How Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Traditional Call Centers

Artificial intelligence is fundamentally transforming the customer service field. We have already reached the point where it is difficult to tell the difference between a human agent and customer support software.

AI automates repetitive tasks and predicts trends, letting your customer service representatives focus on more complex tasks. Most importantly, it makes your customer service available to customers 24/7.

Here is how AI is changing modern call centers.

Analyzing Data and Providing Predictive Insights

To provide a customer with accurate product and inventory data, a call center agent needs to contact the sales team or manually navigate through a lengthy database. Lengthy response times may harm customers’ experiences. Remember that most of them expect your customer support team to provide instant feedback

That is where artificial intelligence can help. Namely, AI tools will automatically recognize trends in commonly asked questions and instantly scan the database. With the help of AI, customer service agents will be able to find the desired information faster and provide customers with immediate assistance.

Conversational IVR Boosts Customer Satisfaction

IVR benefits call center supportin multiple ways. It improves call routing, helps you measure customer satisfaction, and provides self-service options.

However, traditional IVRs may often frustrate customers. A customer needs to follow complicated voice instructions. IVR menus are often lengthy and complex. Not wanting to waste time, most customers would either ditch the phone call or simply press zero to talk to an agent. That may frustrate your customer service representatives and increase your expenses, as well.

That is where conversational IVR steps in.

As a VoIP company Nextiva explains, advanced IVR with conversational AI uses machine learning and natural language processing to understand how customers make requests. For example, you can teach a virtual agent to understand the phrase “I’d like to schedule an appointment.” Over time, the AI assistant will also understand the “Can you schedule an appointment for me?” phrase.

With AI IVR, your customers can now use their own words to ask questions. The natural language processing technology will automatically predict the caller’s intent and direct them to the right customer support channel. Those services are often used for natural language call steering, appointment scheduling, answering FAQs, booking services, and payment processing.

Determining the Next Step in the Conversation

One of the most challenging things for your customer service team is to recognize callers’ specific needs and take actionable steps to guide a customer down the sales pipeline.

That is where artificial intelligence can help. AI technologies use caller sentiment analysis to help you understand what customers think of your brand. Real-time conversation analytics platforms will listen to customer conversations and analyze their tone and content.

Their goal is to understand how a caller’s tone changes while speaking with your customer support reps. Customer service representatives will know when a customer is satisfied, enthusiastic, worried, or angry. Based on their sentiment, the tool will direct the phone call to the right team and let them adapt their tone to customers’ emotions and needs.

Improving Customer Engagement

To build trust with customers and engage them, call center agents first need to understand who their callers are. They need to know the customer’s name, location, previous service tickets, brand sentiment, etc.

That is why many call centers turn to online business phone options with Voip software. Namely, modern calling software integrates with your CRM, allowing you to centralize customer data and create detailed customer profiles you can achieve this by using VoIP CRM software.

When a customer calls, AI will highlight the crucial information about them and show it to an agent in an on-screen popup. Knowing who the caller is before answering the phone call, customer support agents will communicate with customers more confidently and be able to assist a customer faster.

Automating Many Repetitive Tasks

With the help of AI and automation, customer service representatives do not need to handle repetitive tasks manually. For example, many VoIP services provide predefined responses. In other words, your team will be able to automate time-consuming tasks, such as changing fields, filling in a form, adding an attachment, etc.

Virtual assistants and chatbots can handle many manual tasks. As mentioned above, they use artificial intelligence and natural language processing, meaning they can understand simple customer inquiries and provide natural and accurate feedback.

An AI Development Company will act as your chatbot development partner and offer technical assistance at every stage of the project.

Above all, they are available 24/7/365. That will build trust with your target customers, shorten their purchasing cycle, and encourage them to come back. If they cannot help a customer solve the problem, they will simply point them to the right call center agent.

Over to You

From the examples mentioned above, it is easy to understand that artificial intelligence is not here to replace call center agents. On the other hand, it will only make them more satisfied and productive. AI benefits your business in multiple ways, from improving customer relationships and predicting industry trends to catering to customers 24/7. Most importantly, it will enhance customer satisfaction and boost retention rates.