More often than not, we call someone, as opposed to emailing or chatting to a bot, when we have a serious and urgent matter to resolve. Consequently, most of us have experienced the maddening frustration of phoning a call centre. The sense of desperation arising, as you’re forced to wait for up to 40 minutes for someone to answer. While you are thinking to yourself: does this organisation take me seriously? Is the line busy as too many people are calling to complain? Or, do they just want me to give up on my claim?
This, coupled with the arduous quest to navigate an endless array of options, painstaking music, hard-to-understand pronunciation and the feeling of being abandoned and disrespected all mean that customer experience – and brand perceptions – suffer as a result. It’s also where Artificial Intelligence (AI) and natural language Machine Learning (ML) come to the rescue. Both are on the verge of transforming the fabric of voice-driven customer experience thought pioneering speech recognition technology.
According to Gartner, AI is almost the definition of hype. Speech recognition, nevertheless, is in the plateau of productivity and Natural Language Processing (NLP) / Natural Language Understanding (NLU)-powered solutions are already moving from hype to the must-have status globally. The speech and voice recognition market was valued at $5.15bn in 2016 and is expected to reach $18.30bn by 2023, at a CAGR of 19.80%, based on some predictions. By 2020, 50% of analytic queries will be generated using searches based on natural-language processing, according to Gartner, and 20-25% of searches made with the Google Android App in the US are already voice searches, according to Google.
Voice-driven customer service is not the preserve of human beings any more. AI is here to complement people and improve customer satisfaction. What is even more impressive, the cutting-edge technology is now able to identify the caller’s sentiment and intent, perform intelligent voice biometrics, transcribe calls and flag issues in real time. AI is also there to ensure the caller doesn’t lose focus and that they remain interested in what is being communicated to them via Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technology.
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Piergiorgio Vittori[/caption]
Such voice-driven technology could be deployed in a myriad of ways, helping to improve not just customer service, but human lives overall. Imagine AI-based technologies tasked with sifting through online content, weeding out non-compliant or even disturbing sounding video and audio content. In doing so, the tech would enable organisations to address potential non-compliance issues quickly or potentially remove disturbing content instantaneously, while helping to improve mental health of human readers who would have to review fewer pieces of distressing content. Imagine calls being prioritised and put through to human operators much faster for genuinely urgent inquiries after a short initial assessment by AI-based technology. What if we could attain a future, where prank calls to emergency services could be identified almost immediately, based on forensics of sentiment, tone and intent? Not just genuine callers and their respective call centre counterparts would benefit, but society as a whole.
Even today, the benefits of AI in call centre environments are significant and refreshing. In many ways, AI is starting to understand customers better than agents. AI NLP voice technology in particular also has phonological awareness. It is already able to access the caller’s sentiment and intent. It understands speaking habits, conversational linguistics, dialects, idiosyncrasies, slang, foreign nationals’ accents, intonation, emphasis, intention and anunciation. It is smart and fast. It can mitigate simple requests and help alleviate customer frustration. It can determine whether somone is happy with the service or a specific offer.