If you've been paying attention, it seems like we're currently in the middle of a major paradigm shift that occurs every hundred years or so. Industries are rising and snuffing out previous occupations at an alarming rate. Stock markets are erratic and unstable, and there's a global pandemic creating a new normal that we're still in the process of figuring out.
One industry that's feeling the pain of transition right now is call centers. Once the domain of millions of workers warehoused in cavernous spaces, call center workers are being sifted out by technology in the name of streamlining and budgetary issues despite increased demand for their services.
With the number of AI-powered voice assistants expected to reach eight billion by 2023, are chatbots and AI killing call centers? Or are they merely reconfiguring the nature of the job and improving customer service?
The turbulence last year posed a unique set of challenges for business owners, staff, and customers from multiple industries. The companies that did remain open were understaffed while juggling an unprecedented influx of calls from people needing assistance and information.
During this time, technology stepped in to fill gaps in service, but it has also increased fears that have rumbled around in the background of the call center industry for several years now.
Fear is a symptom of the low-key panic over perceived irrelevance and redundancy that most workers in service and manufacturing centers are already experiencing. The pandemic has simply accelerated the process of digital transformation much sooner than we anticipated.
Working in a call center is a stressful job that's high-pressure and results-oriented. Managing such a workplace is an exercise in futility. Often, there are very few managers or supervisors overseeing hundreds of relatively isolated staff.
As a result, the turnover rate is high, meaning employees are constantly being replaced and trained while managers continue to strive for monthly KPI success and meet customer demands.
First of all, we must differentiate chat/voice bots from call center employees in order to understand the nature of the issue and clarify a few things. As outbound sales are winnowed out, inbound calls will rise. Chatbots and voice bots are often the first contact point between customer and company. When they are unable to resolve an issue, the call or message is then transferred to a live agent.
Thanks to digital transformation, companies are able to automate and use systems that offer more targeted and personalized services and solutions – something that is quickly becoming the new norm in a world of remote work, outsourcing, and the resulting increased reliance on technology. These new AI-supported technologies have an array of features that are designed to take away mundane admin and accounting-related tasks that keep businesses afloat and running so employees can focus on more complex concerns and tasks.
As demand for calling center services increases, AI technologies such as chatbots can be trained to answer basic questions, assess customer needs, provide quality assurance and transparency, and reduce the necessity for human intervention in most cases. This will improve efficiency, reduce service turnaround times, and increase customer satisfaction.
From an employer standpoint, deploying these technologies can increase workplace productivity, transparency, and accountability. It also improves staff training, reduces stress, and increases job satisfaction. All of this is possible while still keeping costs down.
Chatbots and voicebots also address the problem of service availability by being reachable 24/7. Even if you were to maintain staff on a 24/7 basis, the increased payroll and costs will stretch your budget to the max. By handling the most routine requests and questions via bots, customer service providers can focus on more complex tasks and systems can handle an exponentially higher call volume.
Experts have predicted that AI will power 95% of customer interactions by 2025. However, consumers still like to deal with live agents whenever possible. They also want their questions answered and problems solved quickly.
As long as human intervention is necessary to resolve unique or complex matters, call center employees will be necessary. There will be fewer of them, but they will have more time and autonomy to work with customers directly.
That concludes that chatbots and other AI-powered technologies and software will not kill the call centers so much as they will change how they perform and operate. As marketing expert Dan Fries of Blue Tree notes, AI-powered chatbots can also provide organizations with a variety of features such as analytical functions that let them identify repeat visitors or certain key customers, customer relationship management tools, and accounts-based marketing tools.
These capabilities will also improve morale by reducing workloads and allowing agents to conduct more meaningful interactions with customers, management, and co-workers, thus improving call centre quality assurance. Company leaders can set higher standards and goals that staff will be able to meet without added pressure and stress.
AI-powered technology works best when it enhances service rather than replacing people. With strategic use of cutting-edge tech innovations, service is streamlined so that those who need more intensive help from humans can have easy access to it without having to wait in long virtual queue lines full of common and simple enquiries.
Incorporating an hybrid model of AI-powered customer care and assistance will improve the customer experience, reduce high turnover and employee burnout rates, provide richer data analytics and insights, and allow business owners to allocate budgets more efficiently.