Alexa’s massive success for Amazon last year, established customers’ enthusiasm for communicating with intelligent systems. Be it digital assistants like Alexa and Siri or Intelligent Contact Centres, AI is fast becoming the buzzword for improving customer experience (CX) efficiently.
Many smaller players think AI is only for big enterprises, but AI is proving to be the next disruptor precisely because of zero installation expenses, low OpEX, high efficiency and high ROIs. Here’s how AI tools like Speech Analytics, Sentiment Analysis and most importantly Smart Assistant widgets are going to seamlessly change the call centre game for all contact centres alike:
1 – Voice Recognition will revolutionise IVR
Over the past 2 years, Voice recognition has become the new normal. According to Location World, 40% of adults use a voice search at least once a day. Google reveals that their voice searches are up by a factor of 35 times since 2008. And Alexa devices, as mentioned before, have sold more than 20 million units. How is this new ease of speaking to machines going to affect call centres?
In AI powered contact centres— customers will be interacting far more naturally with your IVR. They will choose menu options (0, 1, Yes, No, I want to buy shoes, check credit balance, etc.) by speaking rather than typing. They will simply state their mobile number or DOB for verification instead of punching it into their keypads. The entire IVR sequence will be shortened, while dramatically improving experience.
This is not a far-fetched reality. Ozonetel is already making this happen for their cloud platform clients with their <recognize> and <intention analysis> tags. In their July rollout of Kookoo 2.0—a completely AI integrated cloud call centre—voice recognition will integrate with many more features to really up the ante.
2 – Robust Analytics will ensure 100% performance
Agent efficiency has a new marker. 100% customer satisfaction will now not be an elusive goal. Until now, monitoring agent performance meant maintaining large quality assurance teams. The teams’ time was then underutilised in monotonous, repetitive tasks—as they waded through barely 5% of the call centre’s total recordings. Agents could expect feedback after days or weeks.
In contrast, AI powered contact centres use Speech Analytics Systems. Thousands of recordings are scanned for greeting detection, agent performance and phrase detection —in few seconds’ each.
This ensures that every single call is supervised, giving 95% more accurate feedback. Combined with Sentiment Analysis, these smart tools can ensure that not a single dissatisfied customer is missed. Agent feedback is instantaneous, making for robust supervision and training systems.
3 – Sentiment Analysis features will add a new layer to customer experience
Sentiment analysis instantly evaluates customer tone in a call. In Kookoo, for example, call sentiments are instantly categorised into positive, negative or neutral. A nearly 85% accuracy, allows the QA department and management a new filter to analyse their calls, agent performance and get product/service insights. In the future, this will also enable intelligent routing of dissatisfied customers to the most experienced agent thus improving outcomes manyfold.
4 – Call Centre Data will get more valuable than ever
Ozonetel calls are now transcribed instantly. The data contains invaluable information to improve call centre performance. It also contains many marketing, product and service insights. Data can be mined for upsell and cross-sell opportunities. Contact centres can use this to create far more value for the businesses they serve.
5 – Once AI integrates into your entire call centre ecosystem, the magic really begins
Kookoo 2.0’s Smart Assistants will be able will create targeted, tailor made customer experiences. Predictive layers will match customer history, customer journey, current urgency and customer sentiment. Based on agent history and expertise, it will ensure best–possible matches. Throughout the call, they will assist the agent with information needed to personalise the call. They can even judge sentiment in real time and suggest barge-ins if needed.
Technology has proven itself to be a potent disrupter over the past few decades. If you are not riding the technology wave, you are being threatened by it. Over the past decade, a large number of startups and SMEs rode the cloud contact centre wave. They excelled the customer experience game and scaling up faster, cheaper and then ever before. Artificial Intelligence will prove to be the next tsunami. My advice? Take your surfboards out now.
Guest blog by Chaitanya Chokkareddy, CIO and Co-founder of Ozonetel
A true techno geek, Chaitanya Chokkareddy can cook up new frameworks in a jiffy. He has worked on various technologies with telecom being his new passion. Within telecom, he is focused on leveraging Internet to deliver telecom solutions. A Masters graduate from the University of Florida in the US, Chaitanya brings years of diverse experience to his role at Ozonetel. He is on constant look out for new ways to innovate.
