Digital transformation has been a buzz topic in the contact centre world for a few years now, and it seems like many of the future trends are already here. According to a Forrester survey, the key business driver of digital transformation is improving operational efficiency, followed by revenue growth and cost reduction.
From chatbots and virtual assistants to process automation and real-time analytics, contact centres have experienced a true rebirth since their original form.
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Stuart Dorman[/caption]
Looking to the future, AI coupled with automation will most likely get in every crevice of contact centre technology – whether it’s human-assisted or entirely working on its own.
CX Today welcomed Stuart Dorman, Chief Innovation Officer at Sabio Group, to take a closer look at the pace at which AI & automation entered the contact centre space and how it’s going to develop in the coming years.
Where it all started
Contact centres have been working with some form of digital technology since their inception; however, the turning point in the adoption of automation and AI happened not too long ago. Dorman points out the year 2016 when natural language processing, driven by virtual assistants such as Alexa and Google Home, started exposing more consumers to speech recognition technology and enabling contact centres to start adopting speech capabilities in a more cost-effective way. He says:
“The major cloud vendors made natural language technology available to developers through easy-to-access APIs. This democratised the technology, making it available to contact centres which enabled voice to be treated as a digital channel.”
Needless to say, the mass adoption of chatbots, voice bots, and different types of cloud technology significantly sped up the process of deployment of these solutions. What was previously available only to huge enterprises has now become accessible to organisations of all sizes.
Yet, enticed by the idea of cutting-edge AI, more often than not, businesses don’t fully commit to what is needed to fully exploit the technology and ultimately eventually fall short of ambitious automation goals.
Trial and error
When it comes to mistakes organisations make with AI and automation, they can happen to anyone. To avoid beginner mistakes, it’s crucial to analyse the organisation’s needs and goals and deploy solutions that will support them. With particular customer-interacting technology, organisations should invest in both technical and operational resources to make it work effectively and deliver ROI, emphasises Dorman.
He also adds: “Businesses that are serious about voice and chat-based digital transformation need to make sure they take the long view, invest properly, and build the right team around it. It’s key to engage in the operation, from developing and optimising to making sure that the back-end technology infrastructure is capable of fulfilling customers’ requests.”