Artificial Intelligence: An Essential Ally for Contact Centre Agents

AI can dramatically improve customer experience and contact centre efficiency. However, agents may fear being replaced by technology. In reality, the opposite is true. AI is their friend, enabling them to deliver a better customer experience. It does this in three ways:

1. Empowering agents with AI-driven insights 2.

Agents are often unable to respond effectively to customers because they don’t have immediate access to the right answers. AI-powered knowledge management allows agents to ask questions using natural language and automatically provides consistent and accurate answers. Digital interactions can also be analysed as they enter the contact centre, so that agents are prepared with the relevant templates and the right knowledge to respond to their query. In addition, by using AI to access information about the customer journey or in CRM systems, agents can offer a personalised service, tailored to each customer.

2. Streamline agent workload with contact centre AI

The use of chatbots and AI-based self-service solutions is an excellent way to divert routine calls coming into the contact centre. This means that agents can focus on more complex interactions, where they can use skills such as empathy to deliver an enhanced experience. This, in turn, can make their roles more interesting and rewarding. In addition, through intelligent routing, calls or digital interactions can be automatically routed to the best available agent, preventing calls from being diverted or customers from being put on hold.

AI can also reduce workload in other ways. For example, it can be used to perform security and verification checks before answering a call. This minimises the agent’s administrative tasks and allows them to focus on establishing a relationship with the customer from the outset. Automating post-call processes, such as summarisation or categorisation, also saves the agent time.

Finally, AI can increase productivity by automatically identifying and exploiting cross-sell and up-sell opportunities. By analysing the conversation in real time, it can provide the agent with information about special offers or additional products to include in the dialogue. For example, if a customer is booking a holiday in Paris, AI can tell the agent about special offers on local attractions while talking on the phone.

3. Support agents better and reduce stress.

Being an agent can be stressful. Customers often get angry, especially if they have had to wait to speak to someone. This affects wellbeing and can lead to burnout and job abandonment.

Artificial intelligence can help agents during calls by automatically analysing conversations. By identifying tone, sentiment and what is being said, AI can use this information to take specific actions. It could automatically provide information to solve a problem. Or ensure compliance by flagging specific areas, such as terms and conditions. AI can even flag specific calls to supervisors. They can assist agents by joining the call or providing information via chat. Use the AI’s post-call analysis of interactions to pinpoint times to coach the agent, identify training needs and improve performance.

All this reduces agents’ stress and makes their work more rewarding. This translates into higher agent retention, which means organisations retain experienced staff for longer. It’s a virtuous circle: happier, more experienced agents deliver a better service, which improves contact centre performance.

All of these examples show the benefits that AI offers agents. And as AI continues to develop, especially through natural language processing, it will provide new ways to help agents in their roles. What is critical is that AI is fully integrated into customer service processes, assisting agents rather than replacing them. In this way, customers will benefit from a combination of human capabilities and technology to offer them a complete experience, whatever their needs.