Artificial Intelligence has already disrupted the contact center – it’s time to embrace it

Artificial intelligence is in its biggest technological advancement and contact centers are in a prime position to take advantage

New technology has always come with its skeptics. After all, we’ve all seen “The Minority Report” and what can happen when technology goes wrong. The fear of the unknown can mean ignoring the opportunity in front of you. And artificial intelligence is no different, with concerns over data privacy and fear that many job roles will become obsolete.

But here’s the thing. Technology is best when used to facilitate human wants and needs, not replace them. And this is the approach we see the most successful contact centers taking as they adopt generative AI.

Make AI your agent’s best friend

Elevated service quality, quicker issue resolution, and reduced costs are all made possible with generative AI. And for many people reading this, that’s not news. But what is news, is how you get there.

Here’s 4 tips to get the most out of this generation-defining technology.

#1 Don’t over-focus on chatbot containment

ChatGPT set the world alight, so it's easy to assume that containment is AI at its best. Many will fall into that trap, but you don’t have to. They’re not your only cost-savior.

Whilst AI-powered chatbots have their uses as part of a coordinated strategy, it’s not going to solve all of your (or your customers’) issues, because it simply can't. Your customers will always have issues too complex, too important, that require a personal human touch.

You’ll likely reach a containment plateau at 40-50%, so put any ideas that they can replace your agents to bed.

Instead think bigger on how you can use it to give your agents the tools and the time to do what they do best, help your customers.

#2 Take time-consuming, manual admin off your agents’ hands

We’ll give you an example, post-call notes. Your agents don’t want to do them; they don’t have time to do them. And now, with generative call summaries, they don’t have to. Artificial intelligence can listen to every call and automatically provide an unbiased, comprehensive post-call recap of what was covered including nuance, sentiment, next steps, and more.

While technology wraps up the manual admin from the previous call in the background, agents can immediately move on to helping their next customer. The result? Call times get shorter and your agents can spend their time on priority issues.

#3 Give your agents the right guidance, at the right time…automatically

Your agents are at their best when they feel confident and empowered to help customers. But when they go from one call to the next with little context into the customer or their issue, your agents are not set up to succeed.

But with AI we can turn your agents into the superheroes they deserve to be, creating a better customer experience and dramatically improving the likelihood of a positive resolution.
Because as the call unfolds, your AI can listen to every word, understand the issue, and direct the agent towards a happy ending with relevant resources and best next steps.

#4 Hunt down and fix bad experiences at scale

Chatbots are one way of making cost savings, but improving service quality and performance – at scale – is another, and equally as important. To do that, you need an overview of how every customer interaction is going so your teams can make sure every experience is as good as the next. With thousands of interactions across multiple channels, that’s way too much for your teams to handle manually.

But generative AI can lead the way, analyzing every call, text, email, chat, shining a light on where humans might need to focus in real-time. And then your teams can get to work to elevate service quality.

This is technology and humans working in harmony to make the service experience quicker and more effective than ever.