Contact centres have seen the biggest growth in the recent years. According to Global Industry Analysts, the global contact centers market will reach $337.8 billion by 2018. However, a huge change that the industry is about to face is the presence of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
AI is the enabling of technology and machines to perform the tasks which are usually done by humans. We all know contact centres rely heavily on its representatives to attend to calls and services of a particular company. Most businesses even take advantage of customer service outsourcing just to accommodate the volume of transactions they get on a day-to-day basis.
With AI, the future of contact centres is about to be transformed. To be ready for it, here are the following call centre functions that should be improved by AI:
Help humans in forecasting and doing skills-based routine tasks
A request and response to the said demand will require less of human interaction, as these processes for customer service agents will become automated. AI will introduce the idea of interactive analytics where agents and intelligent machine-driven scoring system are part of one automated feedback loop.
As an example, certain steps in the contact centre’s previous procedure can be “bypassed” and offer a 360-degree great customer experience to the caller. By now, you should know that callers hate long waiting time and multiple redirecting of calls just to get their issue solved.
Automate the routine transactions
Humans will still take the forefront in customer service engagements. However, because of the complexity of these transactions, humans need an assistant in doing all of them. Customer service agents will be more confident in handling them because they are backed up by smarter data and systems.
With customers expecting their calls to be handled with quickness and accuracy, the customer service agents can remove the routine transactions out of their baggage and focus on this instead.
Assist humans in targeted marketing strategies
If you think that marketing strategies nowadays are targeted enough, then the introduction of AI in contact centers will make this even more directed. The “big data” that AI will give in contact centers will focus on user behavior like browsing history, the most updated device of access, location, search patterns, and chosen platforms. Companies can now say goodbye to inaccurate data such as classic demographics (name, age, sex, etc.)
Use the data for predictive analytics
Since AI is made to be smarter and more in depth, having it in contact centres can help the customer service agents to detect a caller’s disposition through speech analysis. AI can quickly recognize the speech patterns and vocal inflections of a caller and show data on how this type of call should be handled.
In line with this, certain words and phrases can serve as keywords and be stored in the AI machine to notify the concerned parties in a particular call. This saves time and lowers the chance of having an angry and disappointed caller on that day.
Moreover, if this data can be paired with the one coming from social media, concerns raised in the platform can send an alert to the contact centre to be prepared for the influx of calls. This does not only help them prepare, but also matches the type of caller to the kind of agent who can handle such calls based on his or her previous performance.
Remove the time wasted on maintenance
One concern that can be raised in the usage of AI is the maintenance of the machines. Then again, this concept of self-diagnosing and self-fixing can also be programmed in the AI.
In this function, customer service agents and the contact center management can tick this one off of the things they need to think about in making their company run smoothly. From simple patches and updates to the availing of replacements parts, the AI can confidently maintain itself.
With all these benefits of having an AI in your contact centre, it’s important to take note that this technology will not replace humans. AI is meant to assist and increase the precision and efficiency of human processes, and in this case, contact centres.
Individual human complaints can’t be handled by an AI alone. Further, some customers just don’t feel comfortable and haven’t fully adjusted yet to the presence of a machine attending to their woes and needs. AI is there to enhance and not overtake humans in the contact centre.
