Artificial Intelligence for Call Center Excellence

Did you know customers now expect a brand to respond in under 10 minutes when they have a customer service question?

The expectations of consumers have undergone a significant change over the past few years.

The pandemic only deepened these trends, making customers even more demanding – be it in the quality of product, fulfillment cycle time, or customer service experience. 

80% of consumers are more likely to purchase from a brand that provides personalized experiences.

So, owing to the ongoing and imminent developments, it’s almost imperative for call centers to do away from conventional practices and adopt a more dynamic approach that’s relevant to the now.

This means adopting new-age solutions to be more proficient and “intelligent” to be more in sync with the latest consumer trends.

This is where the use of  AI in call centers comes into the picture. Sales and customer support teams around the world are already deploying call center AI software – and so must you!

What is Conversational Intelligence Software?

Conversational software helps businesses record, transcribe, and analyze all the interactions they have with their consumers.

When augmented with the power of artificial intelligence (AI), the software analyzes the raw text to identify insights from the exchange that can potentially help the business secure customer loyalty or sales.

It is possible to analyze consumer conversations across all the channels a business operates, like email, SMS, and instant messaging, to uncover useful sales insights using conversational intelligence platforms.

Artificial intelligence today also encompasses Natural Language Processing (NLP), which helps businesses deliver a humanlike conversational experience through chatbots to their audience.

NLP assists with a contextual understanding of user queries without the need to involve complicated customer support jargon, especially from the consumer.

Using conversational intelligence software thus helps businesses derive pivotal sales and support insight from user conversations.

By identifying user sentiment, levels of satisfaction, needs, and expectations, conversational software helps businesses drive growth through informed decision-making.

You can also use conversational intelligence to compile training material for your sales and marketing agents. Augmenting your sales training with insights in addition to documented interactions is bound to help your sales team perform better.

The Paradigm Shift: How AI Has Changed Call Centers Forever

74% of firms are actively looking into implementing artificial intelligence. There’s a huge reason behind this aggressive transition.

The pandemic economy brought a diverse range of challenges for sales and customer support teams, necessitating refined systems and enhanced workflows.

When the lockdowns were announced, call centers had to re-think their operations. When human capital fell short, they were pushed to adopt alternatives.

Artificial intelligence played a critical role in sustaining call centers and ensuring disruption-free functioning.

Through smart routing, customers were handed over to the right agents. With multi-level IVR, they were engaged/warmed on auto.

With conversation intelligence, reps gained comprehensive insights (in real-time) to offer customers a personalized experience.

Call center artificial intelligence solutions brought a deep paradigm shift, availing call centers with not just the opportunities to survive the pandemic economy but also thrive. 

Employing AI in contact centers is now an integral part of many sales and customer support teams, assisting them to close more deals, enhance customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores, and get more wins.

The modern solutions are amplifying training and coaching, helping reps be more productive and achieve enhanced performance. 

Recommended Read: Set Up a (Successful) Sales Call Center: A Guide to Start from Scratch

AI-Enabled Features to Look for in Call Center Software 

1. Interactive Voice Response (IVR) 

AI software used in call centers must have the option to implement IVR seamlessly. This will empower callers to pursue self-service options that will be customized to their needs.

It will also automate repetitive tasks, free up employees’ time to pursue more complex customer interactions, and provide personalized services if customers choose to contact them. 

2. Sentiment Analysis 

Artificial intelligence in call centers can take advantage of deep learning and natural language processing to conduct sentiment analysis during conversations with callers.

This can allow employees to quickly have personalized brand experiences ready for customers, to redress any problems, generate leads, and retain customer patronage.

Multi-lingual experiences can also be optimized through sentiment analysis. 

3. Call Scoring 

Artificial intelligence for call centers can track employee-customer conversations to pull insights related to speech speed, speech pattern, wasteful small talk, problem redressal time, repeat calls by customers for the same issue, etc.

All of these metrics can be mapped against collected data to check how well employees are performing against expected standards. 

4. Employee Coaching 

One of the benefits of call scoring is employee coaching. Artificial intelligence can provide insights about caller behavior, as well as predictions about the type of engagement they expect from companies in the future.

Call centers can use these insights to create impactful training material. Plus, AI can mimic callers/calls and provide simulations for on-the-job coaching. 

5. Dynamic Routing

Some studies indicate that 1 in 5 mobile calls to call centers are abandoned. High call abandonment rates can be devastating for your firm.

Using AI in call centers can prevent call abandonment by smartly and dynamically routing calls to free agents. This is particularly helpful when businesses serve customers across time zones. 

6. Call Distribution 

Overburdening employees with calls can reduce productivity and increase the chances of mistakes on-the-job.

In addition to call routing, AI can monitor the load taken on by each employee and map their past performance to their productivity level, most-productive times, and least-productive times.

AI can then distribute calls accordingly to ensure the best quality service. 

7. Transcript Creation 

Call transcripts are extremely important in tracking call quality, resolution rates, and potential legally contentious conversations. They can also support employee training and marketing/sales decision-making.

AI in call centers can be used to create accurate transcripts free from errors in multiple languages. AI can also highlight problematic words/phrases and words/phrases which can impact the company’s customer attrition.

7 Benefits of Leveraging AI in Call Centres

Efficient problem-solving is being looked upon as a major advantage of artificial intelligence in call centers.

Predictive and analytical AI software can deliver faster solutions for customer problems, which would not have been possible with human agents.

The following are some of the main advantages of having AI in call centers:

1. Solving Customer Problems Faster

Predictive and analytical AI software can deliver faster solutions because it continuously learns from data, which allows it to identify trends and resolve customer issues before they arise. 

For example, if a customer service rep sees a pattern emerging around a specific issue, they can use this information to troubleshoot the problem or work with other departments to fix it, so it doesn’t happen again.

2. Reducing Costs 

With AI technology, you can now have automated workflows that save time and money for both managers and agents alike by doing away with manual processes, freeing up employees for more complex tasks such as improving customer service or sales efforts. 

This means less human effort is required for mundane activities like logging into multiple systems, routing calls appropriately, and so on. This translates into labor cost savings.

3. Better Experiences for Customers

If the customer has a problem, you want the agent to be able to help them resolve it quickly and effectively. Call center intelligence makes this possible. 

AI can provide agents with immediate access to the customer’s past purchases and interactions with your company, allowing them to better anticipate the customer’s needs. 

This means agents can immediately solve problems without having to do an info dump on the customer or ask for their personal information every time they call. 

This unveils opportunities to deliver every customer a personalized experience and enhance their satisfaction level.

4. Happier Employees

AI call center solutions can help reps be more productive. Reps often have to look up information while they’re on calls with customers, which can slow everything down. 

AI lets them pull up relevant information without having to switch screens or hunt around for what they need. This makes their jobs easier and helps them serve customers better.

5. Unlock Consumer Behavioral Insights

Artificial intelligence in call centers enables the collection of large amounts of data on consumer behavior as well as offers valuable insights into consumer patterns. 

This allows you to know exactly what your audience wants and tailor your products and services accordingly, subsequently helping accelerate business growth.

6. Increasing the Number of Sales

AI is capable of handling multiple queries at once, and it can also handle thousands of calls per hour, which leads to an increase in sales opportunities. 

Besides, it provides personalized responses to different consumers, which results in an increase in sales since people prefer personalized content over the generic kind.

7. Enhancing Customer Communication

When customers feel as though they’re being heard, they’re more likely to stay with you for the long haul. 

Through AI, you can analyze calls for customer sentiment and determine if your agents need additional training or if you need to make a change in your contact center strategy. 

By improving customer satisfaction and loyalty, you’ll boost customer retention rates, as well as increase the amount of new business that comes from referrals.

Recommended Read: 11 Best Practices For Superior Customer Support

Companies that Increased Sales Through AI in Their Call Centers

1: Sentiment Analysis in a European Call Center

A European mobile network operator used artificial intelligence in call center employee-customer interactions.

They wanted to implement sentiment analysis to check at which point conversations turned into negative experiences, which resulted in customer attrition.

Each call received during a certain period was stored and converted using AI speech-to-text.

AI was further used to collect semantic data pertaining to conversations in multiple languages, with a focus on words/phrases surrounding or about the product/service/company.

When negative sentiments were observed, those customers were gifted with a discount coupon to restore lost sales. The sentiment analysis was used to provide training to CSRs, to improve the subsequent quality of calls and service. 

2: Sephora’s Fashion Chatbot

Sephora uses an AI-powered chatbot in their contact center. This chatbot uses machine learning, natural language processing, and sentiment analysis to offer predictive insights about what prospects/customers might enjoy the best.

The bot collects information about fashion preferences from the user and offers personalized recommendations. The chatbot allows users to take selfies and apply Sephora products to the selfie to see how they may look after using the real product.

This has exponentially increased Sephora’s sales. Plus, the company’s AI chatbot allows returning customers to easily re-order, find the most-relevant new recommendations and book in-store sessions.

If needed, the AI chatbot moves customers along to human CSRs for comprehensive support.

How to Use AI in a Call Center?  

Your organization can use AI in its call centers to do the following: 

1. Tailor Brand Engagements to Suit Customer Needs and Sensibilities 

Predictive analytics can help your call center anticipate what type of engagement customers are most likely to seek. You can even anticipate the type of product/service issues they might encounter.

Using AI, you can plan for contingencies in advance and have in place measures that can create safe, enjoyable, and empowering experiences for customers. 

2. Empower Customers with Self-Service 

Did you know that 67% of customers prefer self-service as the first option for any purchase-related issues, compared to CSR support?

AI-powered chatbots can be used to offer a guided self-service system for customers. AI-driven IVR systems can also help enable self-service and empower customers to engage with your company on their terms.   

3. Make Information Accessible and Relevant to CSRs 

Artificial intelligence for call centers is an excellent tool for automating repetitive tasks and saving CSRs’ time for more personalized and comprehensive service.

Additionally, AI can make information more accessible for employees by creating intuitive dashboards that organize call center reports and data according to the employee’s needs. 

4. Increase Employee Productivity and Reduce Mistakes 

AI in contact centers can assist employees in reducing the number of steps they take toward problem resolution.

Additionally, AI can help employees make mindful decisions, reducing the chances of service errors.

Both of these can contribute towards goals like greater productivity, reduced operational expenses, higher customer satisfaction, long-term customer patronage, and higher revenues. 

5. Quickly and Smartly Route Callers to Relevant CSRs 

AI can allow companies to quickly pull up customer data and engagement history and direct their calls to CSRs who have the relevant experience to help them.

Through this smart routing, the use of AI in call centers ensures seamless and robust 24/7 customer support globally. This helps engage in communications that are authentic, informed, and empathetic towards prospects. 

6. Forecast Purchase Trends 

Employing AI in contact centers is pivotal for understanding past consumer behaviors to inform the company’s future sales, distribution, and engagement decisions.

Analytical AI can glean rich insights about customer motives, purchase decision influences, prejudices, and more. All of this can help paint a realistic portrait of customers and how they are most likely to behave in the future.

Benefits of Conversational Intelligence Platforms

Conversational intelligence tools are proving to be more useful for businesses in improving their sales and customer support departments than others. Here are the major advantages of conversational AI for sales and support:

1. Reducing Customer Churn

Forrester reports that it takes only one unpleasant experience for 63% of customers to switch to another brand. You do not want that.

Customer churn is usually a result of the following scenarios:

• Query misinterpretation
• Lack of follow-up
• Delay in contacting customers
• Lack of product knowledge
• Missing interpretation of customer sentiment and acting accordingly

Your company can benefit by deploying conversational AI platforms powered by natural language processing to better understand customer queries and sentiments.

The platform can enrich the sales and support reps’ knowledge on a subject to solve customer queries efficiently. This helps reduce churn.

2. Boosting Productivity

It is important to take notes while interacting with a customer. The problem is that doing it manually takes time that the sales rep does not have. It also prevents the sales rep from accessing the necessary information that the customer needs.

Conversational intelligence tools automatically document customer interactions, giving the sales rep more time to improvise on the call to steer the leads toward a sale.

The software also displays a comprehensive view of the interaction history with a customer to inform the sales rep better about the entire situation.

This insight is essential to delivering a good support experience to customers and helping the sales rep close more deals efficiently.

3. Capturing Missed Opportunities

The biggest benefit of artificial intelligence software is enabling high visibility into every customer interaction. It becomes easier to identify the red flags where a customer is displaying signs of distress or churn.

The machine learning and NLP modules of conversational AI software help your sales and support reps automate clerical tasks (like data entry into CRM) to give them more time to bring back churning customers.

The software helps keep dissatisfied customers engaged with self-help and relevant resources until a support agent can contact them.

Capitalizing on fleeing opportunities makes the entire difference between a flourishing business and a struggling one.

4. Superior Customer Experience

By employing the interpretative power of natural language processing and sentiment analysis, conversational intelligence software deeply understands each query raised by a user.

This helps the system respond with hyper-personalized and relevant resources and responses that serve customer needs to the T.

Considering how important it is to deliver a great customer experience at each touchpoint, conversational AI software collates historical data and current interactions into a full-fledged customer journey map for the sales and support reps.

This helps you measure the quality of your conversations with the customer. By utilizing the insights accumulated from each customer touchpoint, you can deliver a superior experience that resolves all their queries.

Your Complete Call Center Stack: JustCall and JustCall IQ

JustCall is one of the leading cloud phone systems used by 6,000+ businesses worldwide. JustCall IQ is a built-in AI-powered conversation intelligence solution bundled with many powerful features. 

The solution is made for sales and customer support teams at call centers. The features are tailored to address their distinct needs and requirements. 

Some of its core capabilities include real-time transcript, AI scoring, moment analysis, sentiment analysis, Coaching Insights, and live agent assist. 

From offering situational prompts in real-time to unearthing call insights for training purposes, JustCall IQ checks all the right boxes, empowering call centers with unmatched AI capabilities. 

Now train your reps and transform them to become “super reps.” Boost their productivity and performance. And, together, take your business to the next level.

Sign up today and try JustCall IQ. Or schedule a free demo and learn how using artificial intelligence for call centers can unlock limitless potential for your business.