The role of artificial intelligence (AI) in contact centers is rapidly evolving, transitioning from theoretical concepts to practical applications delivering real business value and generating strong business outcomes, now. Its growing importance in contact centers has made AI the holy grail for achieving customer experience (CX) automation.
Using AI to power self-service has proven especially valuable for increasing agent capacity, boosting customer satisfaction, and reducing operational costs. Intelligent virtual assistants (IVAs) and bots are key in helping brands achieve these goals. They do this by facilitating self-service that contains customer interactions and which improves first contact resolution (FCR).
By enabling self-service through tools such as IVAs and bots, organizations can create a virtuous cycle that not only drives operational efficiency but also enhances both agent and customer experience.
The Case for Increasing Agent Capacity
Voice IVAs help reduce the number of incoming calls into the contact center by providing AI-powered self-service over telephony and voice-enabled channels. By enabling self-service options, voice IVAs empower customers to resolve their issues independently at any time, reducing incoming call volumes and alleviating pressure on human agents.
According to our research of 300 U.S. brands, businesses leveraging AI for self-service are up to twice as likely to achieve higher containment and FCR rates across both digital and voice channels. This is essential for increasing agent capacity, allowing businesses to lower support costs or reassign agents to revenue-generating initiatives and handle more complex issues.
The role of AI in contact centers is...transitioning from theoretical concepts to practical applications...
IVAs are different from rudimentary chatbots and IVR systems which rely solely on predetermined customer journeys and often fail to truly understand customer needs. In contrast, AI-powered IVAs can understand a wider range of customer intents to more accurately resolve issues.
AI Boosts CX Confidence
Using AI to support self-service doesn’t just help businesses generate strong business outcomes. It also helps organizations to meet customers’ needs moving forward.
Businesses using AI to deliver self-service recognize the value it generates, which breeds confidence for future contact center performance.
This may explain why our study revealed that 89% of businesses using AI-powered IVAs plan to maintain or increase their investments over the next 12 months. Among those utilizing AI for self-service, 53% are using it across both voice and digital channels, while 46% use it for either voice or digital.
Overall, brands are seeing a strong return on investment and continuing to invest in increasing interaction containment and FCR rates, ultimately improving agent capacity.
IVA Benefits and Challenges
The ability to support a seamless transition between IVAs and human agents ensures that customers receive efficient support when the time comes that they want to talk to an agent.
When a handoff occurs, the IVA provides context about the customer’s issue, so they don’t have to repeat themselves. This not only improves customer satisfaction, but it also enhances agent efficiency, as agents can now focus on engaging with customers rather than repetitive inquiries.
Voice IVAs help reduce the number of incoming calls...by providing AI-powered self-service over telephony and voice-enabled channels.
Many organizations believe they need to re-platform and move to the cloud before adopting AI technologies such as IVAs. However, that’s no longer the case with open platforms, which allow technology infrastructure to remain in situ.
Open platforms are transforming the discussion around AI adoption success, enabling organizations to achieve immediate results. The power of AI is available now and not tied to lengthy infrastructure experiments taking years to deliver real business outcomes.
Agent Copilot Bots Bolster Productivity
Increasingly, businesses are also deploying agent assistance in the form of “copilots” that can provide CX automation in real time during customer communications.
These AI-powered bots provide suggested responses, coach agents on delivering higher quality service, and even execute tasks on behalf of the agents, reducing employee strain while delivering better CX.
Open platforms are transforming the discussion around AI adoption success...
For example, implementing knowledge automation bots means that contact center agents no longer need to spend valuable time searching for the right answers to customers’ questions while the customers are on hold. Instead, the AI-powered bot automatically searches across multiple enterprise content sources and uses Generative AI to summarize these search results into easily digestible responses.
Driving AI Business Outcomes, Now
Organizations are using the extra agent capacity created by AI solutions, such as IVA technologies and bots, to achieve their CX goals and business objectives. These include lowering labor costs and enhancing the customer and employee experience by freeing up agent time for interaction as well as support. And, finally, boosting revenue by empowering agents to upsell and cross-sell products and services.