Table of Contents
Introduction
There has been a constant shift in how businesses connect with their customers. A swift wave of digitalization brought us to the phase of self-serve, where the ownership to resolve issues empowered customers, offering them convenience. However, self-serve comes with limitations, and any issue that isn’t forecast will force customers to connect with their customer support center.
Notably, contact centers are way ahead of the usual call centers that had been a trend earlier. Contact centers are a hub for any type of communication between a company and its customers, whether through emails, chat, social media, WhatsApp, etc.
With the advancement in AI, contact center automation comes as a strategic step for businesses to thrive in a competitive market, where customer satisfaction and experience define their market positioning.
It is seen that a positive experience with AI customer support increases buyers’ satisfaction by up to 20%. Additionally, companies that offer AI-automated customer service grow their revenues 4-8% faster. Contact center automation aims to provide accurate, personalized responses faster for maximum satisfaction.
In this article, we explore contact center automation, benefits, and types, along with the most common use cases that contribute towards exceptional customer satisfaction.
What is contact center automation?
Contact center automation is the use of artificial intelligence technologies to automate common customer service activities and workflows that otherwise take away a lot of time from an executive. By automating common queries, FAQs, troubleshooting steps, etc., human agents are less overwhelmed with manual repetitive processes and can focus on assisting customers with complex issues.
One of the significant advantages of contact center automation is the efficiency in handling a higher volume of customer queries, accuracy in resolution, and increased ability to personalize interaction with the help of AI chatbots. Contact center automation is not just significant for improving customer satisfaction, but it is also about improving employee experience.
With continuous advancement in AI technologies, businesses stand to gain in positioning their services through contact center automation that enables them to withstand ever-changing customer expectations.
What are the benefits of contact center automation?
Automating contact centers is a solution with numerous advantages and implications for different aspects of a business and customer experience. Below are the main benefits that come with it:
• Quick response: It is because automation allows quick handling of routine inquiries, saving the time of the customer.
• 24/7 availability: Customers can reach the support team at any one time of the day from whichever part of the world through features such as chatbots and/or IVR.
• Personalized service: The use of AI automation allows the use of customer data to personalize interactions and solutions.
• Reduced costs: Since automation reduces the use of manpower and makes the processes fast, it can decrease the input cost for businesses.
• Improved agent productivity: Contact center automation allows agents to be more productive and deliver higher value for customers through sufficient interaction time with customers and efficient use of their problem-solving skills.
• Greater accuracy: Automation reduces human error, such as one often made when entering data or any other task.
• Scalability: Automation is more responsive to the surge in demand since the system can perform continually with numerous callers without straining the providers.
• Data-Driven Insights: With AI automation, it is easier to gather analytical insights along various parameters.
• Streamlined workflows: It can integrate different systems and processes to enhance the processes of resolving customer issues and integrate them more quickly.
What are the types of contact center automation?
Contact center automation is achieved through a combination of tools and technologies that are critical in enhancing customer communication and improving workflows. Below are some types of contact center automation that are transforming customer experience;
Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
Computerized telephone system where the caller responds to recorded messages and makes selections via the keypad. IVR is often used to transfer calls, share banking information, or transact on behalf of the caller without the involvement of a human operator.
Chatbots and Virtual Assistants
Most of us are by now aware of AI-driven conversational chatbots that engage with customers through text or voice to assist them with common queries, FAQs, product information, etc.,
Automatic Call Distribution
These are the systems that manage the distribution of incoming calls, connecting them to agents according to given rules (e.g., skill-based routing, priority routing). Automatic call distribution reduces the handling time per call and ensures the call reaches an appropriate agent.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
RPA is a rule-based AI software bot that automates repetitive activities within contact center applications from the back end. They are often helpful in entering data, preparing reports, and processing customer orders. Businesses choose to automate such operations to reduce costs and enhance productivity.
Email Automation
These systems automate the handling of incoming and outgoing emails to improve email response times, personalize communication, and automate email workflows. Such tools auto-respond to common inquiries, routing emails to appropriate departments, and sending automated follow-up emails.
Predictive & Auto Dialers
Such systems automatically place multiple outbound calls for sales and support. While dialing numbers, they use predictive analysis to forecast the agent’s availability and automatically transfer the call to a free agent.
AI-Based Knowledge Management
AI knowledge management tools are particularly effective for giving real-time support during the calls that agents handle. They improve knowledge lookup for quicker problem solving and enrich self-service solutions for clients.
Workforce Management Automation
These contact center tools help in scheduling and forecasting the agents’ roster and their working hours through the analysis of previous data as well as by researching the trends. Such tools ensure proper staffing for busy and critical periods and offer a balanced workload distribution by utilizing AI.
What are the 4 key features of contact center automation?
If you plan to automate your contact center, you should look for some key features that are crucial for streamlining communication. Some of the four key features are;
Automatic Call Distribution
An automatic call distribution system allows contact centers to distribute incoming calls to available agents automatically. Automatica call distribution system efficiently uses its algorithm to analyze the most suitable agent for the call type based on skills, experience, department, availability, etc.
Sticky agent
A sticky agent feature in contact center automation ensures an agent is connected to a caller even through multiple callbacks. This feature offers convenience to the caller if they need to call back for multiple interactions. Every time a caller reaches out, they are connected to the same agent, and the agent can quickly proceed towards assisting the customer without having the customer explain the issue repeatedly.
Interactive voice response (IVR)
An AI-enabled IVR system is extremely beneficial for contact centers, reducing their call handling time and boosting customer experience. An intelligent IVR system guides a caller through a series of menu options to the right service department.
IVR helps reduce large volumes of calls as it effectively directs callers to the right department or agent for their issue.
AI chatbots
These are AI-powered software systems that interact with callers and assist with their issues. Most sophisticated chatbots can assist users through repetitive queries, FAQs, or help them troubleshoot issues without external assistance.
Top 6 use cases of contact center automation
Here are a few top use cases of contact center automation that add significant value to businesses;
Automated Self-Service
IVRs and chatbots are the two primary tools mostly used in contact centers for the purpose of automated self-service. They assist users with typical issues, account issues, and normal transactions. Both IVRs and chatbots have been effective in minimizing the work burden of the agents as they have been round-the-clock solutions and are self-service tools that guide the customers to solve their problems themselves.
Intelligent Call Routing
Automated call routing employs the intelligence of the AI to match the incoming call with a competent agent considering the customer history, agent capability, and availability. It also increases the first contact resolution, shortens the time of transfers, and helps customers gain access to the right knowledge.
Automated Data Entry & Form Processing
RPA bots are generally rule-based software implemented in the contact center tools, in order to perform tasks such as entry of data, filling up of forms, and updating of the customer database among others. These are quite useful tools in reducing the cases of human interference, enhancing the productivity of an agent, and leaving the agents to handle more complicated issues.
Proactive Customer Engagement
This is facilitated by contact centers’ capability to automate outbound communication for various tasks such as appointment reminders, order confirmations, and proactive customer contact, which in one way or another foster customer retention, reduce incidences of no-shows, and increase customer satisfaction. It can be in any form, either automated text messages or automated emails.
Post-Call Automation and Summarization
Contact center automation enables organizations to record live calls and convert them into text or summarize, reducing after-call processes like updating CRM records or creating tickets. These are complemented by the Artificial Intelligence features that exist in the tools. It minimizes the work agents have to perform after a call, boosts their productivity, and presents analysis data.
Real-Time Agent Assistance
Contact center automation provides customer service agents with the information they need to respond to clients’ questions instantly during a call. It increases agent competency and product understanding, shortens call length, and optimizes customer satisfaction. It could include features such as automatically generating knowledge base articles or even providing responses that the admin might consider using.
Conclusion
It is safe to say that the role of contact center automation will be continuous progress and a key factor in developing customer service in the future. This way, businesses can keep up with the new trends and trends attained and consequently improve their entrusted functionality that satisfies and fulfills the needs of their customers. Indeed, the days of dumb and manual contact centers are over.
Frequently Asked Questions
Contact center automation brings a significant advantage to businesses by decreasing costs, increasing the effectiveness of agents, improving customer satisfaction, and allowing for the availability of round-the-clock support.
• Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
• Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
• AI & Machine Learning
• Speech Analytics
Chatbots are used to help provide fast support, address frequently asked questions, and solve basic transactions that take the burden off the company agents and also decrease replying time.
For an efficient contact center automation tool, consider your requirements, future scalability, budget, and integration options.
To know the success of your contact center automation, you can consider analyzing customer satisfaction, call handling time, agents’ productivity, etc.
Some of the key use cases of contact center automation are;
• Automate customer support
• Self-serve options
• Appointment scheduling
• Automated ticketing system
• Agent assistance
The 4 key features of a contact center automation are;
• Interactive voice response
• Automatic call distribution
• AI chatbots
• Sticky agent
Nisha Sneha
Nisha Sneha is a passionate content writer with 5 years of experience creating impactful content for SAAS products, new-age technologies, and software applications. Currently, she is contributing to Kenyt.AI by crafting engaging content for its readers. Creating captivating content that provides accurate information about the latest advancements in science and technology has been at the core of her creativity.
In addition to writing, she enjoys gardening, reading, and swimming as hobbies.
