It was in late seventies that the first contact center emerged in the form of a brand new entrepreneurial venture. Since then, there has certainly been a steady ascent with respect to the technical advancements in the contact center industry.
AI or Artificial Intelligence can be undoubtedly regarded as a revolution in the field of contact center sector. It can be defined as the capability of a machine to perform with the same expertise as that of a human expert.The use of telephones by traditional business has been regarded as a key business tool involving two or multiple parties. Agents dealing with debt collection try their best to motivate clients to pay their dues. On the other hand, a sales representative’s job is to convert a lead to a customer. Customer service representatives work with the company’s existing customers to solve their problems if any. However, when communication between both parties are only limited to telephone, and their body language is not visible, it might be a challenge to understand what the other party actually needs. There are times when both the parties seem to have conflicting objectives.
It is expected that very soon our dependence on manpower may reduce when Artificial Intelligence or AI makes it big. Since AI may very well be used for performing front-end functions, human resources may be only required to act as backups, thus lowering attrition and stress related issues.
When Artificial Intelligence meets the call center set up, there will be a major upheaval as far as the outsourcing activities of an inbound call center is concerned. But even services of outbound call centers will feel the transformation in the form of innumerable outbound calls being made at the same time using the interface of Artificial Intelligence.
The entire discussion can be summed up in brief by the claim that very soon Artificial Intelligence or AI will be replacing the following existing technologies presently being used in a call center environment:
- VOIP or the Voice over IP – Thanks to the internet, the cost for communications has come down drastically. However, it has not replaced the work being done by human resources in a call center at the front-end. Since Artificial Intelligence will replace human resources, especially to discharge the front-end functions, it can surely make the VOIP technology succeed in the coming years.
- IVRs and IVC (Interactive Virtual Communications) – These are widely used for managing call traffic and have a low coverage percentage. However, they are not able to respond to all queries from customers. In fact, the responses are restricted to different dual-tone multi-frequency or DTMF signaling inputs from keypad that use a script-oriented telephone. As opposed to this, Artificial Intelligence will have the ability to intelligently capture a caller’s thought and also take a chain of actions on the basis of those deductions, thus enabling complete customer satisfaction.
As AI is a rapidly growing technology, it will not be long when it is regarded as the next big phenomena to emerge in the contact center industry, if implemented methodically and carefully.
Merits of Artificial Intelligence in Call Center Domain
One of the biggest merits offered by any artificial intelligence software is the it deploys predictive analytics methodology to carry out its functions. It possesses the ability to recognize various patterns within hours instead of taking months or several weeks that conventional methods take to reach a conclusion. Even after spending considerable time, there is no guarantee that those conclusions will be right. That is where artificial intelligence comes into the picture.
AI can also collect meaningful data from both parties of phone calls. The way it can predict the possibility of a creditor paying off their debts or the likelihood of a lead getting converted in the form of a paying customer, it is also capable of analyzing the performance of customer service representatives and agents.
For example – are the agents engaged in a call with confidence, positivity and enthusiasm? Or do they seem to be dismissive, monotonous and robotic? Artificial Intelligence can have an immense contribution in this area and may soon become an integral part for assessing quality performance of call center agents.
Since an AI based predictive voice analytics will be operational, you can understand the difference as you would not function in complete darkness. Your contact center can really understand and visualize the true behavioral pattern of all the parties that are engaged in telephone conversations. It will be easy to look beyond what the stakeholders are saying and rather appreciate their true feelings.
Therefore, soon intelligent self-service via Artificial Intelligence will be prevalent in the call center scenario. AI is a growing trend and a day will come in the near future when an increasing number of contact centers will deploy it.
