The adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in call centers has lagged behind other company divisions. In this sense, when AI has been adopted, often due to the impulse of other departments, such as sales and marketing, the use has largely focused on finding ways to manage costs and time.
Currently, according to a recent report by Ventana Research, the use of Artificial Intelligence in contact centers has gone from being a novelty to a necessity. One of the main reasons is that its adoption is increasing because providers have deeply integrated AI processes into their customer experience (CX) platforms.
Giving people ways to use AI without having to bear the burden of understanding how to program or train complex models has made all the difference, the report’s authors say.
AI has become increasingly common in several key call center processes, including:
- Interaction routing.
- Analyze unstructured data captured in voice recordings.
- Understand customer sentiment.
- Advanced analysis of user behavior.
By 2024, it is estimated that three-quarters of organizations will have explicitly introduced more than one AI or machine learning (ML) application into their contact center service processes for predictive routing, chatbots, and agent support.
What Are the Key Benefits of AI in Call Centers?
Artificial Intelligence wields the most power in the call center when it is used to help and support customer service agents, according to the Ventana Research report. Its main value lies in three areas:
1) Preparation of Agents:
AI can quickly reveal the resources the agent needs, even those that are siled across the organization, turning work from reactive to proactive. The knowledge accessed by Artificial Intelligence is not static; instead, it’s an “organic repository that’s always up-to-date,” according to Ventana Research.
2) Help Agents Provide the Right Answer Based On the Context:
AI-powered solutions on the market today listen to interactions and present the best actions in real time. This marks one of the most revolutionary advances in contact center operations in decades. Doing so shortens interactions and makes them more consistent, regardless of the agent involved. It also reduces friction with the customer while increasing the likelihood that the agent’s response to the customer is correct.
3) Make Quality Assurance Processes Fairer:
AI allows a company to evaluate 100% of interactions while removing subjectivity from the process. This provides a better insight into agent performance and reduces the time between interaction and evaluation.
What To Consider When Evaluating Whether AI Can Help an Organization?
To determine whether AI can add value to a call center, the report suggests asking questions such as:
- Are there opportunities to improve productivity that would arise if more or different data sources could be leveraged?
- If AI processes are distributed across departments and functions, are the metrics used to determine success broad enough to consider and assess the resulting benefits?
- What operations are taken for granted as fixed or not upgradeable based on standard technology?
According to the report, AI / ML is best thought of as a constellation of applications characterized by the ability to learn and adapt as conditions change.
In conclusion, more and more call centers are incorporating AI into their operations, learning more about how to turn customer service into a competitive advantage with a set of innovative CX solutions, specifically designed in a single comprehensive Intelligence framework of Artificial (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) industry for customer engagement.