How can you use AI to improve your customer service?
Reap the benefits of advanced and modern-day contact center AI customer service
Call and contact centers have always played an important role in many companies’ activities. At the same time, these hubs of information and service also tend to enjoy the reputation of being innovation-driven environments. High-tech audio hardware, custom software solutions and teleconferencing solutions are just some of the technologies that modern and savvy contact centers use to smooth out internal operations and provide better and more personal customer experiences.
Due to their readiness to innovate and harvest the benefits of novel technology, using cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence (automation) makes perfect sense for present-day contact centers. This is especially true in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced teams to shift to blended work environments in what seemed like the blink of an eye.
But how can you harness the power of automation to improve your contact center? What are the business benefits of contact center automation? And how can QuandaGo help you to reap the benefits of advanced and modern-day contact center automation? Read on to find out.
- What is AI for contact centers?
- Test your AI skills
- How to use AI to improve your customer service
– Intelligent contact routing
– Automating routine tasks
– Churn prediction
– A better understanding of customer behavior through AI analytics
– Better self-service options
– Real-time monitoring
– Supervision of call center agents - What is to gain for contact centers by using AI?
- How can QuandaGo help contact centers with the use of AI?
- More information on AI customer service
What is automation for contact centers?
Artificial intelligence and automation are the terms that are used to describe a branch of emerging and increasingly popular technologies that we would call intelligent’ from a human point of view. AI in particular focuses on creating computers and software that mimic human intelligence, something that only used to exist in the realm of science fiction.
But in today’s digitalized and tech-driven world, AI and automation are very real. Modern AI has the ability to make plans and decisions, recognize human voices and speech patterns, adapt to new circumstances, make predictions, and solve complex problems in a human-like manner. The spectacular breakthroughs in automation have also paved the way for new levels of efficiency in the contact center. Today’s contact center AI and automation solutions are geared toward improving customer experiences and are designed to speed up the resolution of customerissues, questions and complaints.
Examples of present-day customer experience automation solutions for contact centers are:
- Chatbots that greet customers and collect and store background information to enhance the customer experience.
- Improved and more intelligent routing solutions that allow companies to route inquiries on a wider range of criteria.
- Removal of manual, repetitive agent and customer tasks using intelligent process automation.
- AI tools that analyze data to better identify customer behavior and desires., and take the right actions.
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How to use AI to improve your customer service
So the main question is: how can you actually use automation to significantly improve your contact center and contact center services? We’ll show you by taking a closer look at a couple of benefits and real-world examples.
Intelligent contact routing
Intelligent call routing is an excellent way to determine the best manner in which to solve a problem or respond to a request. Self-learning AI algorithms analyze customer data, customer personality models, information from previous interactions (phone calls, email conversations, app histories) and behavioral data to tailor responses to individual customer preferences.
The partnership between Humana and IBM’s Data and AI Expert Labs is a great example of this and has created a solution that can quickly identify and deliver the specific information that callers need. IBM’s natural language understanding (NLU) software—which uses seven language models and two acoustic models—now translates more than 90% of the spoken sentences it ‘hears’ from customers. It can also understand the unique vernacular of particular insurance-related topics, such as distinguishing between a claim and a referral.
This allows you to determine if a problem or request can be handled by a chatbot or if an issue is complex enough to require the dedicated attention and personal touch of a human contact agent. AI contact analytics can determine which agents or channels (email, traditional phone call, app, social media or chat) are ideally suited to deal with specific types of customers and queries. The great thing about AI is that it can easily analyze huge data sets. What seems like a mountain to climb for a human can be easy for a computer.
Automating routine tasks
In a perfect world, your contact agents do what they do best: help out the customer in the best possible way. Unfortunately, the real world is often a lot more reluctant. Many contact center agents have to do a lot of additional work that doesn’t add any real value to the customer journey and experience. The good news is that AI also comes to your aid in this department of your contact center operations.
AI allows you to automate a lot of repetitive and routine tasks. Voice biometrics is a good example of AI-fueled contact center automation. The AI software is able to recognize and identify the voice of a user and validate his or her account. A customer can have their identity confirmed by the time they get through to an agent, allowing agents to jump straight into the problem or question.
Churn prediction
AI can also lend a helping hand when it comes to churn prediction. By analyzing texts, messages and phone call transcripts, and analyzing them using smart algorithms, AI software can tell which client(s) will want to leave the company in the near future. Thanks to this information, sales and marketing department employees responsible for planning activities aimed at retaining customers can precisely target their activities and focus on ‘endangered’ users. This allows you to make more accurate predictions and significantly lower churn rates.
A better understanding of customer behavior through AI analytics
AI also allows you to better grasp customer behavior. How? For example, by making detailed customer information and profiles available to all of your agents. This helps them to predict emerging customer needs and quickly develop the necessary best practices to provide an adequate response. Such an approach increases customer retention, but it also creates new upsell and cross-sell opportunities. AI-powered analysis also gives you the opportunity to personalize customer journeys and special offers.
Better self-service options
Many modern customers like the idea of self-service platforms and portals that allow them to carry out simple tasks by themselves. AI has the capabilities to handle routine and day-to-day tasks. They can help your customers complete simple tasks like placing an order, filling out a questionnaire or checking a balance. This allows your contact center agents to focus on more complex and delicate issues that require a human touch. With the right data, state-of-the-art AI is also capable of supporting more complex self-service tasks.
Better self-service options
Many modern customers like the idea of self-service platforms and portals that allow them to carry out simple tasks by themselves. AI has the capabilities to handle routine and day-to-day tasks. They can help your customers complete simple tasks like placing an order, filling out a questionnaire or checking a balance. This allows your contact center agents to focus on more complex and delicate issues that require a human touch. With the right data, state-of-the-art AI is also capable of supporting more complex self-service tasks.
Real-time monitoring
More and more data needs to be processed in real time. Real-time data allows you to think ahead and make the right decisions in a timely fashion. Instead of relying on post-contact monitoring, AI also paves the way for real-time monitoring. Live monitoring benefits contact centers as a whole by allowing you to monitor agents’ performance and quickly correct any mistakes. You no longer have to rely on regular reviewing of call logs or communications via other channels to identify problems. This means that issues can be noticed immediately and handled as such.
Supervision of contact center agents
AI also allows you to monitor how contact center agents resolve issues and problems. Do they carry out their work in accordance with best practices? Do they display appropriate behavior? AI tools can measure this and give both contact center agents and managers feedback about their work and possible improvements. They can also check whether employees follow the applicable call scripts. Thanks to the structured rules, it will be easier to spot and solve quality deviations among agents’ work.
What's to gain for contact centers by using AI?
There is a lot to gain from properly adopting and using advanced contact center AI. Take the following examples.
- Automating data collection and routine processes frees up human agents. This means that these specialists can place more attention on client interaction. This enhances the customer experience and increases customer retention, but it also cuts costs.
- Analyzing large customer datasets in a quicker fashion provides more insights into customer behavior and allows you to refine your strategies.
- AI allows you to provide customers and agents with better self-service options.
- Contact center AI makes it easier to create a single source of truth and unify all of your channels in a high-quality omnichannel environment.
- Real-time monitoring makes it easier to correct mistakes and adequately respond to sudden changes in customer behavior or customer preferences.
- Instead of removing humans from the customer service equation, AI actually has the potential to re-humanize the contact center because it can make the work of agents easier, more customer-centric, more interesting and extra rewarding. Your people can turn all of their attention to customer-oriented tasks that add extra value to your business.
How can QuandaGo help with AI customer service?
QuandaGo can help you utilize the virtually unlimited potential of contact center AI. The QuandaGo Experience Platform uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to help automate interactions and processes, incorporating the technology into capabilities across the platform. Furthermore, the entire platform is built around the advanced routing and management of omnichannel customer interactions—with cross-channel visibility, reporting and analytics—and the ability for customers and agents to easily switch between them.
The result? You always have the right data and knowledge at your disposal, exactly when and where your customers and agents need it. This allows you to create automated workflows that drive efficiency and free up agents for complex and value-driven tasks.
What our customers are saying
“Everything starts with a good foundation. By bringing structure to people, processes and systems we worked on creating an ecosystem to offer more efficient and effective customer service.”
“Dela can resolve customer processes automatically, and all the monitoring of cases in other systems and departments is centralized in the platform.”
“Engie is now operating a customer process management platform with an intuitive agent interface and a clear structure where employees can easily and effectively accomplish their tasks.”
More information on AI customer service
Contact center AI is here to stay and will only expand further in scale and functionality in the near future. Would you like to enrich your contact center with sophisticated AI-driven functionalities? And are you looking for a platform that allows you to properly manage customer interactions across all channels and touchpoints in an optimized omnichannel environment? Then QuandaGo is more than happy to help you. Just give us a call at +31(0)73-62 34 097 or send an email to hello@quandago.com. We’re happy to make your acquaintance!
