The goal of AI automation is to allow an agent to focus on the most critical tasks, where they are most required, and to increase the efficiency of their job

Managing a call centre is no easy task. Imagine an office filled with hundreds of agents and supervisors handling tens of thousands of calls, emails and chats from thousands of consumers if you've never been in a contact centre or call centre. Furthermore, the agents are frequently new to customer service, have little to no professional training and have a fourteen-month average tenure. While dealing with irate or disgruntled consumers, the agents are under pressure to rapidly resolve issues or demands. To add to the difficulty, customer service departments try to provide the best possible experience for each consumer.

What is Call CentreAutomation and Why is it Important?

Call centre automation is the practice of using technology to complete monotonous jobs. This might be complete call automation or semi-automation by boosting the productivity of human agents. For full call automation, the most modern contact centres deploy AI-powered systems that include natural language processing (NLP), natural language understanding (NLU) and speech recognition models.

During the Covid crisis, call centre automation has become extremely important. According to a CGS study, during the pandemic, 74% of CX executives observed a considerable spike in queries in their call centres. Longer wait times, higher call abandonment rates and worse first contact resolution rates resulted as a result of this (FCR).

Even if a sudden rise in call volumes is only transitory, it can occur at any moment to any business owing to a new service, a policy change, a technical problem, or even a merger of two firms. Although no one can forecast the occurrence of all such events, firms should be prepared for a sudden spike in client enquiries or planned company scaling.

There's a widespread belief that technology, in general, and artificial intelligence (AI) in particular, will disrupt retail customer service in the same manner that manufacturing was disrupted. Don't be concerned. Although technology is assisting in the evolution of contact centres, human characteristics like empathy and situational agility are so important to the customer experience that robots will never take over call centres the way they have manufacturing lines.

Rather than replacing agents, AI can dramatically increase the productivity and enjoyment of their employment. It also adds to more enjoyable customer experiences by helping agents to offer more of the crucial human skills that customers seek.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a Cutting-Edge Technology

Over the years, several technological advancements have improved call centre productivity, but AI-powered intelligent automation technology is setting the bar even higher. Centres create large amounts of time-sensitive data and being able to use that data right now might revolutionise customer support.

That data could be processed by humans, but it would take hours, days, or weeks. Intelligent automation is the first technology capable of processing massive amounts of data in real-time and acting on it right away, solving issues that were previously impossible to solve or even recognise.

Service Delivery is Improved by Nurturing Agents

Many merchants have been obliged to consider customer service as one of the few levers they have to differentiate themselves from rivals due to high fixed expenses and tight profit margins. Until recently, technology innovation has been entirely focused on customers, but that is no longer sufficient.

Intelligent automation focuses on "upstream" issues that irritate agents and hinder service delivery, which has a direct "downstream" impact on customer experience. If a call comes in during an agent's scheduled break, for example, the agent's dissatisfaction with not having a break will almost surely hurt the caller — and maybe on subsequent callers.

Pandemic Accelerates E-Commerce

The epidemic has highlighted the significance of highly trained and skilled agents in retail contact centres. While by 2020, most retail sales would have moved online, some client segments would still prefer to purchase in stores. The epidemic pushed those customers' hands and now that they've tried e-commerce, many of them plan to stay online.

What happens if an online order is delivered damaged or not at all? What if the same item is charged twice on the shopper's credit card? Consumers no longer come to the business to address these issues. Instead, they contact centre agents via phone, email, or chat. This explains the substantial increase in retail call traffic and average handling time. Because online clients have high service expectations, contact centre executives must employ AI-powered technology that allows operators to handle a considerably larger volume of calls.

Human Agents Forever

The epidemic has proven that robots will not be able to take the position of humans in retail customer service centres. Consumers' always-strong need for human touch is becoming stronger, as seen by rising phone volume and longer handle time.

As a result, to assist operations under today's more demanding circumstances, retail firms must equip their contact centre personnel with AI-powered intelligent automation technologies. Intelligent automation is scalable, cloud-based, and simple to use. It aided many shops in switching to remote agents and continuing to serve consumers throughout the epidemic, and it will help them manage the complex hybrid workforce model that will likely dominate operations in the future.