Pick up on Tone As businesses attempt to cater to customer expectations, the answer may well be hidden in the experience of the agents on the phone. Interestingly, in the research released by FM Outsource earlier in the year, 60% of consumers recognised the person on the other side of the phone was not always to blame for a poor experience and only a third blamed the decline in customer service on the poor attitude of individual customer service agents. Head of customer experience at Firstsource, Ganpath Thanumoorthy said that in advanced systems the agent and the AI dovetail to provide the best experience. “Because the technology takes care of analysing the call, the agent can dedicate his or her time exclusively to speaking with the customer rather than doing all of these transactional activities. This frees up a lot more of their bandwidth to focus on what is most important, which is making sure the customer’s problem is resolved. “The tech and the human element dovetail well as there are many customers who want to speak to an agent about the problem they are having. So clearly, voice calls are not going to go away anytime soon and that is across many industries. “What we’ll end up doing is developing the profile of the agent much more as a problem solver rather than having to transfer a call a couple of times in order to reach a resolution. The
first interaction will be with technology, and the agent will take everything else.” Neo added that the analytics after the call can also lead to an improvement in the way that service is delivered to the customer on the other side of the phone. “AI models evaluate customer interactions at scale in real-time, supporting customer service agents to resolve issues more quickly. “With AI-enabled predictive analytics, historical data, trends, user behaviour patterns and feedback are analysed. As a result, AI models can provide agents with insights that enable them to take proactive measures to address issues and prevent customer frustrations when trying to seek a resolution. “This data can also be used for training purposes, helping agents to improve their performance and wider complaint-handling processes.” Pick up the pace As a result of these success stories, Angus said that the priority for a lot of businesses is to integrate a Generative AI system into their contact centre effectively. “The one key demand I keep seeing is a huge desire for more integration across all forms of communications, from chatbot to voice call, regardless of multiple servers and tools. “The wish for a single pane of glass to provide a 360-degree view of a customer is being treated as a big demand at the moment. That doesn’t mean they are looking for it
Chris Angus VP of Contact Centre Engagement
8x8.com
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Ben Neo, Head of Contact Center Sales EMEA, Zoom on what factors are key to introducing AI to contact centres.
When integrating AI into contact centres, there are some best practices businesses must first consider: ● Have clear objectives in mind: AI tools can complete a huge variety of tasks, from intelligent call routing to predicting customer behaviour. All businesses looking to incorporate AI must do so with clear business objectives in mind. They should consider what issues they are trying to solve, and how they can best support their CX agents to deliver an improved level of service. ● Get buy-in from CX agents first: When introducing AI models to contact centres,
emphasise the positive impact AI models can have on their role and demonstrate how the technology will support them, so they feel empowered and not intimidated. This means running training sessions to familiarise agents with how the technology works, and how best to work alongside it. ● Ensure it speaks the same language as existing programmes: Leaders must ensure AI systems seamlessly integrate into their existing technology infrastructure. By doing so, call centres can eliminate the risk of data being siloed between different programmes. This means all data can be effectively analysed, with the insights shared internally, improving overall efficiency.
Ben Neo Head of Contact Center Sales EMEA
businesses must get buy-in from their agents from the start. Leaders need to
zoom.us
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