Increased agent, satisfied customer!
Jan. 19, 2022
Do you know the feeling of distress when you finally receive your Internet box, but it just won't start? And yet you've followed the recommendations on the installation instructions to the letter... Contacting customer service to solve your problem - quickly - seems the obvious solution. But once you're on the line, faced with a multitude of predefined options, none of which suits you, or worse, with no quick response, you end up hanging up. Irritated and unhappy.
To overcome these bitter experiences, ways of optimizing exchanges have been devised and developed for the benefit of users.Artificial intelligence (AI) plays a key role in personalizing and optimizing the customer experience. According to Microsoft*, by 2025, nearly 95% of all customer interactions will take place via AI-enabled channels!
Today,AI is an essential technology for contact centers. Thanks to theautomation of repetitive, low value-added tasks, agents can devote themselves fully to exchanges requiring human emotional capacities (creativity, innovation, conflict resolution). Call center agents are thus able to offer an optimal customer experience, worthy of the name at last! Technology is proving to be a powerful tool for assisting agents in complex environments. Welcome to the era of theAugmented Agent.
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AI to support Augmented Agents
Customer experience is unanimously considered to be a key element in competitive differentiation. It is even emerging as the new battlefront on which companies are seeking to gain a decisive advantage over their competitors.
The role of the advisor, a point of contact at various stages of the customer journey, has evolved and become central. Charged with heavy responsibilities, being in direct contact with the customer, they are faced with two constraints. Firstly, ever more demanding consumers, but also a job that is becoming increasingly complex under the influence of a number of factors:
The gradual emergence of new communication channels;
The e-commerce boom ;
The Covid-19 health crisis and the need to be as productive while working remotely...
The latter, often insufficiently trained, finds himself having to satisfy volatile customers, who expect immediacy and transparency, juggling infinite interfaces that are ultimately not very user-friendly !
That's whyautomating manual and repetitive tasks using AI dramatically increases the efficiency and productivity of contact centers. These automations can reduce processing times by up to 40%. These aids include :
Analysis of keywords in written exchanges (SMS, email, chat), for example, to automatically suggest appropriate responses to customers;
Semantic analysis of exchanges to help advisors adapt their discourse and make progress;
Time-saving data entry support for call center agents, etc.
Such gains help to keep customers satisfied and loyal, while reducing operating costs. Finally, one of the most promising uses of AI is inemotion analysis. When a call is received within an IVR, for example, it is possible to detect whether a customer is in a particular emotional state (irritated, angry, aggressive, etc.) ahead of an interaction with the support team. This makes it possible to adapt the discourse or transfer it to a specific department if necessary, reducing the emotional load on call center agents, while improving the processing of the customer's request.
Evolving technologies for the benefit of call center agents
Job-stealing robots, technology devoid of conscience and ethics... The fears of AI taking over are numerous, but often unfounded. These alarm cries need to be qualified: telecommunicators will be able to take advantage of these various technologies, which will support them rather than supplant them.
One of the most striking examples of the use of AI in the service of advisors is certainly the deployment of callbots and voicebots in the service of customer relations, notably within interactive voice servers. The purpose of voice assistants is clear: to respond to the caller's request as simply and quickly as possible, without human intervention. These conversational assistants then - automatically - take over time-consuming but uncomplicated operations. If necessary, the call is forwarded to an advisor who will take charge of the customer's request. By creating a new form of enriched customer interaction that is simplified, personalized and in natural language, the customer experience is optimized. This technology meets the needs of contact centers in a variety of ways, and has much to offer customer services to make the work of agents at home, or on site, faster and more efficient.
AI's ability to formalize a customer context and analyze its data takes on its full meaning! This makes it possible to look even further ahead, to see technology not as a replacement for the telephone advisor, but as an extraordinary ally capable of turning him or her into an augmented advisor. If the tendency to oppose human and voice assistant is part of the collective imagination, the association of artificial intelligence and the teleconsultant is destined to enhance the latter's capabilities and usher in the era of augmented customer relations.
Finally, an augmented agent is an employee who is helped by his or her expertise and freed from repetitive, low value-added tasks. He or she is aware of the importance of his or her role within the contact center, and is part of a customer-focused organization that values him or her and provides him or her with the means to significantly improve the customer experience.
ViaDialog, customer relationship management solution, the ally of augmented agents
The issue of AI's contribution to customer relations has been at the heart of ViaDialog's concerns for many years. This has led us to develop innovative solutions for automating the customer journey and improving working conditions for call center agents.
ViaSpeech offers a complete solution for automating the customer journey in natural language, with tools for creating voicebots, callbots and assistants that can be integrated directly into your voice servers. And for a touch of floware, ViaDialog has developed ViaFlow, a natively omnichannel platform for managing customer interactions, featuring our latest AI technologies.
*Powering the Future of the Customer Experience, Microsoft, 2017.
