Customer experience is now at the forefront for many companies across the globe. Industry professionals are making enormous investments in Research & Development to revolutionize the Customer experience. Adopting cutting-edge technologies like Machine learning, Artificial Intelligence in call center operations has become important nowadays.
Artificial Intelligence has a profound impact on many Industries at present as well as in the future. In the year 2030, AI could have the possibility to contribute around $ 15.7 trillion to the global economy. Every facet of the business and managerial activities ranging from Accounting, Finance, Promotion to Recruitment are now becoming AI-driven. Even the Customer service operations are powered by AI. To achieve the goal of providing efficient contact center services, Industries are investing in automation. Attracting a new customer and retaining the customers is challenging, this calls for marching towards smart customer service to ensure that the customer journey is as seamless & easy as a cakewalk. Let us transition ourselves into curious beings and know more about how the application of AI in Call centers is making customer experience more futuristic and dynamic.
1. Prominence AI holds in the Call center market: AI in Call center market has been gaining momentum these days. The significance that AI holds in transforming call centers can be measured by its traction in the market. Call center AI applications have huge potential and the market of Artificial Intelligence in the area of Call center applications is predicted to experience 25.8% CAGR approximately during the period 2021-2026. It can be analyzed that there will be sheer investments in building robust AI- based contact center software solutions by the various Industry verticals like Retail, Ecommerce, Banking & Finance, Hospitality etc.
2. Amalgamation of AI-enabled technologies: Contact center intelligence and automation plays a pivotal role in making the customer service more transparent, seamless and exceptional. But if we look from the solution development facet, the development of AI-enabled call center software solutions comprises Conversational AI, Robotic Process Automation, Speech & Voice Analytics, Predictive call analytics & routing. The amalgamation of these technologies in AI-driven solution development makes the customer journey smooth without any obstruction. Eventually, it will contribute towards a splendid customer experience. Let us briefly explore the elements under the AI-enabled Call center solutions
- Conversational AI: This element has the capability to develop intelligent bots using Machine learning and Natural language processing to make the system learn to recognize speech, voices. This facilitates seamless communication between the bots and the real human beings. The market of Conversational AI will witness a CAGR of 21.8% during the period 2021-2026 and is expected to reach $18.4 billion by 2026. See how great an opportunity it is to invest in the development of this capability.
- Robotic Process Automation: This comes very handy for the call center employees to easily navigate customer information and details to offer personalized services. Using intelligent bots which are made of AI algorithms, incorporation of deep learning in call center automation, addition of Machine Learning contact center algorithms the Call center representatives can deliver great customer service.
- Speech & Voice Analytics: This involves leveraging Natural language processing and Artificial intelligence to capture call center audios and customer conversations. Thereby making the operations task speedy and accurate.
- Predictive Call Analytics: This also involves the incorporation of deep learning, Machine learning and statistical algorithms to compute the probability of the most likely customer events using historical data.
3. How AI handles a farrago of customer activities & queries: It is necessary to reiterate that exceptional customer service is the key goal for all the Industries. The application of AI in customer service operations can help the organization to boost efficiency. During the purchase journey the customer asks a lot of queries regarding scheduling and booking appointments, Payment processes, and a farrago of logical and illogical questions. All types of queries can be handled by the Customer service representatives. Using the NLP based voice assistants, chat bots, conversational AIs can handle the functioning of the FAQs to ensure great service experience. The previous activities and behavior of the customers are tracked to suggest recommendations. All these are done with the help of predictive call analytics so that better service is delivered. In the efficient interaction between the service personnel and the Customers, the scope of AI in customer service is to avoid jittery conversations due to unresolved queries and make the customers rest assured that their avalanche of queries are resolved in the accurate manner.
4. Benefits of Futuristic Contact center intelligence: The future of these technologies is ever-lasting. Lets us know more as to how the Industry leaders can leverage the use of AI for Customer service excellence.
- To be at the top of the game: Leveraging the power of Artificial intelligence in customer service excellence involves usage of sophisticated technologies like NLP, Conversational AI, Predictive Analytics, Robotic process automation even cloud call center solutions ensure great user experience. Usage of integrated voice bots and Voice analytics will help the Industries to stay at the top of the game.
- Impact-driven decision making: Deploying AI-enabled technologies like Conversational AI and Predictive Analytics helps to analyze purchase history, audio calls, patterns and sentiments. Thereby helping companies to upsell and cross sell effectively and give better recommendations to the customers.
- Better Omni-channel experience: The journey of customers should be seamless, it should not be a “nine day wonder” where we have provided services with unfaithful promises. Rather, it should be a structured approach which involves handling customer queries efficiently. To solve this gap, incorporating AI in Call center operations can help Customer service personnel to deliver better Omni-channel experience. For example Banks can track Account holder’s interaction from the Branch Database as well as Online banking application and can suggest appropriate schemes to the holder based on his previous history and then the service representative can send hyper-personalized emails to the holder.
- Enhance employee productivity: Using AI-Powered technologies and cloud-based contact center solutions can help the call center agents to boost approx 90 – 95% productivity and accuracy. The handling time, processing time can be drastically reduced, leading to better service levels delivered by the customer service representatives.
- Increases ROI to multifold: The usage of AI-driven technologies in the call center operations can reduce customer handling time, reduce churn rate and give better experience to the customer. It helps in customer retention, customer loyalty and hence increases ROI for the businesses. The ROI could be even more than 300% depending upon how early the Industries have adopted.
- Reduces Cost: AI- driven technology in call centers can curtail the operational costs by quickly resolving the cognitive dissonance of the customers, FAQs resolving and legit recommendations. This will also bring down the customer acquisition costs.
From the above mentioned points it can be deduced how important the term “Customer service” is. Integrating AI-enabled bots interact with customers to resolve their queries and to make the conversation more humane and the speech, call and predictive analytics analyze the behavior, activities and purchase intent of the customers using algorithms and generating insightful dashboards showcasing the demographics and audience interests. These facts help the Industries to craft personalized messages to acquire new as well as the right customers. At last it can be summed up that all the Industries investing in the AI based capabilities should be purpose-driven and they can either collaborate with the agencies who render Contact center-as-a-service solutions or can acquire the companies or Start-ups who have the strengths to deliver the AI- based capabilities. For example, if any Company who is rich in funds, wants to invest in call center automation and also wants to augment customer experience by revamping the call center process can acquire a growing AI based Start-up who has rich experience in delivering AI based solutions like Conversational AI. This type of concentric acquisition can multiply their strengths to play well in the competitive field and can ensure excellent customer service.