Is Conversational AI The Next Big Thing that can Help Boost Contact Center Operations?
Customers across sectors today want a more instant and efficient call process, so should online businesses drive this experience with conversational AI platforms?
The way contact centres perform today or are expected to has vastly changed. As global businesses become more attune to meeting the needs of customers that demand a digital-first and always-on, instant experience, the demand for quick, intuitive call center interactions has grown. Call centers and contact centers today need advanced ops practices and tools to handle a multitude of interactions without compromising on customer service or after-sales service quality.
Can conversational AI tools come handy when brands are trying to enable this? Let’s do a quick dive:
Conversational AI Helps Meet the Need for A Human Behind the Automation
Long gone are the days when customers would be okay with (in all probability, they actually were not) with automated voice messages or complex voice menus to go through when they needed to raise a query or specific service or product concern with a brand. This can actually impact the end to end customer journey when there are critical queries or concerns surrounding delivery, payment or otherwise. An automated conversational AI tool can handle many requests at the same time while also acting in a more intuitive manner to be able to hold onto a customer call or chat until a live agent can manually take over and respond.
Helps Alleviate Resource Challenges
No paying customer wants to be in put on hold for unlimited durations of time or be in a situation where their concern isn’t address in a timelier manner. For growing online businesses, especially those who might face phone disruptions due to too many calls (read: the holiday season) and for those who crave to serve their customers on time to prevent churn, a well-established conversational AI tool can help complement the efforts of ongoing phone calls or customer queries in real-time. For leaner teams who might not have the bandwidth to handle many incoming calls or chats at the same time, these tools can come handy in serving the customer on time by providing useful/intuitive responses until a live agent is available.
Personalizes Customer Interactions and After-sales Services
Customers today demand a more personalized buying experience, they want to be shown product or service alternatives that make sense to them and serve their current need or challenge and so the increased demand for AI platforms across eCommerce. In addition, a conversational AI tool can proactively help personalize actual customer interactions and after-sales support to ensure customers feel that the brand they are dealing with knows what they are looking for or what their issues are with solutions on how to address them.
Reduces Overall Call Center Operational Costs
Hiring and maintaining large team strengths at a time or running back end ops for any function can eat into operational costs. The right use of processes and technologies like conversational AI can significantly reduce the stress and burden by automating a large part of the initial customer conversation and reducing the load on actual live agents, thereby giving the brand the ability to have a more lean team on ground.
End Note – Conversational AI Enhances the Digital-First Experience
It is crucial for brands and online services/businesses to provide instant, quick responses to any kind of customer concern without getting paid customers to experience long digital queues or unlimited wait times. To enhance the overall buying experience, brands need to pay attention to how their customer support processes, self-serve models and after-sales function.
Virtual assistants supported by conversational AI features can deliver better all-round experiences that cater to this while enhancing the brand value in any paying customer’s mind.
Read More: Shopping Cart Abandonment: Learning from Top Brands on How to Reduce This Impact
