Revolutionising the contact centre with AI
As customer expectations continue to change and become more demanding, the traditional contact centre needs to evolve. Customers want quick resolutions, without needing to repeat themselves at several different touchpoints, and they want businesses to understand them better.
In recent times, we’ve seen contact centres enable remote working and deploy virtual agents, but now it’s time for artificial intelligence (AI) to have its defining moment. The tech has come a long way from simple information-gathering chatbots. It now has the power to completely transform your contact centre, enabling you to streamline operations and deliver the best customer experience.
Here, we’ll discuss everything you need to know about AI-powered contact centres.
What is AI in the contact centre?
With artificial intelligence emerging in all aspects of our lives, its application in contact centres continues to evolve. To date, there have already been some excellent examples of how AI can be used in the contact centre to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and personalise the customer experience. Some of these examples include chatbots, intelligent routing, and more insightful and actionable analysis.
What are the benefits of AI in the contact centre?
Just as AI has multiple benefits in other areas of the workplace, it has several benefits for the contact centre too.
Improved brand reputation
Deploying an AI contact centre solution can help you provide convenient, fast, and personalised customer experiences. The result of this is improved first impressions, customer loyalty and referrals. By using AI to improve your brand reputation, you could also see increased net promoter scores.
Workflow efficiencies
AI can be used to automate routine or low-level tasks and improve workflows. This enables your contact centre agents to focus on more complex tasks and more nuanced customer interactions. Workflows can be more intelligently routed to send customers to the best resource for their query, with no human interaction needed.
Reduced costs
In line with workflow automation, AI can significantly reduce operational costs in your organisation. While it might cost a little more to set up initially, by automating more mundane tasks, you can directly impact your bottom line and save money.
Greater customer satisfaction and first-contact resolution
Customers demand information quickly and easily, and for simple tasks, this doesn’t always mean they need to speak to an agent. According to research by American Express, over 60% of consumers prefer an automated self-service for simple customer service tasks. By using AI to offer self-serve, you can both increase customer satisfaction and reduce the load on your human agents by minimising the need for multiple calls.
Of course, self-service only works when it’s done properly. You’ll need to ensure your AI solution has been created to leave no stone unturned. It needs to be able to efficiently deliver the solutions your customers need without causing frustration.
Improved agent productivity and wellbeing
Customer service agents have become increasingly stretched in recent times, with SQM research showing that 63% of agents have expressed a high job burnout rate. This won’t be news to you if you run a contact centre, as you’ll know that the staff turnover rate in contact centres has been high for some time.
AI can help to increase agent productivity by automating tasks to simplify the agent experience, relieving some of the more mundane tasks from their role. This means they have more time to help customers, can access information more quickly, and can deliver solutions more efficiently. This could improve agent wellbeing and your staff turnover rate.
More revenue per customer
Using AI in your contact centre drives top-line revenue by increasing the number and quality of customer engagements. This means agents spend more time with customers on higher-level tasks, enabling them to build deeper relationships and increase up-sell and cross-sell opportunities.
Future-proofing
It’s no secret that AI is currently taking the world by storm. According to Deloitte, 81% of contact centre executives are investing in AI for agent-enabling technologies to improve the agent experience and operational efficiency.
Businesses must prioritise AI adoption to remain competitive in this evolving landscape. With AI in the contact centre, you can position yourself as an industry leader and innovator, delivering superior customer experiences with empowered agents that help to drive business growth.
What are some AI contact centre solutions?
AI is a great enabler in the contact centre, but knowing where to start or which solutions to implement can be tricky. The technology offers so many benefits that it can seem overwhelming when considering which areas of your contact centre to focus on.
While there are many solutions available on the market, we’ve partnered with Cisco to provide leading AI solutions that leverage cutting-edge tech and enhance customer experiences to drive business success. Here are some of the AI contact centre solutions you can deploy with Cisco:
Virtual agent-voice
This tool provides your customers with a natural conversational self-service experience over the phone using natural language understanding (NLU). With this, you can automate tasks and give customers 24/7 access to your business while relieving your agents of simple and repetitive tasks.
Virtual agent-chat
Like voice, this tool offers an intuitive online self-service experience with a chatbot for simple, less complex enquiries. Your customers will benefit from a convenient and fast service, while your agents will benefit from fewer enquiries, leading to improved productivity.
Agent Answers
Not everyone can be an expert in everything, and Cisco’s Agent Answers offers an excellent solution. Agents can feel empowered with context-driven suggestions and guidance in real-time as they are talking to a customer. The result is minimised research time and improved first-contact resolution.
Agent call transcription
Gone are the days of quickly writing down notes and trying to remember what was said on a customer call, this AI solution instantly provides your agents with call transcripts and summaries. By reducing the post-call wrap-up time, you can improve agent efficiency, transaction accuracy, and streamline the follow-up process.
AI APIs
AI isn’t one size fits all, and Cisco’s open platform enables you to differentiate your business by quickly developing AI solutions that meet your unique business needs and goals.
How can Nasstar help?
With years of experience under our belt and a team of contact centre and AI specialists, Nasstar can support you with comprehensive solutions that meet your business objectives no matter where you are on a digital transformation journey.
From increasing first-contact resolution to enhancing employee productivity and driving operational efficiency, we can help.
Reach out to us today to understand how we can revolutionise your contact centre operations.
