AI is Changing, Well, Almost Everything
The potential of AI in customer engagement is impressive. And let’s be real, for the whole world of digital marketing. The technology, though, can feel intimidating. How… where… when do you even get started?
We hear that loud and clear. We also know you need to deliver results and ROI for your contact center, your teams, and your company.
To make that kind of impact, it starts with making your customers and agents happy. Since AI is the talk of the town (especially since ChatGPT entered the scene in November 2022), you’ve likely heard that AI might just be a truly game-changing way to make life easier for everyone, especially yourself.
Whether you’re a contact center leader, customer service executive, IT professional, or digital marketing manager, it’s time to embrace AI and start experiencing the benefits for yourself.
The Real Power of Artificial Intelligence for Service
The benefits of AI, and the automation capabilities it unlocks, are 3 in 1. If our math’s correct, that adds up to a win-win-win. For you and for your company’s bottom line.
We’ll get into those details soon, but first, let’s talk about what’s in it for you. Why bother with AI when your focus is customer service?
With the right AI solutions at your fingertips—tools that are actually easy to implement, use and optimize—the potential is huge:
- Deliver exceptional (and convenient) 24/7/365 customer self-service
- Boost agent performance / speed up workflows with automation
- Gain easier access to 360° real-time data insights
- Lower your overall operating costs, and
- You might’ve guessed it—a whole lot more than that
Today, we’ll dive deeper into the top 3 reasons why AI changes the game for delivering standout experiences and maximizing ROI.
Reason #1:
Service is the Name of the Game Now
AI helps you deliver seamless, standout service that empowers your customers and enhances their overall experience, boosting loyalty and satisfaction.
A key benefit of AI in the contact center is all the new ways you’re able to provide exceptional customer service.
In other words, using AI to help your people help your customers. By enhancing CX and empowering agents at the same time. Making everyone involved feel valued and heard.
With AI-powered chatbots, voice assistants, and virtual agents, you can deliver 24/7/365 self-service that’s fast, convenient, and personalized.
AI enables customers to:
- Ask questions
- Solve problems
- Place orders, and
- Get recommendations
All on their own time and terms. Without needing to wait on hold or talk to a human agent. It’s the type of customer experience that feels more natural, intuitive, and more human every day.
Here’s why investing in AI for service pays dividends across the board:
- Lower customer effort
- Higher customer loyalty and satisfaction
- More sales and upsell opportunities
The ease and convenience of AI-powered customer service leaves a lasting impression, bringing people back for future interactions (and purchases). And can even help you retain top performers in your company.
Reason #2:
AI Empowers Agents + Enhances Their Performance
AI boosts agent performance and productivity by automating slow, manual, repetitive tasks and guiding customer interactions.
Yes, AI is hugely beneficial for your customers. But what about your agents?
AI lets you free up more of their time and energy for the most key interactions. Those complex or high-emotion tasks that benefit from a human touch. By using smart solutions to automate tasks that often frustrate agents, cause workflow challenges, slow down resolutions, and cap your bottom line.
Don’t let AI intimidate you. You don’t need to understand every nuance of the code underneath the hood. But you do need the right provider, with the right platform, to help you supercharge your company’s AI engine.
The question is: How can you use AI to help everyone—specifically agents and managers?
One way is to let AI take care of all the mundane stuff so you can empower your agents to do what they can do best. And that delivers high-touch and high-value service to customers.
A few examples of “mundane stuff” you can automate with AI*:
- Data entry
- Call routing
- Ticket allocation
(*What other AI applications can you think of to boost efficiency? We’d love to hear your ideas.)
AI can also help guide your agents in their interactions with customers—100% live and in the moment. Capabilities to look for here include:
- Real-time suggestions for next-best actions
- Prompts to improve decision-making
- Customer insights for more personalized service
Live agent guidance is absolutely a difference maker. And when you layer integrated agent workflows on top of that, watch out. The ROI train is moving down the tracks.
Two important things about integrated agent workflows:
- The term refers to an innovative feature of industry-leading cloud contact center platforms. It’s an AI-powered solution that helps you collect, configure, and customize multiple systems / data streams / tools / channels / more into one seamless flow.
- Also kind of sounds like a phrase from a Beastie Boys song…
The result? Agents are able to move through interactions more efficiently, boosting productivity and ultimately, your company’s bottom line.
And the bonus? More engaged and satisfied agents—who in turn deliver an even better experience to your customers.
Reason #3:
Smarter. Faster. Leaner. AI = Game Changer.
AI makes your operations smarter, faster, and leaner with tools that learn and improve on their own, plus gives you access to real-time, data-driven insights to help you optimize.
AI-powered analytics and reporting can help you extract valuable insights from the seemingly infinite amounts of data out there.
Sheer quantity of information doesn’t cut it for contact center data anymore. These days, you need quality insights so you can make the Golden Rule of Business work for you: “Treat customers how they want to be treated.” Like people, not pieces of data.
With AI, you have access to data-driven insights that are mined, analyzed, and tagged automatically, 100% of the time. This means you’re able to identify and engage on opportunities that a manual process just can’t match in terms of cost-efficiency.
All told, with the right AI tools at your disposal, your contact center can begin to:
- Spot trends and anomalies
- Predict customer behavior
- Identify bottlenecks in workflows
- Recommend critical improvements
- And more
Plus, AI can be integrated into your existing business systems and workflows, making it easy for you to deploy and scale up at any time, for any reason.
Take a look at a few areas where AI can help you make an impact on operations:
- Data-driven decision-making
- Improve processes / workflows
- Reduce costs (e.g., overhead, salaries, etc.)
- Faster, more nimble innovation
- And, yep, even more
AI solutions and tools can also tighten up your quality assurance capabilities, optimize workforce management, and surface valuable customer feedback.
One of the best ways to see results in workforce optimization? Choose AI that offers proven predictive analytics, natural language processing, and machine learning algorithms. This will help you be more agile and efficient to gain a competitive edge.
Want More ROI? It’s Time for AI.
As you’ve seen, AI can 100% help you change the game for your contact center’s CX and AX, plus your ROI. We don’t say it lightly when we recommend AI as a game-changing way to help you differentiate, innovate, and grow your business.
The benefits, as we mentioned before, are 3 for the price of 1:
- Delivering seamless, standout service to customers
- Boosting agent performance and productivity
- Making your operations smarter, faster, and leaner
“Okay, okay. Let’s say AI can help me. Take it back to the start: What do I need to do right now?”
It helps to have a 30,000-foot level understanding of how you can apply AI to your operations. Check that box after reading this post.
Then, we recommend the following AI-focused next steps:
- Assess your current state
- Define goals for customers / agents / company
- Look for solutions that fit your needs and budget (and providers who really listen)
Also think about placing more of a focus on change management, training, and communication within your organization. The goal is to help your employees (and customers) embrace AI and see the value.
Never fear. AI isn’t here to replace human interaction anytime soon. Instead, think of the technology as a powerful, proven way to enhance the experience for your agents and customers.
When’s the right time to begin? Yesterday was probably ideal. But there’s still time. Today’s a great day to start getting serious about AI within your company.
Talk to experts. Ask questions. Dig into all the ways AI will be worth your time, effort, and investment.
With the right technology, strategy, you can apply AI to deliver exceptional customer experiences, empower your agents, and maximize your ROI.
No more waiting. No more watching your competitors implement the technology you could’ve had first.
Now’s the time to embrace AI’s power and potential. To start reaping the rewards. And to change the game for your contact center.
The post How AI is Changing the Game for CX Leaders: 3 Reasons to Jump Onboard appeared first on Convince & Convert.
