Despite the entire planet breathing a unified sigh of relief when the clocks struck midnight on New Year’s Day, customers still face the same challenges they did in 2020, the 12 months that will go down in history as the year that changed everything – and not for the better. Yes, COVID-19 has altered the way society in general goes about daily life, with remote working, more time with loved ones and a better work-life balance positive aspects of the pandemic. But customers remain as anxious, emotional and stressed now as they were when news of the virus spread across television screens, laptops and mobile phones worldwide last March.
A report commissioned by the Customer Contact Association (CCA) back in 2013 found that empathy was key when the study asked its participants what they felt were the most crucial traits required of modern-day contact centre agents. And with a devastating volume of customers being unable to engage in any interaction at all during lockdowns, it’s no wonder the value of having a simple conversation where their feelings are truly understood and acknowledged cannot be underestimated. It’s because of this that a tidal wave of organisations and brands are pursuing AI solutions to aid live agents in delivering empathetic customer experiences. In an exclusive interview, CX Today talks to Amanda Halpin, Genesys’ EMEA Strategic Solutions Lead, about how AI in the contact centre is driving the upward trend of empathy.
Creating More Empathetic Experiences with Customers
‘The product is crucial in creating those memorable experiences and keeping customers loyal to you,’ says Halpin, referring to Genesys’ recent focus on their flagship solution, Genesys Cloud, which acts as a one-stop-shop for businesses looking to interact with their customers using voice, digital and social software.
It continues to be in high demand following the global pandemic when businesses had to battle to shift agents to remote working fast. To confirm that empathy was at the forefront of Genesys’ programmers’ minds, the product enables agents to transfer calls remotely while offering up the most important factors in helping to drive empathetic customer experiences – speed, simplicity and agility.
‘AI really plays a role in identifying the right moment to interact with your customers, so there’s no point in just displaying a chatbot or a chat icon when you’ve only been on the website for two seconds. You need to let the customer self-service and self-navigate and understand they have the autonomy to do things themselves. Using AI to really understand that time of need and to ensure that you are there at that moment really matters.’
Halpin continues to add that it’s vital businesses do not make the mistake of believing chatbots are essentially live agent replacements, and in fact the bots should work alongside employees to deliver excellent customer experience as a team.
Halpin says: ‘Chatbots aren’t going to be able to do the complex queries, not nor are they going to be able to solve challenging problems. Having that ability to transfer to an agent when needed – as part of a seamless transition – and providing all of that context to the agent so the agent can pick up that conversation is crucial.’
Predictive Routing
One of Genseys’ popular AI contact centre solutions is predictive routing, which has had a huge success rate among their own customers.
‘Predictive routing uses AI to match the customer with the right agent and drive better business outcomes, this could be improving your net promoter score, reducing your average hold time or the average call handle time,’ Halpin adds.
‘And our customers are really enjoying using it, with reductions in average handle times up by 7% and also an increase in first contact resolution by 3 to 4%, so they’re seeing huge business benefits from a productivity but also a customer satisfaction perspective.’
Negative Brand Perception
Halpin explains the common mistakes businesses and brands make in terms of adopting empathy, with one major result of a lack of empathy being negative brand perception, the outcome of which drives down customer experience and ultimately – the business itself.
‘Not stepping in the shoes of that person and understanding the road they’ve been on is the big mistake businesses make. There’s a contradiction in demonstrating empathy in a contact centre while adhering to the usual metrics of contact centre handling times too. When experiences are answered with empathy, even if the customer issue can’t be resolved, the customer is more likely to have a positive brand perception. With the voice of the customer being delivered through social media, brand perception is more improved.’
Another example of an empathy faux pas is a lack of understanding in the importance of mapping a customer journey.
Halpin says: ‘The customer journey has everything to do with empathy and at Genesys that’s what we’re striving to do, to actually break down those silos, so when an agent is speaking with a customer they know the road that customer has been on. They’re not going to ask them to repeat themselves, they’re going to be able to give them the service and the personalised experience that they deserve and that’s through connecting all of those dots’ of the customer journey.
To summarise, empathy will always be sought out in human-to-human form and this is mostly down to convenience. However, with advanced solutions on offer like those from Genesys, it’s becoming clear that customer experience in the form of empathetic AI is not only a viable option, but an ever-increasing one too.
