Artificial Intelligence (AI) is taking over the business landscape. It helps to automate tedious tasks, surfacing deeper insights from data, and enhancing productivity on an incredible scale. Perhaps one of the most significant areas where AI is making waves, is in the contact center.
Some studies suggest that more than one in every five contact centers had already completed a major AI project by 2022, and numbers have continued to grow ever since.
However, despite increasing adoption, there are still plenty of misconceptions surrounding the concept of AI in the contact center. Today, we’re sharing 6 crucial truths you should know if you’re looking for a way to enhance your contact center with intelligence.
Be Aware of Potential AI Risks
As powerful as AI technologies are in today’s world, there are risks to implementing any new innovative solution into your workflows. The more advanced AI becomes, the more threats emerge, from concerns about ethical AI use, to the risk of deepfakes, and the rise of new regulations.
Companies need to have a comprehensive strategy in place to ensure they eliminate as many risks as possible, and protect vulnerable customers. Unfortunately, many companies have rushed to introduce AI into their solutions, without conducting the proper due-diligence.
Taking your time in the building stage, conducting the right research, and ensuring you’re aware of all the risks you might face will be crucial to success.
1. AI Will Make Companies more Compliant
The rise of generative AI has led to new concerns about ethical intelligence and compliance in the contact center. In a Gartner 2023 report, only 1% of risk executives said they were thoroughly prepared for the risks of AI adoption.
Now that IT leaders are prioritizing data and security in the contact center, to help minimize risks, it’s more important than ever to assess the value that AI can offer from a security perspective. In a world of evolving regulations, AI can give contact centers a crucial edge.
AI can help companies comply with standards like the FCA’s Consumer Duty Act, using speech analytics to recognize and pinpoint any possible vulnerable customers in an instant.
These tools can provide feedback to agents based on sentiment analysis, so team members can tailor their approach to calls effectively. Speech analytics can even analyze trends in calls and surface insights into how companies can improve compliance with regulatory standards.
2. Intelligence Enhances Customer Experience
In a difficult economic environment, one of the only ways to “future-proof” the success of your business, is to deliver consistently great experiences. Studies consistently show that improving the customer experience can increase sales revenue (by 2 to 7% in the case of McKinsey’s report).
While there is a cost involved in implementing AI, the impact on customer experience is significant. Around 21% of contact center leaders says that AI is helping them to boost customer satisfaction and retain more loyal customers. AI tools accomplish this in a range of ways. They can empower companies to offer more effective self-service strategies, and help guide agents through more effective and personalized conversations.
Plus, AI speech analytical tools provide companies with the in-depth insights they need to handle each conversation effectively. AI-driven analytics and sentiment analysis can even help companies to map and optimize each interaction more effectively.
3. AI Can Help You Save Money
As mentioned above, implementing an intuitive solution into the contact center, like AI bots and speech analytics tools does come with a cost. In the current economic climate, many contact center leaders are struggling to optimize their budget, and make the most out of the tools they have.
However, AI can actually help companies save money, and reduce operational expenses in the long-term. In fact, Gartner predicts conversational AI will reduce contact center labor costs by $80 billion by 2026.
Speech analytical tools, for instance, can help contact centers be smarter with how they distribute resources. They also help to reduce the costs associated with inefficient practices, like analyzing conversations manually. Additionally, AI is becoming more affordable for smaller contact centers as the technology develops.