Every year, artificial intelligence plays an increasingly important role in the routine activities of many companies. Among many areas of application of AI-backed technologies, call centers stand out. Advanced software may help your business interact more effectively with customers. Recent research from StrategyR estimated that the global market of artificial intelligence in contact centers will reach $3.5 billion by 2026.
Use cases of AI in call centers
In recent decades, there have been several trends that have turned business logic on its head. First, the massive use of smartphones, social networks, and user-friendly applications has dramatically increased customer demand. They no longer want to put up with long waits and incompetent agents. One bad experience is enough to lose a customer forever.
Secondly, the active development of cloud services and machine learning tools has created additional potential in client service. Today, many business owners cite improved customer interaction as the main reason for adopting artificial intelligence, and cost reduction has faded into the background.
Next, we look at how AI is modernizing contact centers and helping to ensure the best customer experience.
- Predictive call routing: AI for call centers matches contact customer requirements with specific live agents to understand who may best handle a problem.
- Interactive voice response (IVR): IVR solutions use voice response and analytics to automate call routing. If you have an automated message you plan to convey to clients, IVR technology can send customized messages through different channels. Using the IVR conversational platform, you may move customers and leads through the sales funnel. We recommend choosing a solution that can scale on demand.
- Voice analysis: AI for call centers records customer interactions and instantly converts audio into text transcripts. Speech analytics platforms analyze transcripts to determine common call topics and keywords and evaluate agent performance.
- Chatbots: it is the most popular use case of AI in customer service. When a buyer chooses a virtual mode of communication with the company, the chatbot welcomes him, collects reference data, and tries to solve the user’s problem. AI-based bots successfully cope with simple tasks, but non-standard situations require the participation of agents.
- Call analytics: advanced technologies provide the management team with in-depth analytics on-call time, first purchase decision, and more. Such techniques may identify trends and access user data to determine whether a customer’s experience has been positive or negative.
Modern AI-backed contact centers can sound realistic. An excellent virtual assistant uses machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), and speech recognition for smooth, human-like communications.
Innovative virtual agent technologies also help call centers manage expenses and staff efficiency. Because the AI processes multiple interactions in parallel, administrators may route the most promising leads to live agents and identify how many employees are needed to keep the contact center running smoothly.
Advantages of adding AI call center technology
As techniques advances and telemarketing requirements change, AI-ruled systems open up many options to grow the business. As a result, adding artificial intelligence and machine learning to your cloud call center creates an additional tool that allows you to compete in the industry, increase efficiency, keep abreast of the latest practices and meet strict requirements. Let’s talk about other benefits of implementing best practices:
- Finding and qualifying leads: advanced techniques allow you to quickly and reliably find potential buyers. Your solution is ready to make outbound calls, helping professionals sort through thousands of contacts to find the people most likely to use your products or services.
- Collecting helpful information: AI for call centers lets you manage the necessary data quickly. Create new strategies and determine which tools work and which are better to refuse with the help of smart technologies.
- Fast customer service: you can cut each support call’s average time with technology that instantly delivers actionable data.
- Reducing contact center expenses: according to a global McKinsey survey, 44% of organization owners who use AI have achieved cost savings. With fewer staff cuts, training and scaling spending can be greatly decreased.
People often wonder: can artificial intelligence replace live agents in contact centers? The short answer is: yes and no. AI-based techniques can handle simple and repetitive calls and automate part or all of the conversation. It helps support reps by giving them time to deal with more complex cases. Reducing the number of calls to agents can lead to a reduction of employees. However, there are extraordinary situations that artificial intelligence cannot cope with, which means there will always be a need for live agents.