Building new-age contact centres with conversational AI

Building new-age contact centres with conversational AI

What does customer satisfaction look like in the contact centre? It’s simple: your customers get the answers they need, through their preferred channel, in their preferred language, instantly. Long wait times, added stress, and poor reviews from customers are detrimental to the business.

DTMF and IVR-based customer service technologies have been the same for decades, and the pandemic exposed their shortcomings—the inability to handle exponential volume, support different channels, scale dynamically, or offer personalised services. Also, live agents are costly to train, operate, and retain. Even with fully trained agents, there are challenges of time to respond and quality of service.

Modern-age customers expect instant responses, self-service options on their preferred channels, and personalised services. However, legacy technology contact centres carry huge operational costs with no significant ROI. Companies cannot just rely on them and expect a miracle to meet their customers’ rapidly evolving needs. Changing times warrant a change in strategy and technology.

Gartner* predicts that 1 in 10 agent interactions will be automated with the help of conversational AI by 2026, thus reducing the agent labour cost by $80B. However, today, companies are only at the cusp of implementing intelligent automation for their contact centres, with strides towards conversational AI.

*https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2022-08-31-gartner-predicts-conversational-ai-will-reduce-contac

• What are the major challenges contact centres are facing in recent times? What strategies and technologies are leaders exploring to address them?
• What trends are shaping the future of the industry? What role will conversational AI play?
• What are the capabilities you look for in conversational AI? How would you measure its success?