Question: Ben, What Is the Current Sentiment Around AI and Automation in Contact Centers?

Answer: Today, contact centers have started to feel the concrete benefits of AI, from its ability to improve customer satisfaction to increasing agent productivity and upskilling employees.

While some companies still struggle to understand how automation can fit into their tech stack to transform how they operate as a business, many have started to experiment with AI technology to support specific processes or tasks in their contact centers.

Q: The Report Shows That Only 15 Percent of Organizations Are Taking Advantage of Emerging AI Technology, Such As Human-in-the-Loop. What Might Be Causing the Hesitation?

A: Our survey shows that contact center professionals are lacking confidence in their understanding of AI and the business results they should expect. As with implementing any new technology, AI comes with challenges, and our survey found that security and IT risks around legacy contact center equipment rank number one for concern.

Companies are also facing resistance from leaders and staff within their organization while grappling with labor shortages, all of which make it difficult to build, use, and maintain new automated systems. CX (customer experience) leaders need to be transparent with their workforce, emphasizing the core benefits and uses of AI and automation.

In addition to improving a business’s processes and bottom line, this technology also has the power to streamline employees’ day-to-day activities by filtering out the repetitive tasks. By openly communicating these direct benefits, companies can gain buy-in from their entire workforce, from entry level staff all the way up to managers and above.

Q: What Are the Security Risks That Come with AI Technology?

While security and IT risks of outdated contact center equipment are a main barrier to adoption, once deployed as part of a digital transformation initiative, AI actually makes contact centers more secure. Three in four CX professionals agree that AI tech will allow customer data to be more secure than a live agent, and four in five agree that AI will significantly help companies improve identity and authentication security in the next two years.

Q: How Can CX Leaders Address These Risks?

A: If AI has the potential to improve contact center security, the question then becomes, how can companies securely implement the technology? The answer is simple: businesses must put the strongest foundation in place to support AI. Specifically, they’ll need to invest in modern cloud architecture that will seamlessly and securely integrate AI technology.

Q: If a Company Has Not Yet Adopted This Technology, Are They Falling Behind?

A: Companies that continue to be resistant to AI adoption will undoubtedly fall behind in two areas: EX [employee experience] and CX. In today’s contact center workforce, AI technology helps reduce the repetitive tasks and transactional work for agents, alleviating stress, reducing workloads, and allowing teams to rebuild their contact center workforce.

AI provides the much-needed support during ongoing labor shortages and will be instrumental in upskilling workers to provide a more meaningful role in the contact center.

In terms of CX, conversational AI can help contact centers provide high-quality experiences by instantly responding to customer queries at any time of the day. AI can also equip agents with the contextual, personalized knowledge they need to accurately answer customer questions. This leaves customers highly satisfied and eases friction that comes with lengthy interactions.

Q: In Making the Decision to Implement More Advanced AI Technology, What Do CX Professionals Need to Consider?

A: There are three things CX professionals and leaders should consider:

First, do our agents have the right training and resources to leverage this technology effectively? Before launching new tech solutions, it’s important that the current agents have a strong skill set and understanding of how this will impact day-to-day operations, as well as best practices to work in tandem once the technology is in place.

Second, do we have the internal resources to make AI operations accessible? AI will continue to become more advanced and the only way for a company to reap the benefits of this technology is by making it accessible to everyone, even those who don’t have formal technical training or backgrounds.

Third, do we have a current system that can support a safe integration of advanced AI technology? Without the right foundation, you won’t be able to utilize AI to its full potential. Prior to deploying AI technology, take the time to consolidate redundant tech stacks.

Q: With 79 Percent of CX Leaders Planning to Increase Contact Center Investments, What Do You Think the State of AI and Automation in Contact Centers Will Look Like in 2023?

A: In 2023, the realization of AI’s capabilities and benefits will be more apparent than ever. While some companies may still be hesitant, there will be many more use cases and success stories to reference and tout the positive outcomes for contact centers.

We can all agree that AI technology will continue to evolve and adapt to new business needs within the next year. Along with that, the growth of no-code solutions will continue to shine a light on the true ease of adoption, putting a rest to concerns around the challenges of adoption.

Thank you, Ben, for taking time to share your insight.

It’s been my pleasure!

Ben Rigby is the SVP and Global Head of Product & Engineering at Talkdesk, an end-to-end contact center solutions provider.

By Jeff Fettes

Contact centers are more hectic and overworked than ever. While agents deal with a huge volume of calls, they also deal with expectations of superior customer service. Although businesses have tried to reduce call volume with features like texting and more robust web interfaces, the reality is many requests still need personal attention. Those workers, however, often struggle to resolve calls quickly enough to keep a good pace while still making customers happy.

The answer to this problem isn’t more hiring. Rather, it’s harnessing the best elements of humans and artificial intelligence to create a seamless call center experience. Think of it as a hybrid that merges the best elements of people and technology. Attended automation uses AI and machine learning to guide and support human agents by answering questions, handling repetitive tasks, and preventing errors. The automation is attended by the agent; it does not replace the human.

How Attended Automation Makes an Impact

Most companies offer customers several self-service options, so when a customer calls, it’s likely a critical issue. Agents are left to deal with the complex matters a bot alone can’t handle. Chatbots can perform only limited tasks, while other options like texting often result in handing off customers to live agents to complete the case.

Attended automation, on the other hand, works alongside an agent from the beginning of the call or contact. Here are six ways attended automation can quickly transform a call center.

1. Attended Automation Crunches Data

Attended automation software sits on an agent’s desktop and can access the same programs and information. Unlike humans, it can browse, crunch, and compile this data at breathtaking speed. This added assistance enables an agent to deliver the care and concern that’s at the heart of customer service—without the hassle of switching between tabs, screens, or programs.

Essentially, attended automation allows agents to work smarter, not harder.

2. Attended Automation Handles the Grunt Work

Everyone has experienced a call where an agent struggles to find account details, financial history, or order status. It’s incredibly frustrating for both customer and agent, especially if a customer has already waited on hold before getting to the agent.

Attended automation can be the JARVIS to an agent’s Iron Man, uncovering necessary information and suggesting the right action, all while taking care of repetitive or low-value tasks in the background.

3. Attended Automation Helps Agents Act with Empathy

An agent who is trying to root out the right information will not be able to be present and helpful. And customers who wait on hold to connect to an agent often have complex issues or might be upset or frustrated. The last thing an agent needs when helping an upset customer is to navigate multiple programs and complex policies while the customer’s impatience grows.

With attended automation, agents have exactly what they need when they need it and can focus on making sure a customer is happy and resolving the issue in a way that benefits everyone.

4. Attended Automation Supports More Flexible Workforce Management

Traditionally, managers must account for weeks—sometimes months—of training time before new employees are ready for the floor. But technology like attended automation helps decrease the time needed to train agents to full proficiency and supports veteran agents in providing even better service.

It guides agents through workflows that once required lengthy training, like a GPS for customer care. And beyond faster speed-to-production, attended AI technology has a related benefit: a larger selection of qualified candidates. Recruiters can put less focus on hiring for technical expertise and agility. With a built-in coach on their computer, agents can focus on connecting with the customer—the job they were hired to do—rather than remembering systems and workflows.

5. Attended Automation Does More Than Expected

Companies expect an attended automation program to handle certain low-level tasks like retrieving customer data, auto-populating forms, and logging call details. However, it can do much more, including preventing unintentional overpayments and intentional ones (fraud); highlighting personalized insights; and drafting professional, on-brand emails.

New features and capabilities are frequently added to most automation software.

6. Attended Automation Can Overhaul Call Center Metrics

Call center agents aren’t just under pressure from upset customers. They are also under pressure from their supervisors to resolve calls quickly and handle a certain number of calls per hour or day. Attended automation can significantly reduce AHT (average handling time) and rap-up time, increase productivity and accuracy, and improve CSAT (customer satisfaction) scores.

Agents contribute to the bottom line but are also able to do their jobs well with less stress and pressure.

Conclusion

With attended automation as an agent-assist tool, the agent can focus on interacting with the customer and providing outstanding service versus fumbling around for the right information or keeping a customer on hold. The agent—and by extension, the brand—gets credit for an amazing customer experience with a little support from some advanced technology.

Attended automation in the contact center has the potential to deliver happier agents, happier customers, and ultimately, a happier bottom line.

Serial entrepreneur Jeff Fettes is the founder and CEO of Laivly, a leading AI-powered attended automation platform designed specifically for the contact center environment. Laivly helps some of the world’s best-known brands transform their call center operations with next-generation automation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning so they can excel, reduce costs, and improve customer satisfaction and experience.

By Rod Brownridge

The modern contact center has come a long way over the last few decades. The standard used to be dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of agents forced to sit in the same room and answer phone calls from customers.

Technology advances have made it so that many times a robot can give customers the information they’re looking for without the need for a conversation with a human. It’s a drastic change that has had considerable impact on the way contact centers do business in the twenty-first century. It’s not just the how that’s come a long way, it’s also the what.

Modern contact centers have many more tools at their disposal and advances in technology have allowed for a skills-based approach that ensures contact center agents are able to easily connect a customer with the best resource to fix their problems.

We now can solve more problems on the first call, and we’ve created a better pathway to customer/client retention and loyalty backed by a commitment to customer service.

But even though technology has improved the contact center over the years, 59 percent of consumers “would rather go through additional channels to contact customer service than have to use their voice to communicate,” according to Business Insider.

The report says that interactions with legacy customer service channels fell 7 percent over a two-year period “due in part to poor customer service.” We have the tools necessary to avoid the deterioration of customer service, and results like this should open the eyes of companies who aren’t putting an intense focus on customer interactions.

Here’s how modern-day technologies are driving effective resolutions while creating a more seamless customer experience and improving customer engagement.

The Advanced Use of Data

Our world has more data now than ever before. And the greatest advantage the modern contact center has now is access to information we didn’t dream possible in the past.

Today’s contact center should use analytical and qualitative tools to track calls and requests every step of the way. And each call or request should result in a detailed automated report that provides information about how the call was set up and what happened along the journey from beginning to end. The purpose of this is educational.

Your customer success teams should learn from each call and use the data and analytical tools to improve future outcomes. Using data to track key performance indicators, learning about call demographics, and using it to track quality control metrics is great, but you need to be able to dig deeper.

Access to conversation-level data enables a better level of customer service. According to McKinsey, companies are going wrong because they “do not have the right foundation in place, due to entrenched organizational structures and processes, legacy IT systems, and other challenges.”

McKinsey says the two root causes of slow advanced analytics adoption are a lack of integrated data across channels and an inability to link analytical insights to actions. With access to advanced analytics, we can reduce call volume and drive down the average handle time, creating a more efficient process.

Meeting Customers Where They Are

Many of today’s customers choose to not call contact centers. We still need to make the contact center work for them. Providing customers access to an integrated, help center portal that acts as a dashboard to supply information and tools—like the status of a request or an active chatbot—gives them options to get help.

Advanced technologies make these options available to the customer on their phones through an app, which they can use to sign up for text updates or automated calls to keep them abreast of what’s going on with their request.

Being nimble is key, and modern solutions supply more options. There will always be some customers who prefer to call and speak with a human. We need to be able to meet them where they are or risk them taking their business elsewhere.

Anticipatory Experiences for the Present and Future

The future of customer service—and where many modern-thinking organizations are going—is in the category of anticipatory customer service. The anticipatory approach allows you to see a customer profile with detailed information before you get on the phone with them, leading to quicker resolve times and shorter conversations.

What’s a straightforward way to impress a customer? Give them the impression that you have all their information at your fingertips and that you’re spending time working on their services when they’re not around.

Don’t forget to delight them with your communication style, frequency, and genuine care. Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solutions enable this type of customer experience through the cloud, improving customer engagement in many ways.

The standard customer experience has for too long revolved around a reactive approach, and companies have long failed to stand out. It’s the old leaders versus followers debate.

If you don’t stand out, you risk becoming interchangeable from your competitors. Instead, our approach should always focus on creating loyal customers through positive customer service interactions.

When you can anticipate the services your customer needs before they express those needs to you, you become more valuable to them than even they expected.

Today’s Contact Center Knows You Better

One thing hasn’t changed over time and probably never will: Customer service is all about relationships.

Advances in technology have allowed us to bridge gaps and get to resolutions faster and more efficiently than ever before. We’re now able to deliver more consistent results while focusing on managing relationships instead of managing problems.

It’s a two-way transaction. It’s never been easier for the contact center to work for both the company and the customer.

Rod Brownridge is a senior vice president of customer service at Fusion Connect, a provider of managed security and collaboration services. Rod brings two decades of operations, engineering, and customer success management to the role. He leads an award-winning customer success team at Fusion Connect, with a focus on providing frictionless experience to clients and customers alike.

By Jim Iyoob

In this booming high-tech era, technology is disrupting and optimizing different business processes. From just being a discussion on the coffee table and brainstorming session, virtual reality (VR) simulation is now becoming a real-life application for call center training.

Initially this technology was expensive, and usage was underwhelming. However, with increased demand in VR devices, technology is getting cheaper and efforts are improving virtual reality simulation to make it more useful.

For call center trainers, it’s crucial to reinvent continuously and adopt new skills while simultaneously coaching their teams. This not only helps the trainers themselves but also plays a key role in the organization’s success. Virtual reality gives contact center trainers an opportunity to increase self-awareness, develop new skills, adapt to different situations, evaluate their performance, and identify growth opportunities.

How Does Virtual Reality Simulation Work?

Virtual reality creates real-life business situations where the brain and body feel they’re in an actual world. Users are part of this virtual world experience through VR wearable devices such as headsets or glasses to encounter real-life challenges. The virtual reality system incorporates training modules that prepares leaders by testing them in a virtual world, with a similar-to-real-life application.

Hence, the trainers learn and evolve to fulfill their duties and meet the organization’s expectations. As a result, trainers get a hands-on experience in the virtual world, before tackling challenges in the real world.

How Does Virtual Reality Simulation Help in Call Center Training?

For a long time, the true potential of virtual reality simulation went unnoticed, especially in contact center training. VR empowers trainers by allowing them to practice and handle difficult conversations in the virtual world, something which isn’t possible in a classroom. Once they decide on their scenario online, they can put on a wearable VR headset to get into the simulation and practice any situation.

As businesses are getting tech-savvy, it is the right time to make room for virtual reality. So, let’s take a deep dive into different areas where virtual reality simulation enhances contact center training.

Improve Soft Skills

Soft skills are the core of training and development. Without proper soft skills, workplace functioning gets affected. With virtual reality simulation, call center trainers can assess and practice their soft skills. They can experience different circumstances such as mentoring and motivating team members, giving performance reviews to the team and appreciating excellent work. Virtual reality simulation makes it easy for call center trainers to evaluate their reactions to different situations and bridge gaps in the learning curve.

Create a Secure Training Environment

Getting nervous before major events can happen to anyone. Here, virtual reality simulation can come to the rescue and provide a secure and friendly environment where trainers can learn comfortably.

VR lets trainers practice for meetings, presentations, and seminars by creating realistic business situations. Therefore, the contact center trainers can prepare themselves, identify areas of improvement, and work on them before the actual event.

Strengthen Emotional Connectivity

It’s important for call center trainers to make practical decisions. However, the need of developing decision-making skills based on empathy cannot be overlooked. If the trainers can connect with the sentiments, beliefs, and experiences of their team members, then they can become empathetic leaders.

Empathy is a driving force that keeps team members connected, motivated, builds trust, and increases collaboration. With virtual reality, trainers can take a detailed look at different scenarios, develop empathy, and make decisions that are good for all.

Leveraging technology for call center training is an area every trainer must look forward to. Leaders must be visionary and adapt to the latest technology to have a competitive edge in the market. Virtual reality is a crucial tool for businesses to effectively train their team members.

Investing in virtual reality simulation technologies may seem expensive, but it’s rewarding overall. Strong leaders developed with the help of VR can positively influence business results. With the use of virtual reality tools, call center training can become more proficient.

Virtual reality simulation for training and development is worth the investment.

Jim Iyoob is the chief customer officer at Etech Global Services. He handles strategy, marketing, business development, IT, program implementation, operational excellence, and product development across all Etech’s existing lines of business: Etech, Etech Insights, Etech Technology Solutions, and Etech Social Media Solutions.

By Daniel Fallmann

Today, many call centers have their general scripts and rules they follow when a customer calls. However, consumers have increased their expectations regarding their personal customer experience. With increased competition in every industry, organizations cannot afford to lose valuable business because of poor customer experience efforts.

With the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning technology, companies can begin to access relevant data to personalize a customer’s call center experience and make the journey more relevant. Personalization to scripts and approaches from call centers allow customers to feel understood by the brand, building a solid level of trust and loyalty.

To offer unique and personalized experiences, support teams will primarily need access to relevant data surrounding their customer and their journey with the brand. Without doing so, you’ll just be another call center not optimizing the power of connected data.

Gain Entryway into Relevant Customer Data

Access to relevant and personalized data requires the connection of structured and unstructured data sources. Before calling, a customer may have interacted with your product or company hundreds of times. Artificial intelligence allows companies to connect data from all these interactions in a 360-degree holistic view.

From activity on your website (form downloads, support requests) to emails, call transcripts, and purchase information, data can be captured, analyzed, and utilized in the form of customer journey maps. Seeing the full story of a customer gives workers in the call center all the information they need to help a customer quickly and in a personalized manner.

In a recent Gartner survey, 83 percent of respondents reported that their organization struggles to use customer journey maps to identify and prioritize CX (customer experience) efforts. Being in the other 17 percent can play a pivotal role in transforming how people view and talk about your brand—ultimately, coming back to purchase more and increase business.

The connection of scattered data also allows customer support teams within call centers to access information about related problems and other customers with similar buying habits. Doing so helps call centers see what has worked well in the past and can assist them in shaping their approach for future like-minded consumers.

However, not all data is for everybody’s eyes and data privacy needs to be enforced by giving the proper access rights to each department. AI-solutions, like such, give management the ability to restrict sensitive data to support teams, ensuring compliance and privacy standards are always upheld.

How Does This Look in Real Life and Real-Time?

If a customer calls with a problem, innovative AI-based solutions can first identify who the number belongs from, using data that the company has previously collected. Prior to picking up the phone, the support agents’ screen will show them all the relevant information regarding the customer in an easily digestible format. Therefore, they can already begin personalizing their introduction to the call.

When a customer starts explaining why they’re calling in, the agent will already have a full view of different touchpoints that have occurred. Examples of different touchpoints include web activity, form downloads, conversations with chatbots, previous calls, email communications, and purchase orders.

In addition, the call agent will also be able to search for any piece of intelligence they may need to help the customer in the quickest, most efficient, and personalized manner. If this specific customer calls about a broken appliance, searching for that appliance will extract all the relevant data to steer the representative in the right direction.

Call centers can even take it a step further and search for a particular issue with that appliance and then be fed with information from corporate documents or similar customer interactions in a matter of seconds, eliminating long wait times or needing to put customers on hold.

Conclusion

In the digital times we are living in, innovative companies are well underway transforming their approaches to customer service and customer experience. As an example, chatbots are constantly learning from corporate data to better understand and assist with customer needs directly on the homepage of consumer-facing websites. In addition, management teams are using data in real-time to enhance their current CX strategies and business roadmaps.

There is no reason why people tasked with handling customers on the frontlines in call center roles shouldn’t be equipped with this type of technology. After all, the capacity to personalize and organize data makes life easier for your workforce and gives your customers a unique experience to highlight their individual importance.

Daniel Fallmann founded Mindbreeze in 2005 at the age of 23, after he finished his studies in computer science. He has many years of experience in the computer and information technology sector. As Mindbreeze’s CEO he is an example of high quality and innovation standards. From the company’s very beginning, Fallmann, together with his team, laid the foundation for the highly scalable and intelligent Mindbreeze InSpire appliance.