The utility of artificial intelligence in the contact center space is obvious. Whether it’s deploying virtual agents to meet spikes in demand, reduce costs and improve CX, or agent assist to reduce handle time, AI can have a transformative impact on the customer and agent experience. Too often, however, these benefits go unrealised due to a perception that implementing the technology is expensive, time-consuming and dependent on technical expertise.
The Five9 Intelligent Cloud Contact Center is built to overcome that hesitancy by helping organizations rapidly deploy digital workforces that include virtual agents for customer self-service, as well as AI that assists agents in real-time.
These solutions automate repetitive tasks and coach agents. Workflow automation, meanwhile, connects the Five9 Intelligent Cloud Contact Center with other enterprise technologies for improved understanding of performance and cross-platform automation.
Crucially, these technologies are delivered in such a way as to democratise the development and deployment of AI. Five9’s digital workforce solutions are designed to minimise the pain of AI deployment via:
- No-code IVA development, which uses a web-based, drag and drop environment to enable non-technical professionals to build virtual agent applications
- Shared components that allow the use of common AI elements across self-service and employee assistance applications
- Context preservation, which ensures previous conversations are maintained as customers move through multiple channels
Five9 also takes an agnostic approach, with conversational AI abstraction allowing IVAs to use multiple conversational AI engines and APIs like Google, IBM Watson and Amazon Lex. Five9 customers can also use leading third-party AI applications like Cogito and ValidSoft through their VoiceStream API.
Meeting Customer Expectations With AI
That ease of access matters because adopting AI is becoming a must. Already evolving customer expectations have been supercharged by the pandemic, with customers now expecting new ways of interacting with support agents via self-service approaches. At the same time, they are demanding more empathetic and personalised experiences – which can only be enabled by automatically equipping agents with previously shared data.
“Contact centers will need to automate where possible and free up live agents for more complicated tasks, which also opens the door for professional growth opportunities. And as customer expectations rise, equipping employees with the right tools and resources will be mission-critical,” said Callan Schebella, EVP, Product Management, Five9.
In short, customers want their inquiries to be resolved in one go, and via the channel of their choice. Look no further than IQVIA, which deployed Five9 IVA following trouble with a difficult-to-use DTMF auto-attendant which customers frequently bypassed – resulting in being routed to an agent who didn’t always have the skills to help. Five9 IVA allowed customers to simply say what they were calling about, resulting in a much-improved percentage of correctly routed calls.
“To balance efficiency and employee satisfaction, the contact center of the near future will operate with a blend of live and virtual agents, and advanced analytics and modern cloud technology will be essential,” said Callan Schebella. “For contact centers experiencing the shortfalls of legacy software, now is the time to innovate.”
To find out more about the Five9 Intelligent Cloud Contact Center and its digital workforce capabilities, go here.
