It's safe to say that the environment for consumer contact is evolving. Today's customers expect better, more immersive experiences from their favourite companies, and contact centre technologies are growing as a result.
Some of the most significant trends appearing in the contact centre lately involve the combination of artificial intelligence and automation. While AI helps to give contact centre agents more useful information to work with during customer conversations, automation ensures that simple and repetitive "busy work" is removed from the workflow, so that employees can focus on the interactions that matter.
Sub-sections of the artificial intelligence environment like voice and facial recognition may help to take contact centre conversations to the next level, according to Suzette Bouzane Meadows, the Director of Contact at KCom.
The Quest for Richer Customer Service
In a discussion about the rise of face and voice recognition software, Suzette commented that today's businesses are looking for a way to create next-level customer experiences in an "always-on" environment. While the demand for automation is increasing, businesses also know that they can't afford to risk the "human touch" in their customer conversations.
Although many of today's customers are growing more familiar with the concept of communicating with robots thanks to things like Amazon Alexa and Google Home, they still want a human agent to help them with complicated issues. Although AI may never be able to replicate the human experience, Suzette believes that an agent capable of recognising a consumer voice or face will create a more personal, customised experience that today's clients will appreciate.
What Can Voice and Face Recognition Do?
There are plenty of ways that voice and face recognition may begin to play a part in the contact centre environment. Already, voice-focused technology and biometrics are making a difference in the way that we manage security from a customer contact perspective. Systems for "voiceprinting" can check for unique nuances in a customer's voice to determine that a person is who they say they are when they call to check up on the status of an order or complete a transaction. Voice recognition is starting to make a difference in the fight against fraud.