Contact Center AI: What is it, and What are the Benefits?
Contact Center AI: What is it, and What Are the Benefits?
Contact center AI has transformed customer support. By using AI for customer service, companies can say goodbye to endless hold times and frustrated callers—boosting customer satisfaction and reducing call center costs.
But what exactly is contact center AI, and what are the benefits of AI in customer support? Now is the time to determine whether this technology is right for your business. If your company already uses contact center AI, evaluate how effectively you are leveraging it and identify opportunities to improve or refine your current strategy.
What is Contact Center AI?
Contact center AI refers to the use of artificial intelligence technologies to automate customer service functions and empower human agents with advanced tools that enhance, personalize, and accelerate the customer journey.
The Three Main Categories of Contact Center AI
Many mistakenly assume that the only function of AI is to reduce headcount in contact centers and replace human agents. While AI certainly does reduce labor requirements, it also augments the capabilities of the human agent, enabling them to complete their job more effectively.
Here are three general ways to categorize the uses of AI in contact centers:
Contact Center Automation: A business uses AI-powered chatbots to automate some percentage of functions and tasks within the customer service environment. Companies like Squarespace and Frontier Airlines, for example, have minimal human agents—AI agents automate almost everything. Most organizations, however, use a combination of AI-powered chatbots and human agents, assigning different responsibilities to each.
AI Solutions for Human Agents: In this category, businesses equip their contact center agents with AI-powered tools that assist them as they perform their duties. One example is Observe.ai, which uses real-time customer sentiment analysis to guide agents on how to respond to customers based on tone of voice and word choice.
AI for Business Insights: AI tools provide post-interaction support to contact center agents and their supervisors. These advanced solutions can collect and analyze customer feedback, or voice of customer (VoC) data, to help supervisors coach agents in resolving caller requests more effectively. Post-call AI also automates spreadsheet reporting, eliminating the painstaking process of manually recording customer feedback and other contact center metrics.
The Benefits of AI in Customer Support
There are many game-changing benefits businesses can reap by using AI in contact centers. While this is not an exhaustive list, here are the top five.
1. Reduced Costs
Reducing call center costs with AI is often the primary reason companies use AI. It is not an exaggeration to say that for some organizations, their largest expense comes from headcount costs in the contact center. If even 10% of customer interactions can be automated, businesses will become significantly more profitable.
2. Better Customer Interactions
Most calls that come into the contact center are simple queries that only require simple answers. “What is my password?” “Are you open today?” “What time is my flight?” By automating these tedious tasks, not only do they get resolved faster, but human agents are free to focus on higher-value interactions, allowing them to deliver a more personal and effective experience to customers.
3. Customer Freedom via Self-Service
Since the pandemic, consumers have become more accustomed to self-service. With certain contact center AI configurations, customers have the choice to speak to a live agent or use a chatbot. This freedom to choose boosts customer satisfaction.
4. 24/7 Availability
Although huge contact centers with thousands of employees can remain operational 24/7, most businesses cannot afford such a scale of operations. However, contact center AI (i.e., chatbots) can work any time of day and even during holidays.
5. Greater Scalability
Whether businesses need to scale up or down, contact center AI permits them to do so without decreasing or increasing headcount. This scalability is especially valuable for industries like retail, which often experience seasonal spikes in contact center traffic.
Key Considerations for a Contact Center AI Strategy
Every business should use contact center AI—the question is, to what extent? As mentioned above, some brands have outright abandoned the human element altogether. Others embrace a hybrid approach. In the end, the answer will depend on the type of business in question, its industry, the nature of its customer queries, and the characteristics of its customer base.
Consider these key factors when deciding how your organization should use contact center AI.
1. What is Your Business and Industry?
A local dentist's office and a major retailer are going to receive drastically different volumes of customer calls. Nevertheless, even for a small dental practice, contact center AI can help patients schedule appointments outside business hours. The use of AI should depend on the scope and scale one is looking to achieve.
2. What Are The Most Common Queriers?
Consider a law firm and an airline—the nature of the calls coming into their respective contact centers will vary wildly. For the law firm, calls will likely have a more complex or emotionally sensitive nature. Chatbots can schedule appointments, but a human agent might be better for those interactions that require empathy and personability. Similarly, the airline needs contact center AI to manage the deluge of customer questions, but having a group of skilled human agents will be key for handling those more challenging customer requests.
3. Who Comprises your Customer Base?
Generally, the younger age cohorts (Millennials and Generation Z) don’t have issues interacting with chatbots and sometimes might prefer to speak with one over a real person. Although the older cohorts tend to prefer speaking with a human agent, they aren’t opposed to using chatbots to complete certain tasks or answer simple questions. Ultimately, it is up to the business to research what its customers want and implement a corresponding contact center AI strategy.
Conectrix Helps Enhance Your Contact Center
Choosing among the dozens of different contact center AI solutions can be overwhelming. Implementing this technology can be even more daunting. With Conectrix, we help research options based on your company and connect you with the most optimal contact center AI providers. Some of our partners include:
Boost.ai
Observe.ai
Sound Hound
Reach out today to learn how we can help your company achieve its contact center goals.