CX automation solutions, from intelligent chatbots to IVR systems and routing software, are taking the contact center by storm. More than 99% of professionals say automated solutions are valuable. They help them save time, deliver better customer service, and make fewer mistakes in the contact center.
At the same time, automated technologies help businesses scale their customer service efforts and boost customer loyalty while keeping costs low. IBM found that companies leveraging AI and chatbots in the contact center can reduce operational costs by up to 30%.
Trends are emerging as customer expectations evolve and innovations continue to emerge in the AI landscape. Here are some of the most significant trends to pay attention to in the year ahead.
1. Cloud Consolidation and Optimizing Omnichannel
Demand for omnichannel support isn’t going anywhere in 2024. Customers increasingly expect to be able to interact with companies across a range of platforms, from social media and email to video, instant messenger, and more. More importantly, they want companies to deliver consistent experiences across every channel.
Leveraging automated solutions can help businesses enhance the omnichannel experience in various ways. CX automation tools like AI bots can now offer service not just via chat and messaging channels but also through voice calls and even video interactions.
However, to deliver highly personalized and engaging experiences, companies need more than bots that can interact in various modalities. They need a unified cloud ecosystem that allows bots to draw information from UCaaS and CCaaS platforms, workforce management systems, and CRM platforms.
Consolidating cloud environments and automated technologies empowers companies to map customer journeys more effectively, empower agents with unified knowledge, and leverage end-to-end data from each interaction.
2. Advancing AI in CX Automation
Artificial intelligence and CX automation have long been closely connected concepts. However, the AI algorithms available to contact centers have become much more advanced in recent years. Conversational AI solutions, offering access to natural language processing, sentiment analysis, and more, can help businesses deliver more intuitive experiences to customers.
For instance, conversational AI in an IVR system can help customers address issues and route them to agents based on their sentiments and historical data. Generative AI, on the other hand, can help companies automate more complex customer interactions, accelerating resolution times and improving customer satisfaction.
Chatbots with generative AI capabilities can draw information from various environments to help customers complete tasks. Gen AI solutions can support agents by rapidly summarizing conversations and highlighting essential action items.
Today’s contact center and CX leaders offer companies a range of ways to enhance their customer service strategy with more customizable, flexible conversational and generative AI bots.
3. Increasing Focus on Data and Insights
CX automation solutions have the potential to minimize repetitive tasks and improve efficiency in the contact center. They’re also excellent at gathering data and helping companies make the most of the insights they collect from every interaction.
Automated systems can enhance quality assurance, monitoring discussions for insights into employee performance metrics, technology issues, and compliance risks. Some companies even offer access to tools that can automatically create scorecards for each team member based on pre-defined metrics and KPIs. Automated tools can also enhance customer journey mapping processes, offering businesses a holistic view of where, when, and why customers interact with their contact center.
They can even help businesses to deliver hyper-personalized experiences. Around 76% of business leaders say they’re leveraging bots and AI to create more informative customer profiles. With the ability to automatically capture everything from customer interaction histories to sentiment details and satisfaction scores, automation can help businesses become more data-driven. Companies can even use automation to collect voice of the customer data through surveys.
4. Evolving Self-Service Solutions
We’ve already mentioned that advanced AI solutions are transforming CX automation on a significant scale. From a self-service perspective, intelligent automation offers companies a wide range of ways to optimize customer interactions. Aside from allowing companies to create more intuitive bots, automation solutions can also:
- Improve IVR experiences: As mentioned above, AI algorithms can enhance the IVR experience for customers, allowing callers to navigate a menu using their own voice and even complete tasks without human intervention.
- Create advanced resources: With generative AI and insights into customer data, companies can create more intuitive FAQs, guides, and customer onboarding materials. This can significantly reduce the number of calls agents need to handle.
- Enhance transactions: Intelligent CX automation solutions can draw information from your database and use it to support customers throughout their purchasing journey. Companies can even create bots that suggest products to customers based on previous transactions or automatically reach out to customers when new products or services are available.
5. Proactivity in CX Automation
CX automation solutions empower companies to transition from “reactive” to proactive customer service and engagement strategies.
Intelligent automated systems can leverage vast amounts of data from the contact center, enabling companies to anticipate customer needs and issues before they arise. They can even automatically inform customers when they might experience a problem with their services or send them promotional messages about new products.
With intelligent automated solutions, companies can more effectively forecast impending contact volumes and adjust their staffing and scheduling strategies accordingly. This ensures organizations can make the most of their available resources, reducing understaffing and overstaffing risks.
Some solutions can even help companies take a proactive approach to compliance. Companies can use systems to automatically detect and redact sensitive information from recordings and transcripts.
6. Increasing Focus on Agent Experience
When investing in CX automation solutions, many companies focus on how these tools can enhance customer experiences. However, in recent years, many organizations have recognized that improving employee experience is just as important.
Automated technologies are excellent at improving agent experiences in various ways. They allow agents to delegate repetitive tasks like transcribing conversations or entering data into CRM to bots. They can also offer real-time coaching and assistance to hybrid workers wherever they are. Agent assist tools are excellent for training, onboarding, and supporting staff in the contact center.
With many CCaaS and CX software providers now offering access to no-code and low-code tools, companies can even empower agents to create their own automated workflows. This ensures team members are free to discover new ways to optimize their productivity and efficiency without relying on support from IT experts.
7. Human and AI Collaboration Remains Crucial
Finally, while intelligent automation solutions in the contact center are becoming more advanced thanks to evolving AI algorithms, maintaining the right AI-human balance remains crucial. In some instances, a bot can automate a customer’s entire experience and achieve excellent results.
However, there are also times when customers want empathy, creativity, and emotional intelligence that only a human can provide. Intelligent tools ensure you can empower your agents to deliver empathetic, personalized experiences with AI and sentiment analysis. However, keeping the human in the loop throughout your contact center is essential.
Make sure customers always have the opportunity to transition from a conversation with a bot to a discussion with a human agent. Avoid relying too heavily on automation for customer service.
The Evolution of CX Automation
Automation and artificial intelligence are having an incredible impact on the CX landscape. Implemented correctly, these technologies can help reduce costs, improve compliance, enhance customer experience, and boost employee satisfaction.
As the contact center continues to evolve, alongside changing customer expectations, make sure you’re prepared to thrive with the right approach to automation.
