AI: Artificial Intelligence. We’ve all heard the term, and most of us use AI on a daily basis. Does your phone use face recognition technology to unlock its screen? Have you ever deposited a check through your mobile banking app?
The social media platform you use is also considered AI. Have you noticed how new car ads pop up for you when you’re on Facebook after looking for cars for sale on your browser?
AI was designed to support our lives in multiple ways. One of the most significant ways AI impacts a contact center is through the capability to provide 24/7 assistance to clients. Recent surveys showed that 70% of customers expect an immediate response.
AI can accomplish that for you. When viewed through an agent’s lens, AI can significantly make workflows easier, efficient, and quick. AI in the contact center is a big benefit for agents. Concerned it may be a little too complex to incorporate into your company? Long ago AI was reserved for coding experts. Fortunately, integrating AI into your contact center operations has been made into a very simple process.
Examples of AI in a Contact Center
There are many kinds of AI available for the contact center environment that greatly benefit agents. Here are some examples of the most commonly used AI programs and how they work.
Interactive Voice Response (IVR): In the simplest terms, IVR is a technology that allows your customers to interact with a computer. When a company integrates IVR into their operations, customers experience several benefits.
An IVR uses automated workflows to identify a caller and their needs. For example, a client could call in to ask about her current balance on a bill. Instead of having to wait for an agent to become available, an IVR could help find her account and tell her what her balance is.
A workflow using IVR benefits the agent because customers are able to self-service. Agents then get more time to help customers who may have more complex problems. IVR also helps dramatically reduce call volume for contact centers because clients no longer need to speak directly with an agent for something the IVR was able to help them with. Lower call volume generally means less stressed-out agents.
AI-driven Chatbots: Chatbots are a great tool to have as another option for customer self-service. If a client prefers SMS or chatting online, LiveVox AI chatbots interact with them using text-based messaging.
LiveVox chatbots are simple to implement into your company. Using an intuitive drag and drop builder, users can easily automate a series of questions and categories through the decision tree method.
Agents benefit from this second kind of self-service feature too. Customers can get routine questions answered through AI chatbots. If a chatbot cannot help answer a customer’s question, they can then be prioritized and transferred to a live agent via online chat or SMS. There are many ways to create these workflows. It is up to you to decide what works best for your company.
Speech Recognition Technology: Speech recognition such as LiveVox’s SpeechIQ provides multiple benefits for clients and agents. The SpeechIQ feature consists of our speech engine that transcribes and analyzes agents’ calls.
Managers get alerts if SpeechIQ picks up any verbiage that could indicate compliance issues, escalations, or performance problems. SpeechIQ is also capable of scoring calls. It uses your own scorecard that you can customize with specific performance indicators.
Agents can receive extremely valuable feedback if SpeechIQ is implemented into their company operational workflows. You can ensure that performance improvement is a priority with this type of AI.
Managers and agents can easily view call scores for one on ones with their agents. Areas of improvement can be easily and quickly identified, leading to overall better support for your agents.
Virtual Agents: Virtual agents are similar to both chatbots and IVR. This type of AI brings together the best of both worlds.
Chatbots answer customer questions through human input. When creating your chatbot, you build questions and answers into it. When a customer asks a question, the chatbot relies on what you told it to do in order to provide the right answer.
IVR uses natural language processing (NLP) to “talk” to customers who call your contact center. The goal of natural language processing is to comprehend a customer’s speech. LiveVox provides a no-code approach to “teach” your IVR how to recognize and answer questions. Using a drag and drop method, you can build an automated workflow for your IVR.
Workflows consisting of elements such as speech or text recognition are easy to build with our intuitive builder.
Virtual agents use the technology behind chatbots and IVR to provide a smooth customer experience. Virtual agents use AI, resources that chatbots pull from, and natural language processing. Like IVR, virtual agents can “learn” and become more proficient over time.
Virtual agents are a big win for human agents. Not only do they take care of customers who have simple questions, but they also help route clients to the right person. This speeds up the process for customers and reduces wait time by getting the right agent on the first try. Agents are less likely to have to appease a client who is upset about their original problem and long hold times.
When a company invests in AI-driven technology to power their workflow operations, agents’ jobs become much easier. AI gives agents the tools they need in order to improve their performance, obtain the right data, and make each customer interaction flow as smoothly as possible.
Your agents’ high level of job satisfaction is a crucial component of a healthy, well-run contact center. Reducing agent stress levels through AI-powered tools results in quality customer service of a higher caliber. Your company will reap the benefits in the long run.