AI is of course the topic du jour, and commentary on its impact ranges from how it’ll support humans in being better in their roles to just outright replacing them.
When it comes to contact centres, there’s possibly some truth in both views depending on how AI evolves and the adoption strategy taken by organisations.
The outcomes may still be not fully known, but it’s clear that companies are beginning to implement AI solutions and will continue to do so.
At CloudClevr, we have been sitting in the front row of these discussions to ensure we can assist customers and businesses throughout this changing landscape.
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Customers still like to pick up the phone
In a previous article, we discussed how speaking on the phone was still one of the most popular contact centre methods and how routing people purely to online interactions may cause lower customer satisfaction. But is that from a deep-rooted desire to speak to a real person or – as I suspect – people wanting just a fast resolution?
Services like interactive voice response (IVR) were meant to smoothen the process, but instead have given people a bad perception of early attempts at automation. We don’t want to listen to menu after menu; we don’t want to be misheard, we don’t want to be misrouted.
What people want is just the easiest and quickest way to get a positive outcome, and that’s where call centre AI may reinvigorate the contact centre and really sharpen the focus on delivering positive outcomes – if done right.
Call centre AI as the assistant
One view is that AI will support existing agents. If AI can get an initial grasp of what a caller requires, and then find and collate all relevant data from across all contact points, the agent will be better informed and be well-placed to offer quicker resolution.
AI can also coach agents, providing information on factors such as the caller’s emotional state as well as tips on how the agent could perform better in finding resolutions.
Sounds clever doesn’t it? Ultimately if AI can help agents do their job well and resolve matters faster then happier customers and happier employees will be the outcome.
Then there’s the added benefit that if AI can help and guide agents to deliver a better customer experience, this means your business continually evolves, with both technology and agents growing together. Some would say a clear win-win?
And let’s not forget the generational shift here. As we see AI creeping into schools and universities there seems to be more of an acceptance of technology-assisting services in every aspect of daily life. Ease and efficiency seem to be the main motivation.
Or will AI replace call centre agents?
There is also the line of thinking that AI will just replace people entirely. K Krithivasan, CEO and Managing Director of Tata Consultancy Services thinks the end of the call centre could merely be a “year or so down the line”.
Why guide an agent when your AI can just be the agent, goes the thinking. AI is already demonstrating good levels of understanding voice interactions and responding appropriately.
In time that will only improve and if it’s integrated with your CRM and other systems it will have at its virtual fingertips the answers to most issues faster than a human could understand them.
The answer is perhaps somewhere in the middle
There is a possibility that a bit of both is the way forward. That will replace some call centre agents while assisting the remaining agents in their day-to-day work.
Chatbots and IVR have already changed the way contact centres operate and instead of replacing human agents outrightly, they’ve worked alongside them to streamline the customer experience. We think AI in the contact centre will also do that, but better.
Call centre AI could provide a first line of support, trying to solve simpler issues and deal with routine requests. What IVR has tried to improve, but not always successfully, AI has the chance to increase call containment and reduce the load on human operators.
Then if the problem really is complex and can’t be solved by AI alone, it could be passed onto a human operative who will be guided by AI – and have the complete support history – to provide a resolution.
Those agents can then enjoy many benefits of AI like:
- Transcription – calls can be written up automatically, providing a full record for future agents and setting follow-up actions from the current call.
- Sentiment analysis – see if calls are going well or deteriorating, allowing issues to be flagged to supervisors and for them to assist if needed.
- Fast access to data – the system will bring all previous interactions and history to the agent before they even pick up the phone, and give them all the information they need.
- Quality and compliance – calls can be rated against QA metrics and issues can be addressed if the agent does anything that may cause compliance issues.
It may even be – and there’s evidence of this already in the marketplace – that premium customer service becomes a perk of certain levels of spend with a company.
The real question your business should be asking is how do I prepare my business and customers for the emergence of AI. As much as we all are uncertain about how it will evolve I think it is clear that it is evolving and fast. The key is to be in front of it and not behind it.
Could it be a legal right to talk to a human?
Supporting a more hybrid view of AI in the contact centre, Gartner predicts that the EU will make it a right to talk to a human.
It’s hard to say what exactly such legislation may entail. But the right to talk still doesn’t mean maintaining large call centre operations. It may be that organisations take an AI-first approach and then have human contact to triage issues where the AI really can’t solve the issues.
It also provides an interesting opportunity for organisations that are already largely customer-service free to begin providing some. Speaking to a person at a company such as Facebook or Just Eat is already an impossibility for an average member of the public, so AI could offer an opportunity to offer support where none previously existed.
This is now an HR conversation
For the first time, HR will likely be a key stakeholder when implementing IT solutions. Whether it’s reductions in the headcount or just changing the way people work, it’s important to have HR at the table to understand and manage the impact of AI in the contact centre.
It’s not good enough to involve HR once the contract has been signed – they need to be involved from the start to understand what it means for the organisation.
There are definitely wins to be had with the wider HR agenda too. Demands on recruitment may be reduced and those working in the call centre don’t have to be locked to one facility, with flexible working available via the call centre platform. Remote workers have shown a 77% increase in productivity according to one report.
The end of call centres, or a new beginning?
The full impact of AI on the contact centre is yet to be seen but as the landscape changes daily, a need to be agile and open to change is key.
We must also remember that is not just the introduction of AI that can have benefits but what you feed that AI engine is the difference between success and no change.
Like any new technology, its success rests on its implementation and adoption to ensure it matches the needs of the business. We are watching with bated breath to see how this exciting new chapter in the contact centre evolves.
