According to Gartner, the number of businesses implementing artificial intelligence increased by 270% in the past several years. Tidio's survey also states that more than 80% of employees consider artificial intelligence a solution that boosts productivity. AI transformed the operation of the customer support department, enhancing it with self-service, proactive virtual assistance, and highly personalized user experience.
The AI call center can utilize the potential of artificial intelligence to increase the number of interactions with users. It empowers the workflow with solutions for quality control, analysis, and training, raising the professional level of the team members and their working capabilities.
This article will help you realize the impact of AI on call center operations and their benefits. We will share AI-powered solutions and practices we consider the most valuable and efficient for a stable and efficient work process.
The Evolution of AI in Contact Center: Changes That Matter
Artificial intelligence transformed the entire call center area with powerful solutions to boost the work, simplify it, and support a major part of the operational process.
First Steps in Automation
The impact started with the first interactive voice response (IVR) systems and scripted responses for basic inquiries automation, reducing the need for human agents in simple issues. First, automation allowed customers to navigate through a pre-recorded menu for information search.
Call centers started developing centralized databases for easier storage and search for customer information. Data organizing helped streamline the processes and supported agents when assisting customers.
The need for quality control pushes the development of quality evaluation by metric recording. The automated systems started recording AHT (average handling time) and FCR (first-call resolution) to measure key performance indicators.
Chatbot Development and Sentiment Analysis Input
You can imagine AI's long way from basic automated features to advanced AI assistance. The rise of chatbot implementation started nearly fourteen years ago with the first integrations into website support systems. Nowadays, it still handles common inquiries, allowing human agents to focus on complex tasks. The development of sentiment analysis allowed AI to analyze speech patterns for better efficiency.
Advanced AI Enhancements
The evolution of NLP (natural language processing) improved AI’s capability to understand customer inquiries and made responses and conversations more human-like.
Predictive analytics added the possibility to foresee future trends and inquiries. Forecast addition made services more proactive and personalized to customers by anticipating their needs.
The first integrated multichannel support that allowed users to choose the preferred communication method switched to the omnichannel option. With omnichannel capability, users can get required help within multiple channels, including phone, chats, and social media, and switch between them. For call center workers, it means assistance via various means and a reduced waiting time.
Current AI Call Center Advancements
The evolution of artificial intelligence allowed call centers to integrate virtual assistants. Unlike the first chatbots, nowadays, virtual assistants can handle more complex tasks and offer instant help to agents.
Integration with CRM systems enabled AI to provide information about customers' history, preferences, and habits for personalized service.
Empowered with real-time analytics, AI provides agents with insights, optimizes workforce management, and helps to improve service quality.
A choice between manual workflow and automation is common for call centers, and at Simply Contact, we also reviewed how much-automated solutions could contribute to our work. We believe that the evolution of artificial intelligence makes the operation of call centers more organized, effective, and customer-focused with less required effort.
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Satisfied customers: The faster a customer gets help, the better experience they have. AI call centers operate faster and have all the required information for prompt assistance.
Productive agents: Agents’ productivity depends on their training, equipment, and access to the knowledge base. AI can support the AI call center with these matters at each phase.
Round-the-clock access: When the agents are unavailable due to the end of the working day, AI-powered chatbots can assist users via digital channels.
Phone call summary: After a conversation, AI can automatically summarize the finished interaction, saving time for human agents.
Automated routine tasks: AI can handle major parts of AI call center repetitive processes like call routing, basic inquiries handling, data entry and management, scheduling, training, and reporting.
Lower average hold time: Automated responses to frequently asked questions and AI support during the conversation reduce the hold time, as customers can get responses faster.
Better resource management: The resolution rates increase when AI routes the calls to the most suitable agents based on experience and availability.
Enhanced quality assurance: Automated monitoring can check agents' behavior compliance with company regulations and evaluate their work efficiency.
Cost-saving: Staffing level optimization reduces the need for large teams. Also, AI assists in agent training and offers insights and support during phone calls, saving supervisors’ time.
The Ways to Use Call Center AI
The main goal of AI use in contact centers is to significantly boost main operation processes and raise agents’ productivity, performance quality, and customer satisfaction. So, the main question is: “How can we achieve it with the help of artificial intelligence?” See below a few tips on using AI in your call center.
Save time with the help of automated query processing.
Enable automated evaluation for agents' performance checks.
Apply smart call routing to improve resolution rates.
Provide agents with AI tools to support them during the call processing.
Use AI-powered virtual assistants to cover customers beyond working hours.
Create an AI-powered knowledge database with access to reliable information.
Use insights to study your customer behavior habits and predict needs.
Enable self-service for your customers to reduce the workload.
Those are only a few examples of how you can boost your workflow with the help of artificial intelligence. Further, we will look closer at key AI-powered solutions for contact centers.
Key AI Contact Center Solutions
Artificial intelligence can become your transformative force to upgrade your call center into a more powerful, efficient, and customer-oriented business. You have already learned about AI’s benefits and ways of use, so now it’s time to look at the most valuable AI solutions. Based on our experience, we prepared a list of key AI tools for modern AI-augmented call centers.
AI-based Call Center Database
Generative artificial intelligence, in combination with LLM (Large Language Models), can create a database of knowledge based on your business direction and format. It will help you to ensure that all your agents have constant access to all required information. AI may assist with regular database updates, ensuring all relevant and correct information is up to date.
By analyzing search requests from agents, artificial intelligence can detect the lack of information, notify you, and suggest refilling your database. Considering previous customer interactions and the subject of a current request, AI can offer the agent relevant information, making the agent’s work more efficient.
Microsoft Azure Bot Service is one of the examples of AI bots that work with dynamic knowledge bases. Azure bots can provide real-time responses to user queries, providing agents with immediate access to up-to-date information about products, guides, and other matters.
Virtual assistants can help customers and your team, during information searches, knowledge improvement, and new agent training sessions. You can ensure your virtual assistant has relevant and accurate information by training it on your internal knowledge base.
AI-powered Voice Assistant for Wheelshare
As one of our recent projects, we have created an AI-powered voice assistant for Wheelshare, the wheelchair rental company. Wheelshare online voice assistant handles common queries using real human voices. This implementation helped to increase the resolution rate up to 80% as all calls get resolutions within 30 seconds. Also, it reduced the abandonment rate from 30% to zero. With the help of a voice-to-voice translation system, the cases can be operated even by non-German agents. Voice assistant improved call coverage and increased the level of customer satisfaction.
Call Center AI Quality Assurance
Imagine that one agent in a small call center may handle about 50-100 calls daily, while the numbers could reach hundreds in larger centers. It would be extremely time-consuming to evaluate each of them, considering the number of agents and different lengths of conversations. As modern problems require modern solutions, you can use virtual evaluation to save time and nerves for your human evaluators.
Such virtual solutions for QA like CallMiner Eureka can provide accurate analysis of customer and agent interactions within voice, chats, and emails. Automated call scoring can evaluate conversations according to set parameters like compliance with company regulations, customer satisfaction level, and resolution efficiency.
We have also created our AI solution for quality control while working on the Wizz Air project. We developed an advanced speech-to-text tool to handle various voices and accents and analyze large data volumes and processes. Integrated translation text-to-text capabilities reduced the time required for multilingual quality assurance from a traditional week to a 2-day turnaround.
Still not sure which AI solutions will suit your company best? Check out our range of services to know more, and we will gladly help you make a smart choice.
Access to the global history of interactions within the call center can help AI analyze them all and define trends and patterns in customers' and agents' behavior. From the side of the agent, AI can detect low efficiency, issues with resolution rates, lack of knowledge, and other factors that signal the need for training. From the customer’s side, AI can show the trends and common issues that push customers to contact the AI call center.
Analytic tools help your agents get more customer information, making the conversation more focused and personalized. Information-driven reports will help your call center upgrade self-service options and improve inefficient processes.
Zendesk is one sample of such analytic solutions that offer insights into customer behavior and interaction history, covering both previous and real-time events. Agents’ monitoring is included and helps to detect problematic areas for future improvements.
Real-time Translation for AI Contact Center
We often face situations when foreign language speakers need call center assistance and know for sure how difficult and time-consuming such communication can be. Using our knowledge in managing an outsourced call center, we conclude that integrated translation tools are necessary for stable operation and time-saving. The combination of NLP and machine translation engines offers built-in real-time translation.
Translation tools are well-integrated into existing AI call center software. You can implement translation options into live chats and voice calls through APIs. Voice recognition functions enable voice transformation into text for further translation, simplifying agents understanding and case resolution.
As mentioned before, our project with Wizz Air has translation functionality that enables multilingual support. It has integrated voice-to-text and text-to-text functions to help agents understand foreign language speakers without additional software. It reduces costs for language controllers and speeds up operations by processing large data volumes. Real-time translation simplifies the operation processes for users, agents, and evaluators.
Call Center AI for Intelligent Call Routing
Call routing is one of the most important functions in a call center as it ensures that your customer will not stay on hold forever. This optimization transfers the call to available agents with relevant skills based on the customer activity history and call subject.
Your agents will receive not only the call itself but also they will automatically get information about the caller, their intentions, and possible subject of conversation. Intelligent routing helps your agents to be better prepared for the conversation, have higher productivity, and fully concentrate on customer's problems.
For example, Amazon Connect utilized machine learning for intelligent routing. The system recognizes customers and retrieves their history to provide agents with all relevant information, enabling smoother and more efficient conversations.
Training in AI-based Call Center
Artificial intelligence can significantly empower the preparation of new agents and training current employees for skills improvements. AI can serve as a work aid, providing instant responses on information searches and FAQs and suggesting troubleshooting steps during live interactions. AI can evaluate agents’ skills by setting parameters in problematic areas. It tailors learning programs according to agents’ weak and strong sides.
Real-time Feedback
Real-time feedback allows call center AI to analyze phone calls, their duration, the agent’s tone of voice, clarity, and compliance with scripts to show what needs to be changed. Thanks to AI’s ability to simulate human-like conversation, new agents can train their problem-solving and communication skills on AI for better preparation for further work.
AI-Enhanced Training Tools
Professional high-quality training AI for contact centers, according to our experience, is one of the most helpful ways to prepare and educate your agents. We have also implemented AI-enhanced training tools for our outsourcing call center. We utilize AI simulations to mimic customers' reactions during training sessions with various scenarios and emotional reactions.
With the help of individually tailored AI contact center training, we achieved better communication efficiency, intensive preparation, and faster integration of new agents. Such practice helps our agents to fulfill tasks within less time and reduce phone call duration while maintaining the same high-quality level of service. Also, thanks to AI implementation, we have reduced the time required for training by up to 30%.
Best Practices for Implementing Contact Center AI
AI solutions work best when you don’t choose them randomly but tailor each decision to the specifics of your call center operation. At Simply Contact, we developed our list of the best practices that could help you ensure your AI integration will be successful and positive for business growth and development. Let’s have a closer look at each one of them.
The Importance of Clear Objectives and KPIs in AI Contact Center
Before any implementation, you must decide your business goals and what you want to achieve with technology upgrades.
Do you aim to improve the resolution rate for your call processing?
Are you not satisfied with the current waiting time, and do you need means to change it?
Do you need assistance with database or customer handling?
What parts of your operation process draw you back?
Once you find the answers to basic questions, you need to set KPIs so they can track the fulfillment of your goals. It will help to see the progress and how close your realization goes to the initial target.
Personalization Is Vital for Customer Experience.
AI call center solutions are a powerful augmentation for your current staff that can improve process personalization with smart call routing, chatbot, and virtual assistant support. Customers expect an individual approach, and you can offer it by providing instant access to interaction history, customer preference, and fast reactions to their pain and difficulties.
Empower Your Existing System
The evolution of an Artificial intelligence call center doesn’t mean an entire replacement for the previous system. Consider it an upgrade of familiar processes with modern solutions. Successful implementation of cutting-edge technology means seamless integration of AI with your present platform and existing tools. Check if renovation requires any modernization before starting.
Monitoring Is a Natural Necessity for Automated Call Center
AI implementation into the working processes is not a one-go procedure. It requires constant monitoring and adjustment. Your business may grow, your customer’s needs may change, new technologies may appear in the market, and monitoring will always show you what needs improvements. Pay attention to customers' and agents' feedback to control the situation and workflow effectiveness.
Conclusion
Artificial intelligence call centers are reliable working machines where you can be sure that your team shows the highest efficiency and provides qualified help. AI changes traditional call center routines into productive workflow with the help of automated solutions, intelligent call routing, and accurate analytic tools. AI can offer your team translation support and assistance during phone call interactions with the help of customizable databases.
Not a less important fact is that call center AI solutions can be a source of materials for personalized training sessions. Artificial intelligence offers efficient practice for your teams' education and new employees' preparation. As you can see, AI augmentation can help your contact center stay on the competitive edge and demonstrate the highest performance results.
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