Artificial Intelligence is one of the most important resources in the contact center today. As AI algorithms and technologies have grown increasingly advanced, companies from every sector are beginning to experiment with smart ways to enhance CX.
Today, AI solutions can automatically address customer queries, reach out proactively to customers at the beginning of the sales cycle, and even draw useful insights from raw data. Microsoft has emerged as one of the leading innovators in the AI landscape in recent years, collaborating with OpenAI (the creators of ChatGPT), and building their own Gen AI assistant: Copilot.
If you’re using Microsoft Teams for collaboration, you may already be leveraging the AI-driven tools in the platform. The question is, how do you embed AI into a Microsoft Teams contact center?
How to Use AI in a Microsoft Teams Contact Center
The great thing about choosing a Microsoft Teams contact center for your CX strategy is you don’t just get access to all of the latest contact center features offered by your vendor. You can also leverage the intuitive capabilities of the Teams platform, including its AI capabilities.
Microsoft Teams offers access to a range of intuitive tools, such as Copilot for meeting and call summarization, content creation, and agent assistance. You can also access a host of AI-driven integrations within the Teams app market. Options are available for everything from business analysis to CRM enhancement, and chat bot creation.
Paul Martin, an account executive for Landis Technologies says: “Contact Centers can significantly enhance operational efficiency and customer service by leveraging Artificial Intelligence. AI enables the creation of round-the-clock self-service bots, unlocks valuable insights, and boosts employee productivity.”
If you choose an innovative vendor for your certified Microsoft Teams contact center, you can even unlock additional tools like sentiment analysis and intelligent routing.
Here are some of the best ways to use AI in an MSFT contact center.
Enhance and Optimize Call Routing
A powerful contact center built for Microsoft Teams should already give you access to a range of routing configuration tools and options. These routing tools ensure you can connect consumers rapidly with the agent best suited to address their concerns, improving satisfaction rates, and reducing call transfer and handling times. However, you can also use AI to further enhance the routing process.
AI algorithms built into your contact center can give businesses the option to leverage “skills-based routing”. This means instead of simply adding callers to a queue based on agent availability, your system can examine the skills and capabilities of each agent, and align them with the needs of your customer. Intelligent call routing tools can analyze previous call histories, behavioral data, and even customer personalities, to determine the best strategy for handling calls.
These intuitive systems can automatically determine when to drive routine requests to chatbots, or send them to specific members of your team, leading to a more streamlined customer experience.
Unlock Advanced Analytics
Data is crucial to the success of any contact center. It’s what drives companies to make intelligent decisions about everything from which service channels to use, to what products to offer. Fortunately, there’s a wealth of data included in every customer interaction handled by the contact center.
AI can help you tap into this information, transforming raw data into actionable insights that guide and support your team. Using AI and automation, companies can rapidly create reports and wallboards, showing insights into everything from call handling times to agent performance.
Additionally, innovative contact center vendors for Microsoft Teams take advantage of speech analytics and natural language processing tools, to unlock additional information. Using these features, companies can assess the sentiment of each customer as they move through the buyer journey, looking for potential churn risks, and evidence of improved satisfaction.
Empower Agents with Bots
As customers continue to handle more issues themselves, using self-service solutions, the queries agents receive are becoming more complex. A Microsoft Teams contact center can help to empower and support agents by allowing them to instantly access useful resources and collaborate with colleagues. However, AI can support your agents in another way.
With real-time agent assistance bots, companies can deliver next-best-action guidance and direction to agents wherever they are. Innovative tools can provide instant feedback about customer sentiment, the flow of a conversation and more. This means every agent can access real-time coaching, without having to interact directly with a manager or supervisor.
It’s even possible to use these bots to ensure that agents adhere to industry and internal compliance standards. For instance, bots can remind agents to ask for permission before recording a call, or notify supervisors when employees reveal potentially sensitive information.
Save Agents Time on Repetitive Tasks
An intuitive MSFT Teams contact center offers companies a range of ways to improve the efficiency and productivity of their agents. With the right tools, companies can leverage automation solutions like Microsoft Power Automate, to streamline workflows. You can take advantage of Microsoft Teams Auto Attendants, for one-click call handling and transfer options.
Plus, companies can leverage the advanced features available within Microsoft Teams to save employees time on call wrap-up and follow-up processes. AI tools built into Microsoft Teams can automatically transcribe and even translate contact center recordings. They can summarize conversations rapidly, highlighting the most important topics and action items.
Tools like Microsoft Copilot for Dynamics and Microsoft Teams can even assist agents in creating responses to customer queries rapidly, or writing follow-up emails.
Facilitate Self-Service
Perhaps the most obvious way to use AI in a Microsoft Teams contact center, is to provide users with self-service options. While AI agents and chatbots can’t replace human agents for every customer interaction, they’re excellent for handling routine queries quickly.
With tools like Microsoft Power Apps, companies can create their own chatbots and automated selfservice experiences for customers on a multitude of channels. Plus, there are various chatbots and building tools available through the Microsoft App marketplace.
With self-service solutions, you can help customers complete everyday tasks, like placing an order, troubleshooting an issue, or checking a balance. This means employees have more time to focus on the queries and conversations that require their unique skills.
Using AI in an MSFT Teams Contact Center
The demand for artificial intelligence in the contact center will only continue to grow. With AI innovations, companies can unlock new levels of efficiency and productivity and deliver powerful experiences to their audiences across numerous channels.
“There are so many concepts around AI in the marketplace today. At Landis, we’re committed to providing companies with AI tools that can be implemented today and deliver immediate value to their customers.”, says Paul Martin, an account executive for Landis Technologies.
With the right Microsoft Teams contact center solution, embedding the power of AI into your customer service operations is easier than you’d think. You can create chatbots, automate workflows, and even unlock in-depth insights.
For more information, watch this useful video here.