According to the 2022 Gartner CIO and Technology Executive Survey, 48% of CIOs have already deployed or plan to deploy AI and machine learning technologies within the next year. However, the firm also found that many companies experiment with customer experience automation but struggle to truly integrate the technology into their standard operations. Add to this a recent McKinsey study which found that most respondents failed to meet their expected targets post-automation and it’s clear that there is a disconnect between automation aspirations and automation success.
Within the contact center one of the most common examples of automation was early-generation website chatbots. While billed as a customer-service enhancement that would also reduce costs, the reality was a little less sunny. Customers typically were left frustrated as agents were forced to look up answers, leading to higher costs and lower customer satisfaction scores.
So, what’s the secret to getting automation right?
Deploy Automation to Augment What People Do
AI and automation technologies can outright replace some repetitive tasks for both contact center agents and customers, but the technology’s greatest potential lies in its ability to make humans smarter, faster, and better. Whether its agents in your contact center, employees across your company, or your customers obtaining answers via self-service applications and integrated knowledge bases that learn to get smarter, automation can be instrumental in augmenting what people do.
To help, below are some critical steps to take for achieving success:
- Integrate All Data Sources: It’s simple—the more data you have the better your AI and automation systems will perform. And when these systems are fine-tuned, the experience for customers and agents alike will be both expedited and improved.
- Focus on End-to-End Workflows: Don’t look to automation for a single task or individual step in the customer journey. Instead, focus on customer journeys across all the channels, people, processes, and departments they touch, automating where appropriate in the context of the entire workflow – not just in the contact center..
- Factor in the Human Impact: Never lose sight of the fact that automation is most beneficial when it is applied to help people. With more information at their fingertips than ever before, customer service agents can be more knowledgeable, efficient, and empowered to delight their customers. And by providing the latter with innovative self-service applications, companies can further improve CX by enabling customers to obtain what they need without ever engaging with a bot or an agent.
At QuandaGo, we help companies in virtually every sector seize the automation opportunity and achieve up to 50% reduction in costs and massive improvements in process efficiency. Drop us a line to see how we can help you get automation right—for your agents and customers alike!
