AI is starting to turn the world of work upside
down. Whether it's AI in logistics predicting demand or chatbots
such as ChatGPT writing your emails, almost all industries will be changed by
artificial intelligence over the next few years.
Customer service is no different. With more
and more companies organizing their customer service through contact centers as
a service-software that's based in the cloud-the benefits of using AI
technology have never been clearer.
Read on to find out how AI technology can make
your CCaaS more intelligent and responsive than ever before.
What is CCaaS and AI?
To provide the best customer service to your
clients, you must be available across a whole range of social media channels-as
well as via email and phone. Luckily, the days of managing all of these
channels separately are behind us.
Instead, contact centers as a service (CCaaS)
make sure that you can access all of your communication channels from one
cloud-based software. Usually incorporating both cloud
telephony solutions and email management, they're a great way of allowing
your organization to easily respond to your customers' needs.
However, that's not to say that CCaaS is
perfect. This is where AI comes in. The idea of artificial intelligence has
been around for decades, but it has only recently started to have a real impact
across the world.
While you might just think of generative AI
tools like ChatGPT when you think of AI, that's only one part of recent
developments. The increase in cloud-based data has meant that AI-powered
analytics are making it much easier to get sophisticated insights into any
dataset, for example.
These advances in AI have started to influence
CCaaS providers. They've recently started to integrate AI technology into their
software in the form of chatbots, enhanced analytics, and intelligent customer
self-service, which has made CCaaS even more effective and easy to use.
AI and CCaaS: the benefits
So how exactly are these new AI technologies
improving your CCaaS software? Well, here are some of the most important
benefits of using AI in CCaaS:
1)
Better customer service
Let's be
honest-there'd be no point using AI in CCaaS, which may require adopting new
software and legacy system integration if it didn't result
in better customer service. But, when it comes to customer service, AI isn't
just a trendy phrase.
Your clients and
customers will soon see real improvements in customer service once you adopt AI
technology. One example of this is the use of AI chatbots. While customers in
the past had to wait for a human agent if they had a query, chatbots are able to
provide instant support while also being a far more responsive experience than
other help features such as FAQs.
2)
Personalized experiences
We all like to feel
special, and AI-powered CCaaS is great for making the experiences of your
customers as personal as possible. You can use machine learning algorithms to
analyze customer data and purchasing habits so that your customer service can
be tailored to each customer's individual needs.
As customers use your
service more often, AI customer service interfaces will be able to adapt their
responses over time as they learn what really makes each customer tick. This
will mean that you'll be able to balance the improved availability of AI
customer service with the sort of personalized experience that can usually only
be offered by a friendly voice on the phone.
3)
Speedier resolutions
Let's say that you're
selling online communications software, and a customer wants to know how to
send a fax. They might search your website for ‘fax from my computer,' which could point them
to a guide that they have to read and try to understand. If that doesn't work,
they might call your center and wait for an agent to help them.
While all this is
happening, your customer is wasting hours of their valuable time. AI is able to
process huge quantities of data in seconds, enabling it to quickly find
solutions for customers. This means that chatbots can provide instant
resolutions-and you can keep your human agents for the most difficult problems.
4)
Improved scalability and
availability
There's no doubt that
one of the biggest benefits of an AI contact center is its almost endless scale
and availability. There's no chance that your customers will only need to
contact you between 9 and 5 on weekdays. AI support means that these issues can
be resolved without needing to worry about employing agents 24/7.
Similarly, a CCaaS
that is entirely dependent on human agents can only be as big as the number of
agents that you employ. If you use AI in your contact center, your business can
scale up without increasing the size of your customer service team. This can
result in huge savings.
5)
Sentiment analysis
One of the most futuristic
elements of AI in CCaaS is real-time sentiment analysis. What does this mean?
Well, AI tools are able to detect customer emotions in real-time by monitoring
voice calls and live chats.
This feature means
that AI responses are not simply cold and rational. Instead, AI tools in CCaaS
are able to treat your customers with the sort of empathy and understanding
that they expect.
Real-time sentiment
analysis is just one of the groundbreaking aspects of AI that will ensure that
AI in contact centers will only grow and grow as the technology develops.
AI: The Future of CCaaS
No one really knows what the future of AI will hold. However, it seems
clear that it will continue to play a huge part in all aspects of business,
including CCaaS.
This doesn't mean that AI will replace human
agents. Instead, the future of customer service is one where human employees
are able to be more productive through the use of AI.
Through benefits such as personalized
experiences and increasing the speed of responses, AI is elevating CCaaS to the
next level-making AI-powered CCaaS increasingly invaluable to any organization
that wants to give its customers the best experience possible.
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