How to leverage AI in the contact center

Artificial intelligence (AI), and especially generative AI, is disrupting most industries. This is particularly true of the contact center industry, where large language models have the potential to revolutionize operations, increasing efficiency and reducing human contact volumes dramatically. This was the consensus among several of our speakers at All Access: Contact Centers.

In case you missed the event, here is what they had to say…

AI will not totally replace human agents

The opening panel discussion, How to improve employee experience to aid retention and elevate service in the contact center, saw our panelists agree that AI will be “critical” in future operations. Nicole Cable, CXO at CareMax, opined that although AI will change the shape of contact center operations, “humans are still the key to everything. People don’t bond with chatbots, they bond with humans.”

Rod Armstrong, VP of contact center operations at ServeCo North America echoed this, adding that “AI is going to be the way to future proof your business, especially when thinking about omnichannel experiences”.

Ingrid van Ruiswijk, customer service manager for DTC at New Balance, said in her session that the company is taking an approach of “automate what we can, personalize what we cannot”. The sports apparel giant is expecting to see a massive 35 percent drop in contact volume with the rollout of AI-led automations and chatbots, particularly to solve more common and less complex customer queries such as “where is my order?”.

Implementing bots for low value tasks like this “takes away the clutter and the noise so that you can focus on the quality conversations with agents”, Ruiswijk said. Agents are then free to focus on higher value tasks, such as product knowledge, which is critical in the sportswear and apparel industry, and eventually cross- and up-selling. During his panel, Armstrong similarly noted that AI will allow agents to focus on more complex requests.

AI can reduce journey friction

Our partners at RingCentral focused on generative AI in the contact center. Andy Watson, product marketing manager, also emphasized that generative AI-powered chatbots can augment but not replace agents.

When exploring use cases for generative AI in the contact center, Andy explained that generative AI can summarize what the customer has already been through on their journey, eliminating the need for agents to spend precious time reading reems of messages between the customer and first line chatbot.

Not only does this have a huge cost-saving benefit (time is money, after all!), but this prevents customers from needing to re-explain their queries, ultimately reducing journey friction and easing potential frustration.

So, where can you get started?

Watson’s session closed with practical advice about getting started with generative AI in the contact center. His four-step process was:

• Ensure that data sets are up to date to guarantee accurate responses.
• Once the data is in-hand, prioritize the most pressing issues. This will guide companies on where to roll out generative AI in the contact center.
• Identify the top five interaction types or pain points along the customer journey and build initial AI and generative AI capabilities there.
• Finally, establish a formal quality assurance process for AI. On this, Watson noted “you don’t let your agents operate without a review […] you need the same process with generative AI.”

He added that it is helpful to think of generative AI as another agent who also needs “constant coaching and improvement”. From there, he said, it is an “iterative process” that relies on up-to-date data.

This event went live on July 11, 2023. If you would like more information on the topics discussed in this article, you can access the details here.