Artificial Intelligence in the Contact Center
6 Killer Applications of AI for the Contact Center
If Artificial Intelligence (AI) for the overall business is a red hot topic in C-suites, AI for customer engagement is white hot.
As a pioneer in AI for contact center customer service and customer engagement, eGain has not only developed cutting-edge technology but also best practices and proven use-cases over the last two decades.
In this white paper, we discuss 6 killer applications and associated use-cases for Artificial Intelligence in the contact center that have already enabled blue-chip companies to transform—not just improve—customer service and engagement. We will also talk about an industry-first, innovative way that can get you going with AI in as few as 30 days! That being said, the paper is not a primer on AI nor does it get into defining what it is.
1. Understand natural language and answer customer questions
Virtual Assistants (VAs or chatbots) enable businesses to wow customers with distinctive self-service, while helping them cut costs and build brand equity.
The best virtual assistants are also multilingual and communicate in multiple modes—text-to-text, text-to-speech, speech-to-text, and speech-to-speech. Importantly, they know what they don’t know. When unable to answer the customer’s question, they escalate to human-assisted customer service in the contact center with full context from the self-service interaction.
For the assistant to be able to do this out of the box without integration work, it needs to be an integral part of an omnichannel customer engagement hub which consolidates omnichannel interactions, knowledge, AI, analytics, and administration into one platform.
Companies that have implemented contact center AI for customer service and engagement show some amazing return on investment (ROI) and benefits.
2. Guide search and service interactions
While virtual assistants are good at answering questions of low to medium complexity, AI reasoning technologies are capable of guiding customers and contact center advisors through interactions of higher complexity. Reasoning can guide users to the next best steps in their search for the correct answer by asking the right questions to clarify intent, troubleshoot, or track progress across long-lived service fulfillment processes. This conversational, dialog-driven guidance is based on intelligent understanding of the problems faced by the customers as well as customer service expertise drawn from the best agents.
A global bank, an eGain client, uses eGain’s patented AI reasoning technology to guide a largely novice agent pool through best-practice interactions across 11 countries, while reducing training requirements by half and agent churn to <1%.
3. Decide as output or as part of service process
“Bad decisions harm my organization’s reputation in the marketplace.” 82% of respondents in an executive survey by Grove Critical Thinking either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement. Decision-making for customer engagement is no different—it could spell the difference between delight (for the customer) and demise (for the business).
Again, unlike rule-based systems that start breaking down as decisions become more complex (these systems are also harder to maintain), AI reasoning helps make decisions with a flexible approach, working with incomplete or ambiguous information and by comparing similar decision-making scenarios from the past.
The output could be the final decision or be one of the decisions in a larger customer engagement and contact center management process. For example, a global media and legal services giant makes decisions on whether to take on malpractice lawsuits, based on multiple factors like the amount of damages, win rates in the past for any given topic, tendencies of specific courts/judges, powered by eGain AI.
4. Comply with regulations
A leading bank serves wholesale clients in multiple countries with a single eGain-powered AI system that incorporates the global parent’s best practices, while taking into account local regulations in those countries. Artificial Intelligence in the contact center can be employed to guide agents through the compliance maze.
We also encourage you to view our CEO’s keynote speech from our annual Digital+AI conference to get an understanding of digital disruption and AI in contact center, customer service, and customer engagement.
