The topic of “contact center intelligence” has become increasingly popular in recent years. In virtually every industry, companies are experimenting with evolving forms of intelligent technology. Artificial intelligence is powering bots and generative AI self-service experiences.
Machine learning, conversational AI tools, and automation are helping companies to gather valuable insights into their customers, markets, and teams. There are even new forms of virtual agents emerging to support and guide contact center reps.
But there’s still confusion around what the term “contact center intelligence” stands for and what companies promising this technology should provide to business leaders.
Here’s your introductory guide to the evolution of contact center intelligence.
What is Contact Center Intelligence?
Contact center intelligence isn’t just another term for “contact center AI.” Instead, it’s a broad concept encompassing all forms of intelligence leveraged within the contact center. This might include AI, machine learning, and natural language processing tools.
However, it also refers to solutions for workforce optimization, which help companies to forecast changes in caller frequency and make the most of their human resources. Contact center intelligence can also include the analytical tools companies use to evaluate consumer and employee experiences and the voice of the customer analysis technology and advanced CRM systems.
Virtually any solution that empowers companies to enhance team productivity, improve workplace efficiency and optimize customer experiences can be classified as contact center intelligence. Additionally, intelligence can be applied to every aspect of the contact center.
Companies can leverage intelligent tools for scheduling, marketing, sales, customer service, and workflow optimization.
The Use Cases for Contact Center Intelligence
Ultimately, solutions for contact center intelligence combine data analysis and automation with emerging AI technologies to strengthen the performance of CX teams. As customer expectations have evolved and companies continue to search for ways to improve productivity and reduce costs, the use cases for this technology have grown.
Some of the most common uses for contact center intelligence include:
1. Improving customer satisfaction
Perhaps the most significant use case for contact center intelligence is improving the customer experience. Intelligent tools and automation can streamline the customer journey, eliminating friction points by routing customers to the right agent, collecting data before a call, and surfacing information about customers to each agent.
With intelligent tools, businesses can decrease the time it takes for a customer to resolve an issue, minimize wait times, and even improve staffing strategies to ensure they can handle peak demand. This leads to higher CSAT and NPS scores, increased retention, and greater brand loyalty.
2. Enhancing business efficiency
Frequently, companies leverage contact center intelligence to improve efficiency in the customer service, sales, and marketing landscape. Intelligent tools can automate routine tasks, like following up with customers about an order, sending marketing messages, or entering data into a CRM system.
During a call, they can provide agents with real-time guidance and support, screen-pop information, and troubleshooting techniques. Some solutions can even provide next-best-action advice and coaching to team members and eliminate the risk of data entry and analysis mistakes.
3. Enhancing agent experience
Contact center intelligence doesn’t just make agents and professionals more efficient. It can also have a direct impact on the productivity and engagement of employees. With intelligent tools routing customers to the right agent, professionals can spend less time dealing with transfers and handovers.
Thanks to automation, companies can minimize the repetitive tasks agents must complete daily, allowing them to focus on valuable work. Self-service bots powered by intelligence can even reduce call volumes, placing less pressure on overwhelmed agents.
4. Uncovering business opportunities
At the heart of contact center intelligence software is a focus on increasing company insights. Businesses need to collect as much valuable information as possible from each interaction to optimize customer journeys and workflows. With intelligent tools, companies can collect more data about customer satisfaction and sentiment, purchasing trends, and buying cycles.
The right technology can provide insights into which channels customers use most frequently, when peak demand might occur, and where employees struggle with productivity. This helps companies to make better decisions about agent training strategies, CX investments, and strategies for future growth.
5. Reducing costs and increasing revenue
While investing in contact center intelligence does come with some initial costs, it can pay significant dividends to businesses. With automated self-service tools, companies can reduce the number of agents they need to employ to serve customers, minimizing operating costs. Due to an improved working environment, they can also retain employees for longer.
Contact center intelligence can also provide guidance on the strategies and avenues companies can use to increase revenue. It can pinpoint trends in buying patterns for sales teams and offer insights into advanced marketing strategies for promotion. Some tools can even introduce new ways of improving customer lifetime value and loyalty.
Examples of Contact Center Intelligence Platforms
Growing interest in the power of contact center intelligence has led to several companies introducing new all-in-one toolkits for business innovation.
Market-leading CCaaS vendors like NICE, Five9, and RingCentral have all introduced new forms of contact center intelligence into their platforms. These solutions offer access to everything from intelligent customer journey mapping to workforce management and quality analysis tools.
Major cloud vendors with specific “CCI” solutions are also getting involved. Some of the leading contenders in the marketplace today include:
AWS Contact Center Intelligence
The CCI platform from Amazon Web Services offers businesses a comprehensive toolkit of cloud-based services designed to improve CX operations. Built on the AWS cloud, the flexible solution allows companies to embed AI and ML solutions into their existing contact center.
The AWS CCI solutions use a combination of machine learning-powered services for virtual agents, agent assistance, analytics, and more. Offered as a turnkey solution or a direct service from AWS, CCI can reduce call times by 90% and provide 100% visibility into customer sentiment.
The toolkit includes:
- Self-service virtual agents: An all-in-one platform for building virtual agents, chatbots, and conversational IVR systems for the contact center.
- Real-time analytics: Tools for transcribing, translating, and analyzing conversations and sentiment in real-time throughout the customer journey.
- Agent assist Intelligent solutions capable of offering real-time next-best-action guidance and coaching to employees within the contact center.
- Post–call analytics: Behind-the-scenes overviews of contact center trends, priorities, and issues, intended to drive intelligent business decisions.
Microsoft Digital Contact Center
Built with AI at its core, the Microsoft Digital Contact Center isn’t just a solution for managing customer interactions. It also provides access to valuable insights to help businesses improve their customer experiences and operations.
Built on the Azure cloud and connected with Microsoft Teams and Nuance, the Microsoft Digital Contact Center covers everything from self-service solutions for customers to real-time and post-call analysis. The solution can scan knowledge articles on behalf of agents and deliver real-time assistance to professionals during conversations.
Microsoft’s wide variety of tools also includes features like:
- Bot development: Low-code and no-code, bot development tools designed to power intelligent self-service experiences.
- Dynamics 365: Innovative ERP and CRM solutions that offer behind-the-scenes insights into customer trends, expectations, and business operations across channels.
- Power BI: Business intelligence technology offering real-time dashboards and visualizations of contact center metrics, call quality, and more.
Google CCAI
A leader in the Gartner 2023 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Conversational AI platforms, Google CCAI, has evolved drastically in recent years. This AI-powered platform has various embedded solutions to assist businesses in driving powerful experiences.
For instance, Google’s Gen app builder allows companies to create their own generative AI chatbots for various parts of the customer journey without extensive coding knowledge. The platform provides access to agent assist tools, actionable insights, and advisory services.
Google’s CCAI contact center intelligence platform includes:
- Virtual agent: Companies can use Dialogflow CX solutions to create advanced virtual agents in minutes. These agents can switch between topics seamlessly and handle multiple channels.
- CCAI Insights: The Insights feature in Google CCAI uses natural language processing to identify sentiment and call drivers to improve call outcomes.
- Agent assist: Business leaders can empower agents with consistent support during calls and chats with real-time guidance and step-by-step insights.
Google even offers a range of solutions for speech-to-text, text-to-speech, rapid language translation, and dataflow analysis, all built to empower teams and customers alike.
The Rise of Contact Center Intelligence
In recent years, contact center intelligence has become a must-have component of the customer experience landscape. Driven by the demand for more personalized, convenient, and straightforward service, sales, and marketing interactions, companies are on the quest for new technology.
Contact center intelligence tools and platforms provide businesses with the resources to serve customers more effectively. However, they also give organizations powerful ways to improve employee performance and engagement, reduce operational costs, and make data-driven decisions.
As the contact center evolves and new forms of intelligence emerge, the right “CCI” solution could be an essential differentiator for growing brands. Companies can build the contact center experience their customers expect with analytics, automation, and AI.
