08.29.2023 Jonathan Kirkland
Artificial intelligence (AI) has long been a controversial subject. The phrase often comes with the worry that companies will completely change the way they internally operate, investing in robots over humans.
This couldn’t be further from the truth, especially when it comes to outsourced call center AI.
Artificial intelligence is changing the game for many organizations’ customer service strategies, and, most importantly, they are used to augment customer service agents’ - not replace them.
A report from Accenture Research and Frontier Economics - titled ‘How AI Boosts Industry Profits and Innovation’ - predicts that AI technologies have the potential to increase productivity by 40 percent, as well as boost profitability by an average of 38 percent by 2035.
So, how exactly does artificial intelligence benefit an outsourced call center’s customer representatives, and what AI technologies do call centers use? Advantage Communications answers your questions in this blog.
How do AI technologies benefit customer service agents?
According to a report from NewVoiceMedia, US businesses are losing $75 billion per year through poor customer service. That’s because customers are now expecting a world-class customer experience (CX) from every company they engage with.
The success of your company in today's marketplace relies on seamless customer experiences that delight your customers and turns them into loyal followers of your brand.
The best outsourced contact centers are now using AI technology to augment the work their agents do, and enhance the overall customer experience. In fact, artificial intelligence is key to improving metrics such as:
- Improving customer self-service.
- Reducing customer effort.
- Improving customer satisfaction.
- Increasing first-call resolution (FCR).
- And much more.
Here’s how artificial intelligence helps customer service representatives produce better customer service experiences:
AI to augment customer service representatives
The term artificial intelligence comes with the fear of employees losing their jobs, but it’s actually quite the opposite. Next-generation outsourced call centers in Canada are using AI technologies augment and enhance a customer service agent’s job.
Artificial technologies can automate time-consuming, repetitive tasks that allow a call center’s live agents to focus on more complex tasks that drive increased customer satisfaction.
AI-powered virtual agents, such as chatbots or phone-enabled intelligent virtual agents, augment customer service agents jobs and significantly improve your company’s customer service and support strategies.
These technologies are capable of performing many of the redundant day-to-day tasks that live customer service representatives handle, such as answering basic queries or directing customers to the appropriate agent.
These technologies can augment an agents work by offsetting simple tasks, such as basic customer queries, and allowing them to focus on more complex queries that deliver greater value to your customers.
AI to enhance performance
It’s not just about augmenting agent performance either. Artificial intelligence is fantastic at enhancing agent performance, encouraging customer service representatives to constantly improve productivity, efficiency and performance in real time.
Artificial intelligence is making customer service agents smarter. AI tools can improve the performance of customer service agents by cutting down human errors and providing real-time data analytics.
Here are just a couple examples of artificial intelligence tools that call centers are using to significantly enhance the performance of their agents:
Live call guidance: Live call guidance uses artificial intelligence and speech-analysis to analyze phone conversations between an agent and your customer as it’s happening. This real-time feedback allows call centers to provide answers based on the context, and customer reactions, of the conversation. This results in happier customers and more issues resolved in the first contact.
Operational intelligence: Operational intelligence uses AI technology to transform large amounts of customer information into accessible and actionable data for customer service agents. By clearly showing customer data, as well as agent KPIs, customer service representatives can change their customer service approach in the middle of calls to ensure they get the best results possible.
There’s a wide range of customer service benefits that come with artificial intelligence, but these technologies are not only expensive - they also require specialized expertise to implement. That’s why many organizations outsource their customer service to a call center.
Want more information on how Advantage Communications uses innovative artificial intelligence technologies to revolutionize its clients’ customer service strategies? Contact our team of experts today to find out.
