How Can Contact Center AI Change (and Lift) Customer Experience and Engagement?

Contact Center AI

In a digital-first post-pandemic world, exceptional customer experience has become a priority without stepping out, and organizations are paying close attention to making it happen with inbuilt AI technologies in contact and cloud centers. AI is a driving force in contact centers that enables delivering superior customer and agent experience with the help of automation tools. Innovative technologies like ML, Intelligent Automation, and Contact Center AI are helping businesses thrive and succeed in a post-pandemic world.

As one of the leading technological aspects, Artificial Intelligence (AI) keeps gaining popularity for both sales professionals and marketers and has become an essential part of providing an exceptional and hyper-personalized customer experience. A report predicts that the AI market size will reach US$ 270 billion by the end of 2027.

The availability of AI-enabled customer relationship management (CRM) and enhanced customer data platform (CDP) software has introduced AI to businesses without incurring high costs associated with the technology.

Thanks to advanced research and technological breakthroughs, today, businesses are at the point of uprisings in the customer service industry, which is the main reason for the rise in technologies such as AI and ML. With technological advancement and advanced speech analytics, Contact Center AI enables businesses and their bots to understand the human language, emotions, speech patterns, the customer’s real intent, emotions, and implied needs and become a knowledgeable replacement for a better customer experience.

51% of companies are incorporating AI to improve and personalize their customer experience and enhance customer engagement.
– Salesforce

As per Statista, The global AI market is projected to explode to $126 Billion by 2026 from $17B in 2020. AI-based platforms have revolutionized customer service industries with several automation platforms such as Conversational Service Automation. By integrating AI-based technologies in the businesses, contact centers offer personalized customer experiences, bringing in more efficiencies and cost reductions within customer service departments. Automation of repetitive tasks helps humans to focus more on value-added propositions related to customer engagement.

According to Gartner, By 2022, The value of AI-derived business will create $2.9 trillion of business value, and customer experience will become the center of this hike. 78% of the professionals working in the contact centers think that AI will positively impact customer success operations. AI embedded solutions are the key to an advanced future and empower better results for all the customers.

AI-based technologies and automation are recognized as the biggest game-changers in today’s digital world and century. Businesses, whether small or large are currently moving to machine learning and artificial intelligence to transform customer interactions, relationships, revenues, and services. The focus of the customer experience and AI relationship is tools like chatbots, personalized communication, image recognition, and recommendations. 

Nowadays,  It is impossible to ignore Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its impacts on operating business. AI-based tools, services, and programs can transform everything about the business.

The Need of AI in Customer Experience and Engagement

Nowadays, Companies are experimenting and implementing technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and advanced analytics with a belief to improve the customer experience in the businesses. Enterprises are focusing on leveraging these technologies to automate labor and thereby reduce operating costs.

Contact Center Artificial intelligence (AI) is unleashing a new approach for customer experience (CX) strategy, design, development, and engagement. Customer experience is a competitive driver of success and the most significant source of risk when failing. One of the essential aspects of customer experience enhancement is Data insights. However, Customer experience datasets are puzzling, and the customer behavior is chaotic.

Concurrently, the complexity is precisely why Contact Center AI can release such a lot of significant worth across both customer experience and engagement. Call center agents, employees, or the salespersons in the customer-facing businesses and contact centers are not expected to understand a customer’s history based on previous interactions and derive their own insights from it in real-time.

Pankaj Gupta (CTO of Bharti AXA Life Insurance) while speaking at a webinar said, “In the Life insurance sector, Customer Engagement has seen a significant uplift with AI implementation. For instance, various use cases apply to the entire chain, and the most success is on the risk scoring at the time of boarding. With AI, it has become easier to determine which customer needs intervention through calls and messaging based on the previous customer interaction data and their whole lifecycle, making the customer experience more satisfactory and engaging with them more persistently“.

AI helps uplift Customer Service and Customer Engagement

#1. AI helps predict customer behavior

Predicting customer behavior and tailoring the content and interaction based on that is one of the crucial demands in the customer service industry. Amalgamating AI with the customer experience allows for real-time responses, and businesses can also tailor their marketing messages based on their most recent interactions with your company. For instance, AI helps identify customers who use ad blockers and provide them with an alternate user experience.

Combining Contact Center AI with real-time decisions helps agents understand a customer’s intent, recognize their actions, and present highly personalized, relevant content. AI analyzes bulk data quickly, predicts customer behavior, and guides future interactions between a company and its customers.

#2. Augment agent capabilities

Let’s face one fact that is moreover a reality, the customer service departments and people can’t be available all the time, but it is what their job needs. Introducing AI and augmenting agent capabilities have become necessary to streamline the processes and enhance customer services. 

One of the main advantages of AI is understanding emotional intelligence but not getting bothered based on emotions like mundane.  Agents are not going anywhere, any time, soon. But, AI augments the agent capabilities with insights, knowledge bases, alerts, and notifications to do their jobs better.

#3. Improve decision-making

One of the most significant aspects of mundane life is our mind gets tired; we get affected by several factors like fatigue, emotions that interrupt our decision-making, and we often make mistakes. While technologies and machines embedded with AI never get tired and complete the same task again and again with the same accuracy and efficiency. Also, AI helps agents make better decisions based on previous data and real-time insights.

#4. Lower query response time

With the changing pace and advanced technologies, customers have become impatient and need their queries resolved in no time. They ask for immediate solutions to their questions with the best level of customer service. Managing all these tasks might seem herculean for humans but luckily not for machines.  The major advantage of AI is that it never needs to sleep, which empowers businesses to reduce response times to customer queries.  AI empowers a centralized decision-making approach that drastically reduces query resolution time with customers’ 24*& availability support.

#5. Personalize customer experience

Another essential way AI is transforming the customer experience is by tailoring and personalizing the content. Personalized content increases engagement drastically, and it has been noticed that customers are more likely to buy from businesses that follow a personalized approach and make them feel they know what they need. Gone are the days when one size fits all approach – was a mantra to reach out to customers.

Nowadays, each customer is unique, with a unique set of problems and expectations from the brand. While humans can’t offer a personalized experience and content to each customer every time, it is possible with the help of AI. AI understands every customer, their biases, and a unique set of problems and offers customized solutions and query resolutions. Offering a personalized approach and experience to customers also helps businesses retain customers by identifying the probability of mishappenings in advance and offering quick solutions to customers’ delight.

cta

The Future of AI in CX

Artificial Intelligence is one of the next big things in today’s world that gives both businesses and customers an advantage. Implementation of AI in businesses offers personalized experiences to customers that enhance engagement. If AI enters the businesses’ privacy zone, it can bring out a negative experience. Therefore, it becomes essential to strike the right harmony between positive and negative. As Paul Greenberg, the author of the best-selling CRM at the Speed of Light, defines customer experience appropriately “If a customer likes you and continues to like you, they will do business with you. If they don’t, they won’t“. 

Artificial Intelligence in the contact centers is becoming an indispensable part of modern CRM. Customer engagement is likely the most crucial element for the contact centers and businesses and experts claim it to be more important than the product or service they offer. As a report suggests, AI will power 95% of customer interactions by 2025.

Undoubtedly, AI, Machine Learning, and Natural Language Processing will get more sophisticated soon, unlocking the unlimited potential to improve in Customer Relationship Management and introducing new opportunities to increase revenue along the way.

Shambhavi Sinha

Shambhavi Sinha is working as an SEO expert at Ameyo. She also likes to write tech-based stuff. Her aim is to provide knowledge to users by sharing the knowledge about the latest trends about contact centers.