare conversational models. This metric provides valuable insights into the computational efficiency and latency of healthcare chatbots, aiding in their optimization for faster and more efficient response times. Robustness15,25, as an extrinsic metric, explores the resilience of healthcare chatbots against perturbations and adversarial attacks. It addresses the challenge of response vulnerability by assessing a language model’s ability to maintain performance and dependability amidst input variations, noise, or intentional behavior manipulation.

  • With a CAGR of 27.4%, Australia is expected to dominate the market for healthcare chatbots.
  • For instance, our chatbot was not able to recognize users’ emotions and tailor phrase responses to questions.
  • There is also a lack of standard insurance mechanisms for mitigating the institutional risks that such systems may pose to the companies using them.
  • Last month, 30 social care organisations including the National Care Association, Skills for Care, Adass and Scottish Care met at Reuben College to discuss how to use generative AI responsibly.
  • As a result, these chatbots could serve as valuable decision-support tools for doctors, enhancing the accuracy and efficiency of their diagnoses and treatment plans.
  • In less complex cases, such as providing general medical information or offering initial triage, chatbots can save time for both patients and medical professionals.

Tools like biosensors and wearables are frequently used to help care teams gain insights into a patient’s vital signs or activity levels. In addition to predictive analytics, AI tools have advanced the field of remote patient monitoring. AI technologies ChatGPT App are already changing medical imaging by enhancing screening, risk assessment and precision medicine. Addressing these challenges requires health systems to juggle staffing restrictions with surgeon preferences, which data analytics and AI can help with.

ChatGPT Dependency Disorder in Healthcare Practice: An Editorial – Cureus

ChatGPT Dependency Disorder in Healthcare Practice: An Editorial.

Posted: Mon, 05 Aug 2024 07:00:00 GMT [source]

In response to inquiries about the five chapters, ChatGPT-3.5 generated a total of 60 statements, whereas ChatGPT-4 produced 32 statements. ChatGPT-3.5 did not address 123 key messages, and ChatGPT-4 did not address 132 of the 172 key messages of the ERC guideline chapters. A total of 77% of the ChatGPT-3.5 statements and 84% of the ChatGPT-4 statements were fully in line with the ERC guidelines.

  • For instance, one survey found that over 80% of professional physicians believe that health chatbots are unable to comprehend human emotions and represent the danger of misleading treatment by providing patients with inaccurate diagnostic recommendations (Palanica et al., 2019).
  • Apriorit, a software development company that provides engineering services globally to tech companies.
  • It’s up to the radiologist to review the 3D images and search for areas of density, calcifications (which can be early signs of cancer), architectural distortion (areas where tissue looks like it’s pulling the surrounding tissue) and other areas of concern.
  • Table 5 indicates that, f2 values range from 0.015 to 0.646; this clarifies that in the model, two paths have weak effects and four paths exceed the medium effect (higher than 0.15; Cohen, 1988).

Particularly, genomics plays a key role in precision and personalized medicine, but making these insights useful requires analyzing large, complex datasets. EHR adoption aims to streamline clinical workflows while bolstering cost-effective care delivery, but instead, clinicians are citing clinical documentation benefits of chatbots in healthcare and administrative tasks as sources of EHR burden and burnout. The key messages were treated methodologically as equivalent, as there is no tool to compare the clinical relevance of the individual statements against each other, even if some statements appear more important than others.

Top Customer Experience Trends In 2024

How to fit customer experience security into your strategy

explain customer service experience

After Dia & Co began its most recent referral program, its referral links were shared more than 50,000 times. Forty thousand customers shared those links, and in the first month, the program saw about 22 conversions per day. Encourage customers to invest in the program by giving them welcome points when they create an account. When they see how easy it is to earn rewards, they’ll be excited to come back to your store to do it again. A strong customer service system enables you or a customer success representative to address customer needs clearly and efficiently. Customer retention is the practice of increasing your repeat customer rate—and improving your business’s long-term outlook in the process.

  • “Having real-time data enables us to protect customers by having full visibility,” he said.
  • Offering a V.I.P. account with faster access to human support can be a major differentiator between you and your competition.
  • For instance, sales and customer service professionals need to be able to speak with customers, understand their problems and help solve them.
  • An already-annoyed customer who contacts customer service with an issue is guaranteed to get angrier and angrier the more they are asked to repeat themselves.

To calculate CLV, take your average value of a sale, number of repeat transactions, and retention time for a customer and multiply these values together. Purchase frequency shows you how often customers are coming back to buy from your store. This is especially important when you consider that repeat customers are often responsible for a significant portion ChatGPT App of a store’s annual revenue. Here are the most important customer retention metrics and examine why they matter. If a customer complains about receiving a damaged order, take responsibility even if the fault lies with the courier. Offer a sincere apology, ship a free replacement, and explain the steps you’re taking to prevent similar issues in the future.

Rethink Processes With an Eye Towards Customer Success

It’s not just about collecting data; it’s about connecting the dots between different sources to derive actionable and transformative insights. Using the tips and tools in this guide, you’ll be well on your way to building a customer experience you can be proud of. One that both customers will appreciate every time they shop with you and improves your bottom line. You can use multiple-choice questions, free-text answer boxes, and sliding scales to help your loyal customers express their opinions better and help you understand their overall customer experience. Net Promoter Score is a popular metric businesses use to measure customer opinions.

What Is Omnichannel Customer Service? – ibm.com

What Is Omnichannel Customer Service?.

Posted: Fri, 23 Dec 2022 09:27:55 GMT [source]

They are not just for answering frequently asked questions but are trusted to handle aspects of customer service and even manage minor troubleshooting. For over two decades CMSWire, produced by Simpler Media Group, has been the world’s leading community of digital customer experience professionals. CMSWire’s Marketing & Customer Experience Leadership channel is the go-to hub for actionable research, editorial and opinion for CMOs, aspiring CMOs and today’s customer experience innovators. Our dedicated editorial and research teams focus on bringing you the data and information you need to navigate today’s complex customer, organizational and technical landscapes. A good story helps get a message across to internal stakeholders and shows them how collected data affects the organization. Storytelling can also highlight how a particular product or service can benefit customers.

“We developed a customer care app, which is easier to use [than USSD], and also makes services more accessible. That also means making sure that the front-line people are embedded into that journey, she adds. Otherwise they’re likely to forsake the fancy new service dashboards in favor of what they know – even if that’s Excel. “If you don’t embed and get people on the journey, it’s as good as being in the dark ages,” she says.

The roots of customer insight can be traced back to the early days of commerce, but the way we understand and use these insights has changed drastically over the years. These amounts don’t include additional income, such as bonuses or commissions, that employers may offer. These salaries may also differ depending on an agent’s skill level or prior experience. The average salary for ChatGPT contact center and call center agents in the U.S. is $39,912, according to June 2024 data from Glassdoor. The longer your TTR, the more likely it is to be a bad experience for the customer. You can also use a metric alongside first-time resolution (FTR) to see the percentage of support tickets resolved in the first contact versus how many take more than a single interaction.

It includes answering customer support questions in public social media post comments or discussing via private message. Learn what people expect in customer service in 2024, tools to make social media customer service easier than ever before, and tips to make sure you’re delivering a winning customer service experience on social—every time. Customer service is a fundamental component of any business and is crucial to its success. While automation has certainly made the process easier, the human element of “one-to-one” interactions cannot be replaced as people still want to connect with other people.

The challenges in gathering and using customer insights

It depends on what your customers value and what you can realistically provide. But given how vague “customer experience” can be, it’s difficult for some businesses to pin down. Ahead, you’ll learn everything about customer experience and how to improve it. Across the customer lifecycle, it’s inevitable that preferences will vary, needs will change and priorities will shift.

According to McKinsey & Co., more than half of customer interactions (56%) are part of a multi-channel, multi-event buying journey. This shows that the customer journey is not as straightforward as it once was and demands new ways to strengthen customer relationships. CX professionals must identify ways to improve CX and build loyalty and trust among customers. If the organization is new, then gaining new customers may be the top priority. An established brand, on the other hand, may focus more on customer retention, depending on what else is happening within the business.

explain customer service experience

Although the terms “customer experience” and “customer service” often are used interchangeably, they refer to distinct initiatives. Machine scrutiny of customer-generated text goes beyond generic analytics to implement very targeted methods of extracting useful results from the data. Companies cannot forget the importance of a customer’s need to dictate how and when issues are resolved.

Walk through a typical customer journey to see where the hiccups are and what needs to be improved. Working constantly to streamline and make life easier for buyers will help differentiate your business. Asking customers questions will help you determine what the issue is as well as offer insight into potential solutions. Being able to reference details that have been shared and ask relevant questions lets customers know that you hear their concerns and are invested in seeking answers. Today’s consumer recognizes they can conduct business at any time of day or night. The “always connected customer,” therefore, expects brands to be available at 3 a.m.

To retrieve and process data from the web, we apply an adapted version of the new method recently proposed by6. The main results of this study underscore the significant role of online customer reviews in explaining customer satisfaction, particularly in the context of hotel ratings in Sardinia (RQ1). We have identified specific topics in online reviews that positively or negatively influence these ratings (RQ2), with notable differences in the impact of these topics between coastal and inland hotels (RQ3).

By focusing on the customer and creating tailored solutions, brands can improve customer satisfaction, enhance customer loyalty and increase ROI. Fortunately, design thinking enables brands to take each type of constituent’s needs and desires and turn them into actionable insights. “When design thinking takes them all into account — at the same time — new outcomes emerge,” said Schreiber. When considering strategy, it’s important to understand customer expectations and behavior.

explain customer service experience

This methodological framework is applied to a case study focused on tourism data of Sardinia Island. According to5, the single-case study is particularly suitable when the case exemplifies a unique or extreme circumstance that warrants in-depth exploration (Critical Case Testing). Sardinia’s dual identity as both a coastal and inland tourist destination offers a distinct context that is not commonly replicated in other regions, making it an ideal subject for focused investigation (Unique or Extreme Case). Furthermore, the island’s burgeoning interest in off-season and experiential tourism represents a revelatory opportunity to examine emergent trends that have been largely unexplored in other studies (Revelatory Case). Our unit of analysis is the individual review, which is crucial for understanding how specific comments and ratings reflect tourist satisfaction in different geographical areas within Sardinia.

What is the average salary of a contact center agent?

The Dynamics 365 Digital Messaging and Voice Add-in collects and analyzes customer feedback through surveys, polls and other channels. It’s ideal for organizations looking to collect and analyze customer feedback across various touchpoints. It costs an additional $90 per user, per month and requires an Enterprise license. Starter starts at $299 per month for one location and includes basic review and listing management. Growth starts at $399 per month for one location and adds messaging, surveys and basic analytics. Dominate involves custom pricing for enterprises and offers all features and advanced reporting.

Drawing from the multitude of sources, such as product reviews and market research, isn’t an end in itself. The true essence lies in processing this information and interpreting it as a basis for an effective strategy. The post-World War II era brought about a consumer boom, with businesses witnessing an expanding middle class with disposable incomes. Companies became more consumer-centric, leading to the burgeoning of market research firms dedicated to studying consumer behaviors and preferences.

explain customer service experience

This two-level certification program provides training and evaluates your current CX efforts in addition to fostering a culture of CX accountability within an organization. If organizations assess weaknesses and security requirements across customer and attacker journeys, they can find where and how to apply CIAM controls. Organizations often start with their most critical attack vectors, then apply CIAM functions such as multifactor authentication, identity proofing and anti-fraud verification to secure vulnerable areas. Broader analysis tools help analyze market trends and assist with formulating action items on how to get ahead of the competition when those trends become profitable.

It involves systematic gathering, recording and analyzing of data about customers, competitors and the market. This can include surveys, interviews and observations aiming to understand customer preferences, market trends and competitive positioning. Through market research, businesses can identify market gaps, gauge product demand and better understand their explain customer service experience target demographic. In addition to personalized recommendations, companies are also turning to AI services to help develop personalized content. I’m much more likely to buy from a company that has taken the time, or has a used a program, to get to know me. Yes there are some issues with privacy, but for the most part I’m satisfied with what I’ve experienced.

Announcing Microsoft Copilot for Service – Microsoft

Announcing Microsoft Copilot for Service.

Posted: Wed, 15 Nov 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]

What truly separates successful brands from their competitors is offering a high level of personalization as part of their customer service experience. Consumers expect to receive personalized care through all of a brand’s channels, and they expect the same quality experience whether they are in a physical store, on a website, using an app or calling customer service on the phone. Plus, today’s customers expect speed, convenience and ease of use, and brands should help them by providing self-service capabilities. “Customers are now expecting two-way, personalized conversations delivered via their preferred channels. If these experiences are not tailored to a customer’s individual needs, it creates frustration and distrust with the company.” Customer churn rate, which is usually written in the form of a percentage, measures how many customers stop buying a business’s product or service over a period of time. Ecommerce churn rate can be used to measure customer retention for subscription-based businesses.

Try Sprout Social free with a 30-day trial

With Shopify Inbox, you can offer a live chat experience right on your website. Its AI capabilities ensure that customers can get immediate answers and communicate from their computer or phone. Customer accounts make repurchasing a breeze by giving customers instant access to previous orders, pre-filled shipping information, and personalized experiences. These little conveniences encourage repeat purchases and enhance the overall shopping experience.

explain customer service experience

Then put your customer data to good use by adding loyalty apps to your point-of-sale system. You’ll be able to reward customers for shopping with you, both in-store and online. And you can take it a step further by personally thanking them at the checkout counter or sending a personal note with their next online order (more about handwritten notes below). People value it if you reach out to them quickly when they have trouble, have a question, or need a solution.

  • Medallia aims to offer real-time insights across the business, enabling frontline employees and the C-suite to account for the voice of the customer in daily decisions.
  • When the agent is stuck and must communicate with a subject matter expert via chat, estimate the time it will take to get the necessary support.
  • “If the detected sentiment is negative, the ticket is more likely to be addressed quickly by the support team.”
  • Naturally, ecommerce businesses face occasional problems with shipping and delivery.

If necessary, the chatbot can also escalate complex billing issues to a human representative for further assistance. According to Tidio’s study, the majority of consumers, specifically 62%, would choose to utilize a chatbot for customer service instead of waiting for a human agent to respond to their queries. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. These conversational AI applications can efficiently handle customer inquiries and provide support around the clock, thereby freeing up human support agents to handle more complex customer issues. Customer experience creates an emotional bond that helps companies build a competitive advantage by capturing more customers, deepening customer loyalty and increasing customer lifetime value. As businesses grapple with how to keep customers coming back, the factors driving customer loyalty offer valuable clues. Our survey posed a question to understand what most influences a consumer’s allegiance to a brand.

Most successful businesses recognize the importance of providing outstanding customer service. Courteous and empathetic interaction with a trained customer service representative can mean the difference between losing or retaining a customer. However, patience may be the core building block of any fantastic customer interaction. Showing patience in customer service doesn’t just mean staying calm and collected as customers rant about their issues or struggle to explain a problem. When you message Caesars Sportsbook, the bot immediately prompts you to provide all the relevant details needed for quality support. The instructions request just enough information to prevent time-consuming back-and-forth between customers and support agents without putting too much work on either party.

Some NPS questions directly relate to customer service, but other questions reflect other factors, like product quality, price, and delivery times. You can get a leg up on your customer service operations by training your team to expertly address common questions or issues. How to create exceptional customer service experiences at any stage in business. Taught by Mat Patterson, customer service evangelist at Help Scout you’ll practical tips to help you make customer service a competitive advantage.

Why Criminal Defense?

When I first started my practice and told people I was going to be a criminal defense attorney, a lot of people asked me why I would want to spend my life getting people off the hook for committing crimes. I usually gave some flippant response because I didn’t want to take the time to explain that I wasn’t just defending criminals and people accused of crimes, I was defending everyone by forcing the Government to live up to the words of the constitution. A solid criminal defense bar assures that the police and the prosecutors follow the protections guaranteed to all of us in the Constitution and in state laws, and if we protect the lowest criminals in our society we can be sure that the rest of us are protected as well. I usually don’t say all this to people because it’s long winded and sounds really cheesy, but every now and again a story comes along that really drives that point home.

Case in point, this story from Manassas Virginia. It starts routinely enough, a 15 year old girl sends pictures of herself to her 17 year old boyfriend who responds by sending a video of himself naked to her. The police get involved and the State charges the 17 year old with felony charges of possession and manufacturing of child pornography. The teen enters not-guilty pleas and the case gets set for trial (at the time I’m writing this the trial is still pending). The police and the prosecutor decide that they need to be able to prove that it was actually the kids penis and so they apply for and are granted a search warrant to take pictures of the kid’s naked and erect penis. Yeah, let’s go over that again. The prosecutor took a warrant to a judge asking permission to force the kid to go to a hospital and allow doctors to inject him with a chemical to make him erect so that they could take pictures of him naked to use as evidence against him in a case for taking naked pictures of himself. At this point you would hope that the judge would laugh at the prosecutor and send him packing with a denied warrant and maybe a bar complaint, but no. The Judge signed the warrant.

Enter the heroic defense attorney who moves to quash (get rid of) the warrant and calls the local press. The press pick up the story, and although the Judge does not rule on quashing the warrant he did allow the teen to leave the State without the State serving the warrant. The State has since agreed to allow the warrant to expire without being served, meaning they won’t force the boy into the pictures but they avoid a ruling on the motion to quash the warrant.

So, next time you start to think that the defense attorney is always the bad guy trying to get the sleazy criminal off without consequences, remember the prosecutor and the cops who were willing to legally force a child into allowing them to take pictures of him naked, even willing to give him an injection to assure he was erect, in order to prosecute him for taking naked pictures of himself. And then remember that judge was going to allow them to do it and that no one involved seemed to recognize the irony. Then remember that it was the boy’s attorney, a criminal defense attorney, who prevented the atrocity from happening.

DUII Happens to Everyone

I have told clients for a long time that DUII is unique among crimes in that it happens across all socioeconomic levels, it happens to men and women, and across race lines in roughly equal amounts. There is no better evidence of this than the recent arrest of Springfield Oregon Police Detective Marco Espinoza. For more information on the arrest, see this article from the local Register Guard. I’m not going to discuss the facts of Mr. Espinoza’s case in this post (mostly because I don’t know any beyond what’s been said in the paper) but I would like to take a moment to use this case as an example of the stigma surrounding DUII and crimes in general.

First of all, let us remember that Mr. Espinoza is innocent. He has the right, like all of us, to be presumed innocent of any alleged crimes until he is convicted of them in court. Let us not fall into the trap of assuming that police or media are always correct in the first article that the publish. As the old saying goes, the story is on page 1 the retraction is on page 10. I worked on a case recently where the local paper and TV news put out stories of my client threatening a group of people with a knife. Turns out that according to two independent witnesses, that never happened and those charges were eventually dismissed. I looked for any stories on the dismissals and I never found any. So let’s be careful jumping to conclusions.

If Mr. Espinoza is convicted of the DUII he is likely to face some prejudice in his daily life. He will be branded a criminal and possibly a drunk or substance abuser and people will think less of him. That should not necessarily be the case. More so than other types of crimes a DUII conviction represents a mistake, but it should not be a terminal one. I have had more than one client come to me with a DUII charge and tell me what a huge wake up call it was for them. Some of them knew for a while they had a problem with alcohol but never knew it was as bad as it was, and some of them never realized they had a problem. Once you realize you have a problem you can start taking care of it. Everyone of the people who have told me they had a problem has sought help with that problem, either as part of their legal case or not. People who have been through a DUII should not be saddled with that negative stereotype for the rest of their lives.

Time will tell what happens to Mr. Espinoza and his case, but let us remember that we live in a society that presumes people are innocent and if they are proven guilty we believe in second chances.