There’s no denying the rapid rate at which businesses have been adopting generative AI technology. Organizations across industries are finding ways to use AI for their daily work, including customer interactions.
However, making the most out of AI takes more than just adding a ChatGPT bot to a contact center and calling it a day. You need to know how to use AI to improve the customer and agent experiences.
To help our understanding of AI’s impact on the customer experience (CX), let’s look at how conversational AI can be used in contact centers today.
What Can AI Bring to CX?
The first step to understanding how AI can improve CX is knowing where it can be applied throughout customer interactions and how.
From the moment a customer calls a contact center, AI can assist them via a natural language auto attendant. These can help direct customers to the right department or agent for their needs based on voice input, rather than needing to go through a monotonous menu where they have to constantly press buttons to go to the next option.
In fact, using AI can provide a good customer experience without even needing to involve an agent. With digital-first self-service, customers can receive assistance and information from an AI-powered assistant, allowing them to get help quickly even when agents are unavailable.
Beyond that, AI can help agents from the moment the phone rings with AI-powered customer context. While CRMs that provide customer information are common, they only help with existing customers who already have their information saved to it. AI can gather customer information and context before the agent gets the call, so the agent will be better prepared to assist them.
During the call, AI-powered solutions can provide additional contextual information to agents, such as any previous interactions the customer may have had or answers to the caller’s questions, as well as real-time sentiment analysis. Afterward, the solution can analyze the interactions during the call to help with agent training and guidance.
Of course, contact centers consist of multiple agents, all of whom are taking multiple calls each day. That’s a lot of interactions, which are valuable sources of data about customers, agent performances, and any common questions or issues that may be arising. AI can analyze that data, glean new insights, and provide reports delving into any issues or patterns that businesses should be aware of.
Each step in this process can help improve the customer experience, whether it’s by helping make each call more efficient, assisting agents to provide a superior service, or gathering insights to help organizations improve.
