Bake AI into Your Contact Centre
Written by Adam Hand, Cisilion’s Head of Digital Workplace
We are starting to scratch the surface in becoming more automated and driven by AI in the Contact Centre space. Research shows that, based on the profile of our customers alone, 80-90% of customer engagement over Voice channels remains critical and continues to be the main form of communication.
With an ever-increasing demand for services, this level of engagement means that expanding the Contact Centre with more agents is simply unsustainable. For this reason, organisations are now starting to delve into using AI technology to see how they can better serve their customers, in turn delivering the all-important standout experience
Cloud – the driving engine behind AI
Interestingly, according to Gartner pre-Covid19, “Nearly 7 out of 10 (68%) customer service and support organisations worked from traditional call centres“ and less than 10% of staff worked from home. As we know, this has turned on its head as a result of recent events, with at least 71% of contact centres becoming remote.
The need for remote working has driven the transition to cloud contact centres, as almost 25% of customer care organisations move their contact centre operations away from on–premises infrastructure, with a 53% jump in at-home full-time agents in recent months (Nemertes Research).
AI is the silver lining for every cloud contact centre. Organisations can now start to unravel and enable rich and conversational experiences with AI–powered and machine learning capabilities. As organisations move towards cloud, they are starting to unlock and realise the expanded capabilities and potential of AI – being able to rapidly deploy some of the industry’s smartest voice bots and chatbots in particular. In turn, issues can be resolved faster, whilst simultaneously improving customer satisfaction, sales, employee efficiency and more.
Improve your brand with AI
Now, more than ever, the demand for digital interactions has massively accelerated. Delivering an improved customer experience naturally leads to enhancing your brand. AI is playing a pivotal role, not only in solving a number of problems, but also playing a major part in the customer journey and influencing the experience for customers.
The contact centre is perceived to be that moment of truth between a company and its customers, where a good or bad experience can leave a long-lasting impression. We are helping customers already improve efficiencies and helping to streamline processes to transform both the customer and agent experience. Over the last few months, we have been seeing an increase in the adoption of AI-powered services, which has in turn delivered improved services to customers and therefore helped to build a stronger brand.
Print money with AI
Intriguingly, AI could contribute $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030, according to PWC’s AI analysis study. While you focus on how many 0s that entails, it really puts into perspective how revolutionary AI will be in the coming years.
Focusing back to now, there are a number of things that we can already do using AI to generate more revenue. Here are three tips to help unlock that potential:
1. Cash Knowledge is King
Creating an AI–powered IVR (Interactive Voice Response) Contact Centre based around knowledge and context is crucial in ensuring that customer enquiries are dealt with in the most efficient way possible. Understanding everything about the status of your new or existing customers will facilitate and drive a journey that delivers the desired outcome.
Recently, for example, we helped a finance company to identify the status of their customers at the point of entry into an IVR. If they found that they had missed a recent payment, they would automatically be directed to an automated payment IVR with further instructions.
2. Integrate your Web data
Typically, most customer journeys start in a digital channel – like a website or mobile app – before escalating to voice. How great would it be to know exactly what your customers are viewing and which pages/items they have visited before contacting your organisation?
An AI-driven IVR can assist with customer enquiries more effectively, rather than treating every customer and interaction in the same way. For instance, if the AI is aware of a customer visiting your website and has recently accessed information about them taking out a new loan, the AI bot will find the most appropriate and logical step by directing them immediately to a subject matter expert.
With this kind of real-time customer context & intent, your AI understands the context of each call before it enters a decision tree and therefore speeds up the customer journey.
3. Decisions in Real-Time
The power of AI comes into force with every circumstance in this regard. With context, real–time decisions can now be made at every step of the customer journey. What is perhaps even more exciting is that the AI-driven IVR can understand your customers exact needs whilst also identifying each caller’s potential value – as you would expect from your sales agent.
Whilst we are far from replacing our sales force, it is clear that an AI-driven contact centre can play a pivotal role in making a considerable contribution towards the sales process.
I have regularly come across contact centre leaders that have either not yet recognised the benefits of AI, or simply do not know where to start. Here at Cisilion, we are helping many customers make that first step, or in some cases, unleash the full potential of AI to positively transform customer engagement.
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