Augmented agent, satisfied client!
Do you know the feeling of distress when you finally receive your Internet Box but it struggles to start? Yet, you have followed the recommendations in the installation manual to the letter... Contacting customer service to quickly resolve your problem seems like an obvious solution. But once online, faced with a multitude of predefined options that do not fit you, or worse, in the absence of a quick response, you end up hanging up. Irritated and dissatisfied.
To overcome these bitter experiences, means of optimizing exchanges have been thought out and developed for the users. Artificial intelligence (AI) thus plays a vital role in personalizing and optimizing the customer journey and experience. According to Microsoft*, by 2025 nearly 95% of customer interactions will take place via channels using artificial intelligence!
Indeed, AI is now established as an essential technology in contact centers. Thanks to the automation of repetitive and low-value tasks, it allows agents to fully dedicate themselves to exchanges that require emotional human skills (creativity, innovation, conflict resolution). Tele-advisors are then able to provide an optimal customer experience, finally worthy of the name! Technology thus proves to be a powerful tool to assist agents in complex environments. Welcome to the era of the Augmented Agent.
AI in support of Augmented Agents
The customer experience is universally regarded as a key element of competitive differentiation. It even stands as the new battleground on which companies seek to gain a decisive advantage over their competitors.
The advisor, contact point at different moments of the customer journey, has seen their role evolve and become central. Charged with heavy responsibilities, being in direct contact with the customer, they face two constraints. Firstly, consumers are increasingly demanding, but also a workplace that is becoming more complex under the influence of a few factors:
The gradual emergence of new communication channels;
The e-commerce boom;
The Covid-19 health crisis and the need to be also productive while working remotely…
This individual, often inadequately trained, finds themselves needing to satisfy volatile customers, expecting immediacy and transparency, juggling with endless interfaces that are ultimately not user friendly!
That’s why the automation of manual and repetitive tasks through the intervention of AI significantly increases the efficiency and productivity of contact centers. These automations can reduce processing times by up to 40%. These aids include:
Keyword analysis in written exchanges (SMS, email, chat) allowing, for example, automatic proposals of tailored responses to the customer;
Semiotic analysis of exchanges helping the advisor adapt their discourse and progress;
Data entry assistance for tele-advisors for considerable time savings, etc.
Such gains help to satisfy and retain customers while reducing operational costs. Finally, one of the most promising uses of AI lies in emotion analysis. When receiving a call within an IVR for example, it becomes possible to detect if a customer is in a particular emotional state (irritated, angry, aggressive, etc.) before interacting with the support team. This offers the possibility of tailoring the discourse or transferring it to a specific service if needed, thereby reducing the emotional burden for tele-advisors while improving the handling of the customer’s request.
Technologies that evolve, serving tele-advisors
Job-stealing robots, technology devoid of consciousness and ethics... Fears surrounding the takeover by AI are numerous, but often unfounded. It is necessary to nuance these alarm bells: tele-advisors will benefit from these various technologies, which will support them rather than replace them.
One of the most striking examples of the use of AI in support of advisors is certainly the deployment of callbots and voicebots in customer relationships, particularly within interactive voice servers. The utility of voice assistants is clear: they respond to the caller's request in the simplest and fastest way possible, without human intervention. These conversational assistants then automatically handle time-consuming but simple operations. If needed, the call is passed to an advisor who will take charge of the customer's request. By creating a new form of enriched interaction with customers that is both simplified, personalized, and in natural language, the customer experience is optimized. This technology allows contact centers to meet needs in various forms, offering much to customer services to make the work of agents at home or on-site faster and more efficient.
The ability of AI to formalize a customer context and analyze its data makes perfect sense! It is then possible to project even further, to see in technology not a replacement for the tele-advisor, but an extraordinary ally capable of transforming them into an augmented advisor. While the tendency to oppose human and voice assistant is part of collective imagination, the association of artificial intelligence and the tele-advisor is destined to enhance the latter's abilities and usher us into the era of augmented customer relationships.
Ultimately, an augmented agent is a collaborator supported by their expertise and freed from low-value repetitive tasks. They are a collaborator aware of the importance of their role within the contact center, finding themselves in a customer-oriented organization, empowering them and providing them the means to significantly improve the customer experience.
ViaDialog, customer relationship management solution, ally of augmented agents
The challenge of AI's contribution to customer relationships has been at the heart of ViaDialog's concerns for many years. This has driven us to develop innovative solutions for automating the customer journey and improving the working conditions of tele-advisors.
ViaSpeech thus offers a complete solution for automating the customer journey in natural language through tools that enable the creation of voicebots, callbots, and assistants directly integrable into your voice servers. And for a touch of floware, ViaDialog has developed ViaFlow, a natively omnichannel platform for managing customer interactions incorporating our latest AI technologies.
*Powering the Future of the Customer Experience, Microsoft, 2017.
