Cloud-based artificial intelligence was supercharged following the COVID-19 pandemic, as consumers increasingly wanted a self-service option when interacting with contact centers. In the future, data transformation is set to be taken to the next level, so consumers can seamlessly interact with AI or human agents, depending on their needs. “Conversational AI is driving the contact center of the future, leveling up the customer experience, and opening doors for innovation and revenue growth among Value Added Resellers (VARs) and channel partners,” says Michelle Paitich, Global Vice President of Channel Sales for 8x8.
Conversational AI: The Next Frontier
Conversational AI – or technologies that users can talk to – is supercharging the contact center experience by leveraging Natural Language Understanding (NLU), emotional intelligence and customer analytics. The integration of conversational AI and knowledge management empowers, informs, and assists throughout the customer journey. In the contact center, a hybrid agent workforce of conversational AI-powered virtual and live agents is elevating the experience and outcomes.
Conversational AI is the evolution of IVR (Interactive Voice Response). When IVR was widely introduced into contact centers in the 1990s, call queuing and automatic call routing became common. It provided 24/7 access to virtual agents and knowledge banks, reducing the reliance on human agents to deal with routine, mundane tasks. This reduced human workforces and lowered business costs. Reliance on virtual interactions and their functionality has increased since – including speech-enabled user interfaces and integration with back-end knowledge management.
The Role of AI in the Contact Center
AI has been gaining importance in the contact center – from the first flush of IVR to today’s ecosystem including ML, NLU, natural language processing (NLP), automatic speech recognition (ASR), text-to-speech (TTS), and speech-to-text (STT) processing. AI is no longer just powering self-service in the contact center – it is integrated into workforce and performance management, customer interaction analytics, and process automation throughout the enterprise.
Solutions such as 8x8’s Intelligent Customer Assistant (ICA) are transforming call center experiences. ICA enables call centers to effortlessly engage customers with human-like interactions and help reduce customer friction. The tool allows for smooth handoffs between channels – including bots and live agents – and creates engaging, personalized conversations with bi-directional CRM sync.
Frost & Sullivan’s 2023 Contact Center Outlook - Customer Perspectives report has provided us with the current and projected use of AI in the contact center. Significantly, 61% of the 751 contact center stakeholder respondents consider investing in self-service technology in the next two years to be either important or crucial. According to Frost & Sullivan’s Global State of AI report, 71% of enterprises have embarked on the AI journey to support business outcomes. The Contact Center Outlook report identified process automation (80%) and voice authentication (79%) as the top technologies that have already been deployed or are planned within the next two years.
“AI use in the contact center is on the rise and conversational AI is the primary area of innovation and investment,” says Paitich.
IVR in Action
Currently, contact center agents in tech support must talk customers through technical issues that are difficult to visualize. This usually ends in the agent scheduling for an engineer to visit the site to fix the issue – which is expensive and results in delays in solving the customer’s problem.