Integrating new technologies to improve service and operations has been central to contact center success for decades, but now they need to embrace AI and digitization.
While we are still adapting on a global scale to the effects of COVID-19, we are seeing its impact in real-time, across every sector. These last two years have been a time of extraordinary unknowns for businesses and customers, but as 2021 draws to a close, one thing is clear: it has also been a process of unprecedented digital transformation and intelligent insight, especially for contact centers. 2020 was a clear turning point for the industry – people were told to stay home, which meant that calls to customer service centers skyrocketed. According to one survey, inbound traffic to automated call assistants rose by 40% in the two months between February and April 2020 alone. Integrating new technologies to improve service and operations has been central to contact center success for decades – from call routing solutions to interactive voice response. Now this trend must continue as call centers urgently need to embrace AI and digitization. Shifting away from in-person service means that virtual assistance needs to be more complex, to better handle requests from service changes, from billing to complaints. AI is no longer simply a means to triaging customer service – now it is being used to help human agents gain informed insights, leading to customer interactions that are more personalized and efficient. In fact, a recent global study by the IBM Institute for Business Value found that 97% of communications service providers (CSPs) using virtual agent technology for customer care reported a positive impact on customer satisfaction. There are numerous inherent qualities to AI that make it beneficial for contact centers. For one, AI agents can be available 24/7 meaning that callers are not bound by the working hours of human agents. If your customer needs help at 3am, they have no desire to wait – they expect to find self-help centers, FAQ sections, and online support. Digital contact centers can be robust, offering a variety of ways to solve problems, while being available every day, at every hour to deal with customer needs. Beyond this, AI systems gather knowledge over time.
