How To Improve The Customer Experience (CX) By Using Chatbots In Call Centers

Call centers are often high-pressure work environments. In a 24/7 industry, customer service agents are constantly overloaded.

This overwork of agents manifests itself in three important ways:

• Reduced quality of communication.
• Increased customer waiting time.
• Loss of productivity and agent efficiency.

AI-based tools like chatbots promise to mitigate these problems and reduce agent overwork, leading to a significantly better customer experience. A well-implemented chatbot can achieve customer and business goals: fast resolution leading to high CX, along with lower cost.

How To Choose The Right Chatbot For The Call Center

Managers need to choose the ideal chatbot solution for their contact center carefully, as poorly implemented chatbots will actually be a detriment to the business. What problems need to be addressed?

• Chatbots must be “aware” of the context of the interaction. Continuing to resort to “pre-recorded” responses will add to customer frustration.
• Chatbots must have the ability to learn from previous interactions and be easily trained with new information.
• The chatbot must “know” when it cannot provide a helpful response and have the ability to forward the call to an agent. Also, after the immediate problem is resolved, you should be able to hand over control back to the virtual assistant.

What Are The Benefits Of Implementing Smart Chatbots In Call Centers

Smart chatbots do much more than answer questions:

• Empower customer service agents.
• Improve the customer experience (CX).
• Reduce the time to solve customer problems.
• Improve CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Scale) scores.
• Reduce customer-waiting times.

In a study, Gartner shows how the implementation of virtual assistants with Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology can bring enormous benefits to organizations.

They can offload employees, allowing them to focus on the needs of customers with more complex issues. AI-powered bots can increase team capabilities and increase the overall efficiency of contact center operations. Chatbots can handle a wide variety of customer inquiries: handle frequently asked questions, provide access to their accounts, manage transactions, and offer customer support.

What Points To Keep In Mind When Choosing Chatbots For A Call Center

To ensure smooth and effective implementation, companies should adopt a gradual implementation approach:

• Establish metrics for a successful implementation.
• Understand the reasons why customers call a call center and prefer to contact a live agent.
• During the pilot test, it is recommended to start by sending less complex queries such as “Status updates” from the chatbot.
• Review the bugs and retrain the chatbot frequently to increase its capacity.
• Configure the rules and conditions for routing the call to an agent. If none are available, make sure that the chatbot is able to initiate a series of actions (generate a ticket, an email, etc.) so that the relevant follow-up actions take place and the customer’s query is not lost.
• Send periodic notifications to keep the client updated on the status of their inquiry.
• Once the metrics have been achieved, increase the variety of questions that are sent to the chatbot.

In conclusion, call centers are already achieving operational benefits with chatbots. Customer wait times are decreasing and user interactions are being personalized with virtual assistants powered by AI. Agents are freed from repetitive queries and their productivity has improved. Leading to a better customer experience and higher CSAT scores.