Can empowering agents with AI improve customer experiences?

Today, the rapid advancement of technological innovation has catalysed the adoption of disruptive technologies in the Unified Communications (UC) space. Indeed, more companies are now turning to artificial intelligence (AI) in order to improve customer experiences.

Using AI to improve customer experiences

In today's increasingly digital world, chatbots and AI virtual assistants are transforming how humans interact with organisations. In fact, a Gartner report predicts that 25% of customer service operations will use virtual customer assistants (VCAs) by 2020. Overall, organisations report a reduction of up to 70% in call, chat and/or email inquiries after implementing a VCA. Moreover, Gartner found that companies using VCAs also report increased customer satisfaction and a 33% saving per voice engagement. Despite this, another Gartner report notes that chatbots will not live up to consumer expectations unless they deliver clear value. The outsource contact centre VeriCall also affirms this, as it is unrealistic to expect AI powered solutions to deliver instant savings by "taking over the resolution for the majority of customer issues."

Empowering agents with AI

VeriCall also observes that fully AI solutions are incredibly complex and expensive to integrate. In addition to this, customers continue to regularly state on exit surveys that when dealing with a support issue they "just want to speak to a person." While AI solutions are not sufficient as a complete solution, they do have the potential to empower customer service agents. For example, AI solutions can help customers reach the right person more quickly - without the "IVR minefield of endless options to select." In order to achieve this balance, VeriCall approached their AI powered solutions with this focus in mind. In effect, this entailed getting to the customer to the solution quickly, while providing the human interaction they desired.

The solution

An important element of VeriCall's design was ensuring that agents had all the vital information required when receiving a call. In turn, this meant that agents could provide a solution as seamlessly as possible, without the customer needing to repeat information. By integrating with both Amazon and Google AI tools, VeriCall deployed a solution with the ability to learn from accents and languages. As a result, this allowed for accurate decision making by routing calls to the appropriate specialist agent. Using a blended approach evidently provides a superior customer experience, while delivering business benefits. Empowering agents with AI also results in a decreased time to resolution, higher brand loyalty, and ultimately improves customer experiences.

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