Generative AI applications in customer service are growing strong, giving rise to ample excitement alongside some challenging questions. In such a rapidly changing market, how can contact centers keep up? Which use cases are AI appropriate? And how can companies make sure they’re utilizing it in a way that’s just right for them and their customers?
Sprinklr, a leader in Unified Customer Experience Management, harnesses the power of GenAI by integrating their own proprietary AI, built specifically for customer experience, with Google Cloud’s Vertex AI and OpenAI’s GPT models. This enables Sprinklr to redefine the customer experience for their enterprise clients; offering various capabilities tailored to different use cases and business phases.
In a recent interview with Aurélien Caye, Lead Solution Specialist at Sprinklr, we discussed the company’s innovative efforts and the impact of GenAI on customer service in 2024.
The 3 Pillars of GenAI in Contact Centers
According to Caye, there are three important pillars to look at when it comes to the contact center and its AI applications.
The first pillar to consider, he suggests, is actually preempting the need for customer contact. Or, as he puts it, “The best service is when you don’t need service,” meaning that the primary objective is resolving issues before they arise.
“Here, GenAI plays a crucial role in analyzing vast amounts of contact center data to proactively identify root causes of issues,” he explains.
By leveraging data analytics, businesses can pinpoint underlying issues and take proactive measures to address them, enhancing overall customer satisfaction.
Caye’s second pillar is self-service.
“There are cases where we cannot prevent an issue before it happens, so our next priority would be trying to help the customer help themselves,” he says.
In GenAI terms, this means working to make bots more human-like and efficient.
The third pillar is agent interactions – cases where a real human being is still required.
“Here, the main challenge is helping the agent be more efficient, have more context, and get better coaching, – all of which can be addressed and improved with GenAI,” Caye notes.
AI Maturity and Sprinklr’s Conversational AI+ Capability
One of the most significant additions to Sprinklr’s AI strategy is its Conversational AI+ capability, launched in 2023. A dynamic capability introduced to amplify self-service functionalities, Conversational AI+ allows enterprises to tailor solutions to their business’s AI maturity level.
“For companies in the primary stages of GenAI adoption, putting it directly in front of the end customers often sounds intimidating,” Caye explains.
“This is why in this initial phase, GenAI can be used to help the company streamline bot development processes and optimize existing structures.”
As companies progress in their journey, GenAI can be used to address more complex use cases. Caye emphasizes its pivotal role in revolutionizing traditional conversational AI.
“A classic example is using GenAI to analyze extensive datasets, like FAQs, and extract nuanced responses. This was extremely hard to do in the past, but with AI, it’s becoming infinitely more efficient.”
The final maturity phase (for the time being, at least) is building prompt-based bots, eliminating the need for hard-coded flows and predefined dialogue trees altogether.
“These types of bots are both much faster for brands to develop, and a lot more human to interact with as an end customer,” Caye says.
“Instead of following paths designed by the contact center, customers can interact freely and naturally, enhancing satisfaction and streamlining workflows.”
Sprinklr’s Conversational AI+ covers all these maturity stages and caters to diverse customer service use cases, and there’s more in store.
“Our next step is adding new GenAI use cases, and ultimately making everything GenAI-first,” he shares. “This should result in interacting with the platform the same way one would interact with Chat GPT-type interfaces. ”
The Future of GenAI in the Contact Center
Looking ahead, Caye envisions broader adoption of low-risk, internal-facing use cases of GenAI in the short term; and a gradual shift towards external-facing applications in the long haul.
“As the market matures and contact centers gain a deeper understanding and confidence in the capabilities of AI, we’re expected to see an increase in external applications,” he predicts.
Ultimately, he emphasizes the significance of a symbiotic relationship between internal and external GenAI applications.
“If GenAI helps create the very best self-service bots, this would inevitably create a situation where agents only receive the most complex cases,” he explains.
“Therefore, it’s crucial for internal and external applications to progress simultaneously, otherwise, one of them is bound to get overloaded.”
To learn more about Sprinklr’s Generative AI solutions, visit their website here.
