January 2022 - Demakis Technologies

January 28, 2022February 7, 2022 Roxanne Demakis Tech Trends

Conversational UX: Definition & Benefits (+ 5 Best Practices)

This post will help you learn everything you need to know about conversational UX by answering the following questions:

What is conversational user experience?
How does it impact tech and web users?
What are the best ways to include it in your business?

If you are interested in learning how to improve user experience with this innovative approach, keep on reading!

What Is Conversational UX?

Conversational UX is a type of user experience that uses voice, chat, or any other form of language-based technology to simulate real human conversation. The end goal is to create the feeling of true human communication.

It defines the way businesses build chatbots, with seamless interaction as the final goal.

Why Is Conversational UX Important?

Let’s go over the three main reasons why conversational UX design is important:

Higher Agent Efficiency

When live agents are free from dealing with basic questions that chatbots can handle, they can focus on more delicate requests that cannot be completed without human contact.

The agents will no longer feel overwhelmed by the number of mundane tasks and they will be able to handle more queries.

More efficient workflows will also uplift the agents’ mood which directly improves the quality of customer support.

Better Customer Experience

Today’s customers have high expectations when they interact with businesses.

They seek convenience and solutions that will work around their schedule.

That is why the use of chatbots that are available 24/7 can improve the quality of the helpdesk experience dramatically.

Client satisfaction, another benefit of conversational UX, is one of the best marketing strategies.

According to Deloitte, customers are very likely to share positive experiences with nine other people.

More Conversions

Conversational UX can be a great tool for lead generation, upselling and cross-selling.

For instance, many businesses use chatbots to collect valuable marketing information from visitors before they get a chance to ask questions.

Gathering visitors’ names and email addresses helps marketers create strategies to increase the number of conversions.

everything you need to know about conversational ux

5 Conversational UX Best Practices

If you’re looking to implement or improve your conversational user experience, take a look at our list of five best practices:

Establish the Basics First

Although jumping into the practical parts of conversational UX, in order to do it right, you need to determine some of its basic components.

Trying to answer the following questions will help you set the foundations for your new chatbot UX project:

Where will you use the conversational interface? (website, social media etc.)
What will be its format? (a voice-based or text-based interface).
Does the project require advanced features such as AI?

Match Customer’s Intent

In order for your design to work, it needs to go hand in hand with your customers’ intent.

You will only be able to write successful scripts if you have a good understanding of all the potential conversational UX use cases.

Customer interactions are either related to sales or to support, and you should determine which of the two types dominates your business.

If most of your interactions are sales-based, create conversational UX scripts that lead to conversions.

On the other hand, if the interactions are mostly support-related, build a design that spins around informational use cases.

Gather Customer Context

Sometimes chatbots are unable to gather the context of the conversation, and the best way to prevent that is to build your chat flow with both optional and mandatory variables in mind.

Mandatory variables are the key pieces of information that are crucial for the communication to flow, while optional variables stand for additional details that are not essential for the conversation, but they can make it more efficient.

Chatbots will use this data to move smoothly through the conversation and provide helpful answers as fast as possible.

Mimic Natural Conversations

The best chatbot scripts are written with the customer’s perspective in mind, and formulated with structures used by humans.

There are several useful ideas that can help you mimic real human interaction:

Know the language your client base uses, avoid jargon and complicated terms.
Keep the answers short and concise.
Use ‘welcome back’ intents.
Include different agreement tokens such as ‘Perfect’, ‘I think so’, etc.
Create repair sequences to use after an error or a misunderstanding occurs.
Include phrases that show politeness and sociocultural elements.

Analyze and Review Regularly

Your conversational UX interface needs to keep up with the changes in your customers’ needs and desires.

To keep exceeding client expectations, you will need to revisit the setup regularly and modify it as needed.

Take some time each month, or stick to any other interval, to inspect the efficiency of conversational flows, as well as to analyze past conversations.

Look for patterns that will help you fine-tune the scripts and address common pitfalls.

Need Help Getting Started with Conversational UX?

If you think your business can benefit from conversational UX but you are not sure where to start, feel free to contact us at Demakis Technologies.

One of our seasoned professionals will be happy to assist you.

January 25, 2022February 7, 2022 Roxanne Demakis Cyber Security

10 Cybersecurity Gaps You Should Know About

Every year, cybersecurity gaps and data breaches expose more than 155.8 million records in the U.S.

Because businesses are the most targeted, protecting them against potential cyber-attacks is critical.

This post highlights 10 cyber security gaps you should know about so you can get a better understanding of cyber security and the gaps, challenges, and solutions.

Let’s start!

#1 Lack of Foresight

With the frequency and complexity of cyber attacks increasing, businesses can no longer afford to be unprepared.

Before a cybersecurity breach occurs, companies must test their security and be prepared to respond if needed.

Failure to anticipate and respond to breaches will cost businesses a lot of money as they try to get back on their feet.

#2 Unexpected and Unknown Threats

Organizations must understand cybersecurity threats in order to be prepared.

It’s essential to know who your enemy is and what resources you have at your disposal.

Organizations can use the Dark Web to get an insight into their threats and keep up with the latest developments.

#3 Asset Management

Knowing your IT systems and the data they contain improves network security.

You may start identifying which devices are causing network security risks by keeping a continuous inventory of technology assets.

Some of those assets include:

Servers
Applications
Printers
Smart phones
Laptops
Call equipment
Wireless speaker systems

Organizations can discover devices generating network security holes utilizing a comprehensive cybersecurity gap analysis.

#4 Lack of Vulnerability Disclosure

When an organization understands its own weaknesses and gaps, it can develop plans for improvement.

Without that information, organizations can only speculate or do nothing.

Regular reporting on device and server patching can help IT departments.

Organizations who use Proactive Management can see when a patch was applied, which machines were updated, and which devices encountered issues or still needed to be updated.

Once the IT team has this information, they may resolve the issues and identify a potential cyber security gap.

#5 Employee Risks

Employees can be a company’s weakest link as well as its most vital protection.

A dishonest employee may sell confidential information or even grant attackers access to the company’s network.

Unintentionally, a careless employee may leave an “open door” for attackers.

On the other hand, an employee who is aware of the risks and is trained on the signs to look for in a breach is an organization’s first line of defense.

Make sure that your employees are aware of cyber threats and how to respond.

#6 IoT Devices

Most modern wellness technologies are connected to the Internet of Things (IoT).

Many wellness functions and touchless technology are included.

As these devices become more popular, hackers will have more opportunities to identify a weakness anywhere on the network.

It is challenging for IT staff to secure and regularly monitor these devices.

#7 Third-Party Risks

Beyond the systems and employees of the organization, it is critical to ensure that the third parties and vendors with whom you work have robust cybersecurity policies and measures in place.

Organizations should implement a standard and structured method for reviewing and assessing the security levels of these external parties.

That’s how they will ensure that attackers do not exploit these loopholes to access the organization’s network.

#8 Crisis Handling

When incidents happen, organizations must ensure that the crisis is handled correctly.

To ensure that everyone is aware of their roles and responsibilities, a detailed crisis response plan should be in place and well-rehearsed.

Mishandling cyber incidents can lead to higher costs and reputational damage, which is difficult to recover from.

#9 Mobile Security

Employees in modern organizations frequently work on the go or away from the office.

That means that any type of cyber security implemented in the organization must extend beyond the office’s perimeters.

Employees must be aware of the risks and response plans, and mobile devices and laptops must be secured.

#10 Governance and Risk Management

Executive leadership should be involved with a cyber security team and security management.

Appointing a Chief Security Officer (CISO) or a Chief Technology Officer can improve your organization’s infrastructure and cybersecurity measures from the top down.

Better governance policies and cybersecurity practices can be implemented to transition from reactive to proactive.

Close the Gaps in Your Cybersecurity with a Trusted IT Specialist

Managing cybersecurity gaps comes down to determining gaps in understanding cyber security and what can be done to close these gaps.

Proactive cyber security management and measures must be implemented to stop cybersecurity attacks before they impact your business.

Trusted IT specialists like Demakis Technologies can assist you in alleviating cybersecurity concerns and removing tasks from your to-do lists.

CONTACT US to reach out to one of our cybersecurity specialists to get started and start closing the gaps in your network security.

January 21, 2022February 7, 2022 Roxanne Demakis cloud

Cloud Migration: 5 Things You MUST Consider

Cloud migration is a daunting process for any company. So in this new (no-nonsense) post, we outline the five key things you MUST consider when migrating to the cloud.

Let’s begin.

#1 Perform a comprehensive discovery process

Cloud migration is challenging. You need to understand the cloud requirements of your company to mitigate a seamless migration.

To do that, you need to perform a discovery process. This can help you get answers to:

What are the gaps in your current process?
What problems can you solve with cloud migration?
How much money will you spend on top of your current costs?
What features on your platform can you take advantage of?

Do it correctly, and you can develop a new architecture with a bottom-up approach to networking and security. And in doing so, thrive in the public cloud environment.

For the discovery process to work, you’ll have to take into consideration dependencies and the milestones you want to achieve.

Dependencies

Your dependencies shouldn’t be an afterthought. So, you need to make them a key factor from the beginning.

Do you have multiple data connections?
If so, where do they connect? And who has access to them?
Will the same services be available in a private or public cloud offering?
When migrating SaaS-based systems, will users have to change their behavior?

If employees leave the office and the direct connection, you then work with a different type of connection and a different source of traffic.

You end up with more mobility, but also greater security requirements, especially when it comes to data sharing and data compliance.

Decide what level of resiliency you need, and make sure the cloud migration service you’re considering can support it, or you’ll need to augment it on your end.

Milestones

Be it on-premise to cloud migration, or cloud-to-cloud migration, setting up milestones is key.

Without clear goals for your cloud migration activities, how will you know what you have achieved? And whether you have achieved anything at all?

At the same time, it’s essential to align those expectations with your business goals and set a timeframe within which you’ll have to reach those milestones.

Be realistic when building milestones. Look at performance, workflows, traffic patterns, and user satisfaction.

Monitoring platforms can help you set up benchmarks and data sets from where you can see if the cloud integration is a success as you reach each milestone.

#2 Business Drivers

How will your public or private cloud migration align with business drivers? What are the success markets that you have identified?

Consistency is key here, so you’ll need to focus on matching the functionality of the cloud with specific business drivers.

Here are a few things you’ll need to consider when aligning your cloud migration strategy with your business goals:

Reducing risk

What is the risk strategy? SaaS solutions should reduce some of the risk, but you’ll still need good cybersecurity.

If you’re switching from an on-premise to a private cloud, what is the cybersecurity outlook then? Have you evaluated the security of the SaaS providers? Do vendors pose a risk?

Add risk assessment to your cloud migration review, if you haven’t already.

Quick wins

What is the time-to-market? Are there fast and achievable goals? Quick wins?

Cut back on operational risk by creating a series of mini-projects that prove the cloud works and deliver quick wins.

Agility

How lean and agile is your company? Will the new cloud environment empower and support the goals? What is the long-term strategy?

The cloud solution should do more than just cut costs. Cloud migration should transform your company into a better and more flexible version of itself.

#3 Best Practices

We’ve prepared a cloud best practices checklist that can help your cloud migration efforts:

Understand the framework

When deploying the new cloud framework, evaluate your company’s standards, approaches and processes involved in building or deploying new remote technologies.

Choose a provider that’s a good fit to your framework and that can customize it to your specific needs.

Implement cloud controls correctly

To do this, you’ll have to know your current tech infrastructure and inventory. This will enable you to monitor the infrastructure and policies.

Layer your security

There is no oneway solution to security. That’s why you’ll need to take a layered approach during the cloud migration, especially when working in an SaaS-based environment.

That’s because as you start reaching milestones, new endpoints to cloud SaaS targets will emerge; traffic patterns will change; past network perimeters will erode a little.

Having policies and practices to deal with those endpoints will raise security and give you the best level of protection during your migration to the cloud.

#4 Identity Management

A big part of security is how you track accessibility for in-house and outside users across assets and networks.

You need a centralized overview of who is logging in, when, where, how are they accessing the system, and what exactly they are accessing.

ID management is a way of having every app include multi-factor authentication that hinges on conditional access. This can extend your firewall to and around remote users and devices.

#5 Find the Right Partner

Finally, for a successful cloud migration, you’ll need the right partner.

A trusted cloud and IT managed service provider can:

Guide you through cloud migration
Facilitate a smooth transition
Highlight the value of add-ons and extra features
Help you mitigate security risks and identify vulnerabilities

That’s where Demakis Technologies steps in.

With our managed IT services, tech experts can help you with all of this and seamlessly complete the entire cloud migration process together with you.

For more information, CONTACT US and one of our professionals will get in touch with you to answer all your questions and help you get started.

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