Monitoring call times, optimizing agent schedules, timely analytics, not to mention the ability to view the entire customer journey in real and historic-time, ensuring agents have the on-demand resources and data to deal with complex customer requests – the benefits of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in customer service are huge and still only in part realized.
The value of AI is not in replacing jobs, but in doing the jobs that enhance the ears, the eyes, and the ‘voice’ of the contact center – their agents, so that both can, put simply, do their job of looking after the customer so much better. He explains how to find your way through the AI hype to the four areas where AI will bring contact centers and employees most value.
A recent Deloitte study “2024 Global Contact Center Survey” finds that service innovators are over performing and setting a new gold standard – 1.6x in meeting strategic goals, 4.6x in improving customer satisfaction and 2.5x in employee satisfaction. The report identifies service innovators as those that invest in the use of AI and analytics as key drivers.
Using AI in the contact center can contribute massively to quality management and take away the laborious activities associated with quality management when reviewed by a human For example, AI can track whether the call went according to all rules, regulations, and company policies, it can monitor whether the tone of voice was correct, and it can determine if customer details, financial or not, have been stored correctly and safely. It can of course do all this at a much quicker rate than humans, and aids the better management of day-to-day operations.
But there’s even more potential to leverage AI – aggregating and analyzing key contact center data points – then integrating these insights into a real-time dashboard to automatically alert contact center supervisors of any exceptional activity. The potential goes on.
CTO of ContactCenter4ALL.
So you need to get on to the AI bus, but how do you find your way through the AI hype?
There are four key areas where AI is seriously improving customer contact enablement in the contact center:
1. Text channels with an AI boost keep flexibility at the core
Regardless of the number of agents operating in a contact center, AI can be a useful tool in the condensing and analysis of large amounts of data. If you think AI will be used to replace humans, read on. New research suggests that 70% of contact center managers believe AI will mean there will be more agents in the next 10 years, not fewer – and their roles are likely to evolve. Here’s how.
The use and need of AI can vary from business to business, so it’s important that a comprehensive contact center solution keeps flexibility at the heart of operations. Integrating AI into text channels, i.e., emails, SMS, web chat, and other social channels needs varying levels of flexibility. For example, does a customer wish to use AI-assist for email enquiries? Or would they simply prefer an automated email process?
AI is capable of answering simple questions. A customer query into business opening times would not warrant a human agent response, in fact, it would simply be a waste of agent time and resources. Instead, AI could answer this quickly and efficiently, leaving human agents to deal with more complex enquiries
But the human element remains. The age of personalization is not dead, and its with these more complex queries that human interaction still has a strong hold over the customer journey. Here, AI uses customer data to inform next actions dependent on the individual customer. It can route customer queries to the right person, and provide assistance for these requests – think suggested responses, summarized data, previous call history.
It all contributes to a better customer experience and employee experience. When agents are better equipped to deal with these queries, they are empowered, their efficiency is increased, and confidence and trust is instilled and builds for both customers and employees.
…and it speaks any language!
Transcription and translation services within AI make global communication easier. Even if the agent and the customer are speaking different languages, AI integrated into these text channels can help them communicate in a preferred language. The benefits are clear to see, particularly for countries with multiple languages – Belgium, as an example, has four languages!
Directing a customer query to the right place and person might sound like standard practice, but it’s a critical element of a great customer journey. Customers always demand a quick and easy resolution. It’s where a comprehensive recording helps. Call recording is not new, but the process can be made even better with the use of AI. AI will listen to the call in progress and provide summaries to the agent, and suggestive answers. It’s there to help employees and ensure they have correct tools, answers, and data to be efficient.
Using AI, the purpose of the call can be quickly analyzed. Whether it’s to ensure that previous correspondence is considered – perhaps a customer sent an email a while back, this will be added to their record – or that the reason for call is directed to the right department in the contact center. It’s important that the right agent has the means to deal with the query on the end of the call.
It’s not what you say, it’s the way that you say it.
Going a step further, AI also provides semantic recognition to monitor the tone of the call – it examines the conversation for specific words or the general sentiment or mood of the customer, such as whether they’re slightly angry, very disappointed or even laughing, for example. Sentiment analysis is used by the system to proactively analyze cases and provide agents with suggestions for how to resolve issues quickly and effectively, to ensure the customer journey is pleasant right the way through. It all aids better, more effective training.
Not only this, sentiment analysis can also send alerts directly to a supervisor for the chance to intervene or be used in future training exercises to improve employee workflows. It can work across screens, social media, and webchat, in fact, it will operate on whatever channel agents and customers are using, to support additional training and an agent’s ability to solve the issue.
3. Historical and real-time reporting: Knowledge of the past enables you to deal with the future
Reporting provides visibility into processes and events that might not be visible on quick inspection – something that is especially important in the virtual contact center where service and operations are spread out over remote locations.
When it comes to day-to-day operations, reporting within the contact center can be hugely beneficial when integrated with the use of AI in three particular areas: wasted time is reduced by ensuring human agents are focused on the jobs that matter most, human agents and distractions are monitored and assessed on how to be minimized, and the length of calls and busy peak times are reduced, as contact centers can ensure they have enough staff on during busy periods, with a focus on how calls can be more efficient.
In order to maximize the value in their data, contact centers need two types of reporting: Historical reporting and Real-time insights. Both are vital to laser in on key pain points in the customer journey and address them with precision.
4. A safe place: Keeping data secure with Microsoft Azure AI
After all this, the importance of security can’t go unnoticed. Gen-AI requires access to a large data set, and in a contact center setting this can be personal customer data that must be kept safe. If you’re storing customer data, then it’s a given that you need a secure technology stack that keeps this information private.
For example, a solution natively integrated with Microsoft Teams means the entire tech stack, including AI models, is Microsoft based. Therefore, all data is stored in Azure Open AI, and therefore all data is always kept in the tenant customer. Risk and safety monitoring, safety evaluations, prompt shields, safety system messages are just a handful of the new features coming to Microsoft Azure AI to help keep businesses safe. Take a cyberattack as an example. If a cyberattack meets certain criteria defined by the security team, AI can automate the response and isolate the affected assets. Generative AI takes this one step further by producing original natural language text, images, and other content based on patterns in existing data.
Keeping customers secure is a top priority for Microsoft, which is why the company invests $1 billion every year into security, which includes protecting the Azure infrastructure. It also employs 3,500 cybersecurity experts, including 200 who continually look for weaknesses. When it comes to how the technology works, data sent within the Azure environment is automatically encrypted by AI. Then, automated smart traffic monitoring and profiling makes it easier to detect and deflect threats as the system knows when something looks out of the ordinary.
The power of AI when used correctly in the contact center can be felt along the entire contact center chain. It begins with well-trained, empowered employees that are equipped with the tools and data to perform at an exceedingly high level. They are able to answer customer queries quickly, and correctly, in whatever language the customer speaks!
Contact center operations are optimized, whether it be for the length of calls and monitoring for peak times, contact centers can use AI to reduce wait times and ensure more staff are working in busy periods. Effective reporting software gives employees access to historical information and real-time insights to assess the severity of queries. Not to mention that all their data and personal information is kept safe!
And finally, it all contributes to a better customer experience – whether it be a quick resolution, first time fixes, short wait times, or a call directed to the correct department – it all falls under the CX umbrella.
Remember, AI does the jobs better that are too time consuming for humans to do, leaving humans to do the jobs that they are good at better – customer service.
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