Call Center Automation: The Future of Customer Service Experience
How is the hybrid workforce driving call center automation? As concerns about COVID-19 continue into a second year, organizations are choosing to offer employees the option to continue to work from home, work from an office, or a blend of the two.
This is also occurring in contact centers, giving customer service agents the opportunity to work from home. By allowing employees to work from their home offices, issues such as data security, poor internet service, and even power outages become a concern – all creating the potential for disruptions to customer service delivery.
To mitigate these disruptions, many companies are turning to technologies like AI Voice Bots, which provide consistent service regardless of external factors.
Where can organizations turn to provide flexibility and scale, both allowing for work to be delivered from anywhere as well as offset any potential disruptions? AI service management has the answers.
Why should contact centers switch from onsite to Contact Center Automation?
Scalability Using Conversational IVRs: With an increase in contact volumes and potentially limited agent availability, agents may become overwhelmed and burn out, increasing employee turnover. This compounds customer wait times and drives up costs as organizations rush to hire. For organizations that offer services using an IVR conversation tool (Interactive Voice Response), the addition of conversational AI is a game-changer.
A conversational IVR uses an AI voice bot to enable customers to use their voice and natural language (not one-word responses or key presses) to resolve service requests themselves. The IVR can share responses to simple queries or even trigger workflows and automation behind the scenes, delivering faster resolutions.
The streamlined end-to-end process from engagement to resolution can also be integrated with other systems of record including case management and CRM systems like Salesforce, Zendesk, and ServiceNow to track the interactions as well as provide agents with details of the issue, should the customer need to speak with an agent. By eliminating the need to input customer data, agents can immediately focus on resolving the issue, improving productivity.
Additional Flexibility with an AI Chatbot: If agents are unavailable in-office or at home due to high volumes or connectivity issues, an AI chatbot is there to help fill the gap. Live the conversational IVR, can also deliver direct responses to queries or fire off automation. Add to that its 24/7/365 availability, and “AI agents” are an excellent means of adding even more flexibility to the call center.
Contact Center Automation Improves Customer Satisfaction: In addition to scale and increased productivity, the conversational IVR and an AI-powered chatbot create opportunities to improve customer satisfaction. Oftentimes, customers become frustrated with navigating through long phone menus with limited options (the conventional IVR) or the limited responses of scripted chatbots. They then jump at the option to speak to an agent by phone or live chat before realizing the average wait time is excessive. Conversational IVRs and AI Chatbots offer faster resolutions, personalized responses, and effective self-service that – done right – can exceed customer expectations.
Easy Implementation: Installing cloud-native contact center solution software is fast and easy with little impact on your IT organization. An out-of-the-box platform can be implemented in days, with results realized quickly. This saves organizations time and money from training, and investing in onsite equipment such as agent phones, and simplifies the management of hardware needs as teams scale up or down.
Security & Privacy: Cloud technologies that rely on secure platforms such as AWS offer high levels of security as it is their responsibility to be ahead of security threats. This helps ensure the safety of customer-sensitive information such as banking, credit, and health information.
Aisera’s AI Service Management solutions offer contact centers an out-of-the-box conversational platform combining AI & robotic process automation (RPA) to deliver a seamless customer service experience in any situation.
By offering customers omnichannel engagement that is staffed by knowledgeable agents and conversational AI channels and automation, your organization will have the greatest degree of flexibility to handle the challenges of contact volume and staffing while delivering a superior customer experience. Book a free conversational AI demo today!