How to Overcome Contact Center Roadblocks
Contact Centers Can Overcome Challenges Through AI
A company’s contact center faces challenges that other parts of the business don’t encounter. They often rely on large numbers of employees who are tasked with reflecting the company’s brand and expertise, while handling fluctuations in incoming traffic. And when there’s a disruption to a contact center’s operations – as we’re seeing now in the form of a global pandemic – they encounter further challenges that affect overall customer service, as well as the business’ bottom line.
Contact center’s need to focus on a long-term, data-driven strategy that includes automated self-service solutions. And this isn’t just self-service for customers in order to deflect calls – the strategy also needs to look inward and provide automated assistance for your employees so they can more quickly and efficiently get customers the information they need.
Here are six roadblocks that contact centers encounter and how they can innovate toward successful customer service:
1. The contact center and the rest of the business aren’t collaborating
It’s vital that a company recognize that their contact center and the technology it uses are their business. A contact center is often the first contact a customer has with the brand, and they’ll remember that experience, especially if it falls short of their expectations.
To properly implement digital self-service within a contact center, businesses must have a solution that aligns with its mission and its customers’ needs. When a company begins its automation journey with Verint, we know the challenge lies in knowing where to start and how to grow, so we offer AI Blueprint™, to analyze your customer data, evaluate your business goals and provide you with a roadmap for success.
Watch how Verint can accelerate your ROI with AI Blueprint.
2. Concern that IVAs will slow them down or add complexity to their operation
As call deflection, scalability and self-service become top priorities for contact centers, many are turning to conversational AI, chatbots and intelligent virtual assistants (IVAs) to fortify contact center operations. These technologies, when deployed correctly, offer your customers the support they need around-the-clock while also reducing costs.
But some contact centers are often wary that new technology will complicate their operation and perhaps even hurt their efficiency – especially as this technology is being implemented.
At Verint, our experts know their way around contact centers. We’ve built the best virtual assistants possible for contact centers whether they’re working in eCommerce, healthcare, or other industries.
Many of these are customized for a company’s needs, but we also offer QuickStart packages to help get your business up-and-running quickly. And when it comes to your employees, there’s also our Intelligent Agent Assist, which gives your employees quick access to all the information your customers need.
3. They have an outdated technology infrastructure
Contact centers may feel stuck with the technology they’ve been using, even if it has become obsolete. This is a concern, especially when competitors are adopting more cutting-edge self-service technologies.
The truth is that these contact centers aren’t stuck. Verint has a modular, open platform that supports even multi-generational systems, so you can start anywhere, while also growing and expanding with enterprise-level capabilities and sophistication that will bring automation up to the level of your competitors.
So even if you don’t have a Verint IVA, you can benefit from our AI-powered conversation intelligence tools.
Learn More About Verint's Conversational AI4. Lack of real-time access to relevant data
When a contact center agent fields a question from a customer, they’re expected to have an accurate answer immediately. As contact center managers know, this isn’t an easy task, and it’s even more difficult when agents can’t quickly access the information and data they need.
Successful contact centers are using intelligent virtual assistants (IVAs) that are designed to work directly with agents. Verint’s Intelligent Agent Assist uses real-time speech transcription to provide immediate clarity for your agents. The IVA allows your agents to improve average handle time, response accuracy and compliance, while also helping with the training process for new hires.
When your agents have access to the information provided by Intelligent Agent Assist, they don’t have to put callers on hold while they frustratingly search for information, or resort to redirecting a caller to a manager.
Read The Guide To Average Handle Time5. Turnover of high-performing agents
The traditional contact center is only as successful as the agents that work there, and when high-performing agents leave, it hurts the overall performance of the operation and the quality of customer service.
But as contact centers employ digital self-service, like an intelligent virtual assistant (IVA) to handle high-volume but low-value interactions, they can re-skill those all-star agents to handle more meaningful tasks within the operation.
When you employ an IVA like Verint’s Customer Service Assistant, you can shift anywhere from 30 to 90 percent of those common questions to automated channels. This solution elevates customer satisfaction and drives operational efficiency by answering questions, taking action on behalf of the user, and assisting with processes.
The Customer Service Assistant can do all of this with a warm, personalized touch, and our extensive library of natural language understanding intents assures a high rate of accuracy.
6. Too much data
Many contact center leaders know that their users provide valuable data, but they’re wary about putting that data to work. Oftentimes, this is less of a privacy or security issue and more due to the simple fact that the contact center is intimidated by the amount of data to process and is unsure how to begin using it to inform their decisions.
This reluctance leaves them guessing about their customers’ needs and how not just the contact center, but the company at large, plans for its future growth and evolution.
Verint’s conversational AI solutions analyze your customer data through advanced machine learning to discover where and how the IVA can accelerate growth while removing blind spots and data bias to help you make decisions that fit your business goals.
These Conversation Insights do the heavy lifting by identifying your customers’ true needs and intents and also uncovering opportunities that your company can plan for in the future.
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