Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming call and contact center operations, making them more efficient and cost-effective while helping to reduce work-related stress for human agents. Cloud-based technologies have enabled the expansion of AI in contact centers, and the need to support customers effectively during the COVID-19 pandemic prompted many businesses to speed up the adoption of these solutions. By 2021, more than half of call centers had already developed an AI strategy.
If you need to make a case for your business to transform its traditional call center into a future-forward, AI-powered operation, this blog can help support your efforts. We will explore several examples of how leading companies in various industries use AI in contact centers. We’ll also highlight the results they’re seeing from these investments. But before we get to those stories, let’s look at why AI is important in delivering a modern customer service experience and what types of contact center AI solutions are commonly used today.
Why AI is Crucial for Modern Customer Service
AI has long been viewed as a technology destined to streamline and enhance call center operations. The ability of AI to recognize speech, learn from that speech, and interact effectively with customers is invaluable for a contact center. By using AI to automate routine processes, such as call scoring, call center operators can ease workloads and take pressure off human agents, freeing them to focus on higher-value and more fulfilling work.
Moreover, AI can supplement the efforts of live agents by making appointments for callers or recording bill payments, effectively providing a self-service option for callers. This not only improves efficiency but also enhances the customer experience by reducing wait times and ensuring quick resolutions.
The importance of AI in customer service extends to data analysis as well. Machine learning can be applied in various ways in contact center environments, including automating processes, analyzing data, and improving key functions. For instance, AI can automate call scoring for quality assurance, providing a detailed and unbiased evaluation of every call.
Implementing AI in customer service also means providing a more personalized experience. AI solutions can gather and analyze customer data to offer insights into preferences and behaviors, allowing businesses to tailor their services to meet individual needs. This level of personalization is increasingly expected by customers and can significantly improve satisfaction and loyalty.
Read More: What Is an Intelligent Virtual Agent & How Does It Work?
Key AI Solutions for Contact Centers
AI-driven tools offer numerous benefits for contact centers, helping to enhance efficiency and improve customer interactions. Here’s an overview of some key contact center AI solutions:
1. Performance Monitoring and Quality Assurance
Using AI and automation for performance monitoring and quality assurance provides an objective view of 100% of calls into the call center. This allows companies to automate quality assurance (QA) and efficiently evaluate every call for quality and compliance.
With automated QA, call center operators can spend more time solving call-handling problems and less time looking for performance and QA issues. AI-driven QA tools provide instant feedback to agents, helping them improve their performance in real-time.
Automating QA also reduces human error and bias in call evaluations, ensuring a fair and accurate assessment of each agent’s performance. This leads to more consistent and reliable quality control across the contact center.
Additionally, automated QA can help identify trends and patterns in customer interactions, providing valuable insights for training and development programs. This data can be used to create targeted training materials that address specific areas for improvement.
2. AI-Powered IVRs
Interactive voice response (IVR) tools assist callers around the clock. AI-powered IVRs interact with callers in a natural, human-like way by allowing them to respond via voice instead of keypresses. IVR systems like Invoca’s can be set up quickly, without any coding or help from IT.
Because IVRs work with every phone system, they can be deployed immediately without any worry about business disruption. This flexibility ensures that businesses can quickly implement AI-powered IVRs and start reaping the benefits.
AI-powered IVRs provide a seamless and efficient customer experience by routing calls to the appropriate departments or agents based on the caller’s needs. This reduces wait times and ensures that customers are connected to the right person the first time.
Moreover, conversational IVRs can handle a wide range of customer inquiries, from scheduling appointments to processing payments, further enhancing efficiency and customer satisfaction. These self-service options free up human agents to focus on more complex and high-value tasks.
3. Predictive Analytics and Customer Insights
Automation enables rapid scans of data, providing contact centers with insights such as hold and call times, and a wealth of information on customers — from buying personality and sentiment analysis to intent. Through machine learning, AI can go further and provide predictive analytics to benefit marketing as well as customer service teams.
Predictive analytics can help contact centers anticipate customer needs and behaviors, allowing them to proactively address issues and offer relevant solutions. This can lead to improved customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Using AI for customer insights also enables contact centers to segment their customer base more effectively, creating targeted marketing campaigns and personalized service offerings. This level of customization can drive higher engagement and conversion rates.
Furthermore, predictive analytics can help contact centers identify potential issues before they escalate, allowing for timely intervention and resolution. This proactive approach can reduce churn and enhance overall customer experience.
4. Intelligent Routing and Call Optimization
Another benefit of using AI solutions in the contact center is gaining access to intelligent call routing. Intelligent routing significantly reduces hold times by efficiently directing customers where they need to go — including across multiple call centers and branches if needed.
It works by using data about the caller’s digital journey, such as the webpages they visited, to route them according to their intent. Agents are also presented automatically with pertinent information about callers and their intent. That helps to drive higher agent productivity and a better overall customer experience.
Intelligent routing can also prioritize calls based on urgency or importance, ensuring that high-priority customers receive prompt attention. This can improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.
In addition, intelligent routing can help balance call loads across different teams and locations, optimizing resource allocation and reducing wait times. This leads to a more efficient and effective contact center operation.
5. Chatbots and Virtual Agents
Chatbots, or virtual agents, are AI call center agents that can simulate conversations with live users via text chat programs on websites. According to a recent survey by Microsoft, nearly 90% of customers reported that chatbots were effective in resolving their issues.
Chatbot technology is advancing rapidly. OpenAI’s development of ChatGPT-3 has opened the door for businesses to easily provide self-service options to their customers, which can dramatically reduce hold and resolution times in customer service.
Chatbots can handle a wide range of customer inquiries, from answering frequently asked questions to processing transactions, providing a quick and efficient service option. This reduces the burden on human agents and allows them to focus on more complex tasks.
Moreover, chatbots can be available 24/7, ensuring that customers receive timely assistance regardless of the time of day. This level of accessibility can improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Additionally, chatbots can learn and adapt over time, improving their performance and accuracy with each interaction. This continuous improvement ensures that customers receive increasingly better service.
Benefits of Implementing AI in Call Centers
Automating routine tasks, using natural language processing (NLP) to understand human speech, and generating human-like responses virtually via text or voice are primarily what drive the main benefits of call center AI. Call center managers can create a response ecosystem encompassing live agents and virtual agents to streamline workflow, speed up routine tasks, and allow live agents to focus on complex and more serious customer issues.
AI’s ability to generate, gather, and analyze tremendous amounts of data further boosts call center efficiency by providing valuable insights into the customer, such as sentiment analysis. This data can be used to tailor services to individual customer needs, improving satisfaction and loyalty.
Additionally, AI can help deliver relevant and targeted training material to live agents to help them raise the bar on their performance. By identifying areas for improvement and providing real-time feedback, AI-driven training programs can enhance agent skills and effectiveness.
Using AI also means that call centers can provide a more personalized customer experience. By understanding customer preferences and behaviors, AI can help agents offer tailored solutions and recommendations, enhancing the overall customer journey.
6 Examples of AI in Contact Centers
Real-world examples of companies benefiting from AI in their contact centers illustrate the transformative power of this technology. Here are some notable case studies:
1. MoneySolver
MoneySolver, a financial services company, provides customized student loan, tax, business, and credit solutions. Before adopting AI-driven solutions, MoneySolver tracked only a small percentage of calls into its call center, where over 100 agents handle customer inquiries.
The implementation of an AI-driven platform now provides automated quality assurance (QA) based on 100% of calls and instant feedback to agents. This has led to a doubling of the close rate at the contact center. Additionally, integrating AI with marketing tools has helped MoneySolver’s marketing team to track call attribution more efficiently, allowing for better optimization of ads and a 30% increase in return on ad spend (ROAS).
By automating QA and providing real-time insights, the AI solution has significantly improved the overall efficiency of MoneySolver’s contact center operations. Agents are now better equipped to handle customer inquiries effectively, leading to higher customer satisfaction and increased sales.
Moreover, the comprehensive data analysis capabilities of the AI platform have enabled MoneySolver to identify trends and patterns in customer interactions, helping to refine their service offerings and enhance customer engagement. This strategic use of AI has positioned MoneySolver as a leader in providing exceptional customer service in the financial services industry.
2. Renewal by Andersen
National window replacement franchise Renewal by Andersen gets its most valuable sales conversions over the phone and uses a pay-per-call fee model to send leads to its 90 franchise affiliates. However, the firm lacked an effective way to measure and qualify leads or confirm it was billing the correct fees. Additionally, Renewal’s contact center QA was based on just 2% of phone calls graded manually — a time-consuming system that was prone to error.
An AI-driven platform changed all that. Not only did Renewal by Andersen fully automate quality assurance in the contact center, tracking 100% of calls, but it was able to validate every phone lead and bill each affiliate correctly. The result was a decreased cost per acquisition (CPA) and increased return on ad spend for the marketing team. Meanwhile, the contact center team saw a 47% increase in customer appointments made and a 129% increase in agents correctly assessing callers’ needs.
The automation of QA processes has also reduced the workload on human agents, allowing them to focus on more complex customer interactions and improving overall service quality. By leveraging AI, Renewal by Andersen has been able to enhance its operational efficiency and drive better business outcomes.
Furthermore, the AI platform’s ability to provide detailed insights into customer interactions has enabled Renewal by Andersen to fine-tune its marketing strategies and improve lead generation efforts. This holistic approach to using AI in contact center operations has resulted in a more streamlined and effective customer service experience.
3. Windstream Holdings
Windstream Holdings, based in Little Rock, Arkansas, set its sales team a goal of 40,000 new subscribers for its premium broadband and communication services in a pandemic-disrupted economy. However, management knew they needed to better integrate sales and marketing first to achieve that goal.
Using an AI-driven platform with automated call recording and conversation intelligence, leadership was able to achieve marketing efficacy by accurately tying ad campaigns to actual phone sales, which represented 60% of their business. Prior to deploying AI, attributing ads or campaigns to phone sales was guesswork. Using AI helped Windstream reduce CPA by 17% and achieve 150% of its subscriber goal in 10 months.
The integration of AI has provided Windstream with the tools needed to analyze and optimize their marketing efforts effectively. By gaining a clear understanding of which campaigns drive phone sales, the company has been able to allocate resources more efficiently and maximize return on investment.
Additionally, the AI platform’s conversation intelligence features have enabled Windstream to improve customer service by providing agents with real-time feedback and insights. This has led to higher customer satisfaction and retention rates, further contributing to the company’s growth and success.
4. CHRISTUS Health Plan
CHRISTUS Health Plan, an international faith-based, not-for-profit headquartered in Irving, Texas, deployed an AI platform to automate QA in its call center and better train its call center agents. Support specialists now spend 50% less time scoring phone conversations, making sure that agents use the proper greeting and other script prompts.
Using AI to record and transcribe every call made into the call center also provides CHRISTUS Health Plan’s call center leadership with invaluable, real-life teachable moments that they use to train agents and help drive continuous improvement in the customer experience.
The automation of QA processes has led to more consistent and accurate evaluations of agent performance, allowing for more targeted and effective training programs. This has resulted in higher service quality and improved customer satisfaction.
Moreover, the AI platform’s ability to analyze call data has provided CHRISTUS Health Plan with valuable insights into customer needs and preferences. This information has been used to enhance service offerings and create a more personalized customer experience, further strengthening customer loyalty and trust.
5. AutoNation
With over 300 locations, AutoNation is America’s largest and most admired auto retailer. AutoNation uses an AI platform to train its sales team to close more deals and better serve customers. The platform automatically records and transcribes each inbound call, and AutoNation uses these insights to identify sales agents’ weaknesses and coach them to improve their performance.
AutoNation has also started using AI to automate customer call quality assurance (QA). With automated call QA, AutoNation can select the criteria that make up a successful phone conversation for both sales and customer care agents and use AI to automatically scan every call for those criteria, at scale.
This eliminates the manual work of scoring calls and removes human error from the process. It also gives agents real-time feedback on their performance so they can adjust on the fly, without having to wait for their next meeting with their manager.
The use of AI has enabled AutoNation to significantly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its call center operations. By automating QA processes and providing real-time insights, the company has been able to enhance agent performance and deliver a superior customer experience.
Additionally, the AI platform’s ability to provide detailed call analytics has helped AutoNation identify areas for improvement and implement targeted training programs. This has led to higher conversion rates and increased customer satisfaction, contributing to the company’s ongoing success.
6. Rick’s Custom Fencing & Decking
Rick’s Custom Fencing & Decking is one of the largest retailers of fencing and decking in the Pacific Northwest. Rick’s Custom Fencing & Decking has five retail locations where sales agents take calls and schedule appointments. Before using AI, the team didn’t have a formalized call QA process in place. Sales managers would occasionally listen to calls and give ad hoc coaching. Coaching based on such a small sample of calls was prone to human error and didn’t give a full picture of agent performance.
Now, with AI-driven conversation analytics, the sales managers use AI to automatically QA 100% of inbound calls based on their criteria. The company doesn’t use scripts and instead empowers its sales team to have free-flowing conversations with customers — but there are a few topics that agents need to cover on every call. For example, they need to state the name of the business clearly, mention any upcoming promotions, and ask a list of questions to qualify the lead. If the lead is qualified, they need to ask them to schedule an appointment.
The AI identifies these moments in each conversation and grades the agents accordingly. With AI’s help, the company’s agents achieved a 23% improvement in call etiquette pass rate and were six times more likely to use scripted phrases.
The implementation of AI has provided Rick’s Custom Fencing & Decking with a more structured and effective approach to call quality assurance. By automating QA processes and providing real-time feedback, the company has been able to improve agent performance and deliver a higher level of customer service.
Additionally, the AI platform’s ability to analyze and grade calls based on specific criteria has helped Rick’s Custom Fencing & Decking identify areas for improvement and implement targeted training programs. This has resulted in higher customer satisfaction and increased sales, contributing to the company’s growth and success.
Start Improving Customer Experiences with AI Solutions
These are just a few contact center AI use cases illustrating how artificial intelligence is transforming contact center operations. Automation is also driving greater efficiency in customer interactions while helping to preserve the human touch. Customers can get fast answers to easy inquiries or connect quickly with a live agent if they prefer. And automation supports agents by giving them more information about customers’ needs so they can address them more effectively and deliver the personalized experiences today’s customers expect.
Conclusion
Implementing AI in contact centers is no longer a futuristic concept but a present-day necessity for businesses aiming to enhance customer service and operational efficiency. AI technologies, from performance monitoring to predictive analytics, are transforming how contact centers operate, providing invaluable insights and automating routine tasks.
Real-world examples demonstrate the significant benefits of AI, such as improved call quality assurance, efficient call routing, and enhanced customer interactions. As AI continues to evolve, its role in contact centers will only grow, offering businesses a competitive edge and ensuring superior customer experiences.