We sat down with our SVP of Product Manish Barmecha for a discussion on the how JRNI is powering the future of customer engagement:
QUESTION: JRNI has recently released a number of new features. What is the vision that guides JRNI innovation?
MANISH BARMECHA: JRNI’s vision is to help our customers drive ‘More Engagements. Less Waiting. Faster Revenue.’ We know that the more quality engagements an organization can generate, the better it can meet the needs of customers, which progresses them to the next stage of their customer journey. ‘Less Waiting’ has dual meanings; reducing the wait time for customers to be connected to the best engagement option as well as less waiting for the brand to advance customers through sales stages. When more customers have their needs met faster, sales cycles are accelerated, hence ‘Faster Revenue.’
It is this vision that guides our innovation. We strive to enable an exceptional customer experience, make the front-line staff experience as simple and streamlined as possible, and deliver actionable insight and intelligent automation, while providing a true enterprise-grade platform.
QUESTION: With that vision in mind, can you describe some of the new features added to the platform?
MANISH BARMECHA: JRNI continues its market leadership with the addition of several new and impactful engagement features:
Availability By Method: Allows JRNI users (bankers, wealth advisors, sales agents) to set up flexible shift schedules that control not only the location(s) users work at, but also the meeting method(s) (in-person, phone, video) that users would like to provide. Whether users are working from home in the afternoon, taking phone appointments outside of normal operating hours or circulating between locations - JRNI can be configured to match users’ availability windows.
Multi-Staff Appointments: Supports appointments that require the skills of more than just one staff member. This functionality allows users to create bookings with multiple staff or add staff to existing appointments. Before adding staff to appointments, JRNI checks if the desired staff is available and intelligently presents configurable options if they are not.
Personal Booking Links: Fosters a closer relationship between staff and customers and bridges the gap between enterprise and individual appointment booking. This allows customers to quickly and easily book appointments with specific staff members and these direct booking links can be shared via email signatures, social media posts & advertisements, or via user profile pages and personal websites.
Reservation Workflow: Requires a confirmation of attendance before customers arrive for their appointment. This dramatically decreases the number of appointment “no shows” and optimizes staff efficiency by eliminating the need for staff to chase appointment confirmations.
Lead Time Reporting: Provides detailed insights into how long customers have to wait to find an appointment for specific services and locations. This helps you understand demand vs. capacity for services and optimizes the allocation of staff across services, locations and methods, while improving the customer experience by reducing lead times.
Journey Builder: User friendly interface that allows business users to build and configure the appointment booking journey with fine-grained control over the flow, functionality and look and feel of the journey. The Journey Builder allows organizations to maintain brand standards, while customizing the customer experience to fit their business objectives.
QUESTION: How are these features incorporated into an engagement workflow?
MANISH BARMECHA: Let’s take a simple example. Let’s say a customer wants to book an in-person appointment at a bank for a mortgage. If they have an existing relationship with a specialist, they might use a Personal Booking Link to schedule that specific specialist. If not, they would book an available employee at their preferred branch. The enterprise team would have used the Journey Builder to ensure the booking experience is on brand and collects all the required information. Availability by Method ensures the appointment is scheduled with a specialist when they are available for in-person appointments (as opposed to virtual appointments only) at that branch. Let’s assume the specialist determines they need managerial assistance with the appointment. They can create a Multi-Staff Appointment to add the manager to this appointment which would update calendars accordingly. The Reservation Workflow may be set up so the customer is required to confirm the appointment as the appointment approaches. Appointment availability data is continuously fed into Lead Time Reporting, which helps the bank evaluate if the wait times for that appointment type are within acceptable standards.
As you can see, each of these features significantly enhances the appointment process for both the customer and staff.
QUESTION: Can you give a preview of what is coming next in JRNI’s commitment to innovation?
MANISH BARMECHA: Without giving away too much, I can say that we are investing heavily in AI and Natural Language Processing technology with the goal of providing intelligent automation that enables brands to proactively engage with the right customer or prospect at the right time and pair them up with the right staff. We are incredibly excited about these groundbreaking intelligent automation capabilities because they will not only improve the customer experience but also help brands optimize business outcomes and drive more engagements, less waiting and faster revenue!
