Why AI-Powered Customer Support Is The Future

When businesses began investing in customer call centres to help their customers inquire or complain about a product or service a few decades ago, the goal was to create a stronger bond between brands and customers. The technology at its heart, fixed-line telephone lines, for example, functioned well for receiving or making calls in a linear way. Today, technology allows customers to communicate with their favourite companies in a variety of ways, including messenger messages, voice, emails, and so on. Because of advancements in communication technology and general consumption, businesses must work harder to attract and retain consumers. In other words, it is not the product or service itself that creates or destroys a brand, but rather the total consumer experience.

Fast Forward 2022

Customer contact centers have evolved from being a unique selling point for a select firms to being a need for all businesses. As a result, the volume of inbound and outgoing communication from this contact has multiplied several times over. Furthermore, the complexity of the data points, medium, and other KPIs related with each client enquiry makes it extremely difficult for human agents to manage the workload and offer proper response to consumers within the timeframe specified. As a result, contact centres require an innovative makeover to solve the above mentioned issues and improve customer experience.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has already made its presence felt across industries to automate iterative tasks, reduce risks and errors, and decrease operational costs. The contact center industry is no different. According to research by Forbes Insights, about 20% of the service request market will be taken care of by AI by 2022. The market is expected to touch a valuation of US$2.8 billion by 2024 (source). AI-Powered Contact Centers will significantly impact healthcare, banking and financial services, automobile, hospitality, and aviation industry.

Artificial intelligence-based technology collaborate with human employees to communicate with customers, handle complaints, and answer queries. Here’s how artificial intelligence is changing the customer experience in contact centres:

Faster Turnaround Time : Human agents have a limitation when it comes to processing repetitive tasks. While juggling across calls, emails, messenger texts, and cubicle conversations, they also feel fatigued and may lose concentration. As a result, customers have to wait for longer than expected time for receiving an appropriate response. On the other hand, AI-Powered Contact Centers do not feel tired, demotivated, or lose concentration. These bots can function round the clock and perform at an optimal speed. Thus, customers do not come across any disappointment or anxiety regarding turnaround time on their requests. This improvement is a big plus point in strengthening the equity between a brand and its customers.

Accurate Resolution : Humans make mistakes. Period. AI-Powered Contact Center engines can process enormous volumes of unstructured and structured data about customers, their queries, and complaints. This processing ensures that customers receive accurate responses to their requests without any failure. The combination of speed and accuracy is often good enough to make brand loyalists out of window shoppers. Need we say more about AI?

More Value For The Human Workforce : Since AI helps automate several iterative tasks at contact centers, human agents have newfound time and energy to focus on qualitative work. They can address a part of customer engagement that is more complex and might not be managed by computer algorithms. By doing so, human agents have more fulfilling work experience.

Continuous Learning And Improvement : Combined with machine learning (ML) ability, contact center algorithms can continuously learn from customer feedback, market trends, and audit findings. These learnings make the system more robust and closer to customer expectations.

AI-Powered Contact Centers offer a quantitative solution to achieve the required customer experience difference. As a result, it is a win-win situation for businesses, their present and future clients, and their end customers. As more organisations and customers discover the benefits of AI-enabled customer support, adoption rates are skyrocketing. In the battle for customers’ attention and retention, it’s just a matter of time until AI-based automation takes over a large portion of contact centre operations.

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