An article by Dan Miller raises an interesting point: Implementing virtual agents into your contact center isn’t staying ahead of the curve, it’s common. A long time ago, AI implementations were basically hyped-up versions of FAQ sections, but they’re now very powerful tools to improve the customer experience.
Thousands of outsource call centers are using virtual agents or Intelligent Assistants in their strategies, and the automation has shown increased levels of customer satisfaction scores and employee retention rates. This AI has been used in a variety of ways, including through Facebook messenger bots, which broadens the scope of reach in a big way due to smartphone accessibility.
Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing have been in use for more than a decade, which means they’ve had enough customer experiences to be able to respond to questions with effective answers provided in a smooth, natural language of the user.
“By mid-2017, over 1,200 firms around the world had implemented over 2,300 virtual agents, chatbots or other forms of Intelligent Assistants at their companies.” – Dan Miller
If you’re not using AI in the form of bots, virtual agents, or other methods, you’re behind the curve. If you’re still holding onto a fear of bots permanently replacing human agents, it’s time to let it go.
With machine learning in addition to human assistance, your virtual assistants can work wonders. Human agents can review interactions between bots and customers and determine if what the bot said was effective. If the agent decides the communication wasn’t up to standards, they can go into the CRM and update the response with the appropriate language for when that question is asked again in the future.
Eventually, virtual agents get to a point where they’re able to answer customer questions so well that the customers aren’t able to tell if they’re speaking with a human or a bot. If you’re still afraid of the notion of AI overtaking humans, you don’t need to have a goal of completely replacing all your human agents with bots. AI is powerful enough to completely replace agents in numerous circumstances, but most contact centers don’t go this route.
The common-sense approach for handling AI is to opt for a fusion of human and virtual agents. You can increase your agents’ efficiency and make their job so much easier by providing them with virtual assistants. This also increases employee satisfaction while helping lower attrition rates, which could benefit any contact center.
This blog post is based on an article from CustomerThink. To read the article, please click here!
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