By Amit Gandhi
In recent years, the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has transformed how contact centers conduct business. Companies seeking to improve customer service and rationalize operational costs are increasingly adopting agile AI technologies. What’s significant is that the popularity of AI-powered contact centers is not just another passing technological fad but flows from its potential capabilities to ensure the automation of manual tasks, enhance agent efficiency, personalize customer service, reduce costs, streamline workflows, and much more.
Agile technologies such as AI, ML, NLP, etc., can be leveraged to deliver consistent customer experience across the multitude of communication channels that have since evolved (social media, SMS, voice, webchat, phone, email, etc.), thus giving credence to the oft-talked about Omnichannel experience.
Navigating the shift from Multichannel to Omnichannel
There is no denying the fact that people today crave instant gratification, and customer service is no exception. While a multi-channel strategy allows customers to communicate across multiple channels such as email, social media, etc., it fails to create a cohesive customer experience across these touchpoints. Multichannel strategies, though still valuable, create disjointed customer experiences because they fail to retain customer data, thus preventing agents from driving contextually-relevant communication.
While multi-channel has been a reality of our world for quite some time, what’s evolved is the speed of service on these channels. Faster and more efficient service is not just a ‘nice to have’ anymore but has become a necessity to be able to survive the raging competition. This has necessitated the need for businesses to prioritize seamless customer experience by devising an omnichannel strategy.
Omnichannel strategies go a step further by seamlessly integrating these channels to enable seamless and personalized communication. A streamlined exchange of information equips agents to address customer queries across channels without losing context. Delivering a consistent and cohesive customer experience across channels helps build loyalty and drives business growth and profitability.
Given the evolving customer needs with technological progress, businesses need more than just resolving queries seamlessly. They ought to dig deeper to understand customer preferences and behavior patterns and adopt a unified approach to facilitate the transition.
Achieving Omnichannel excellence with AI
AI-powered contact centers have gained momentum over the past few years. Apart from reducing agents’ manual obligations with task automation, they also have the ability to enhance the quality of customer interactions. Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms can help interpret and respond to customer queries efficiently, also making it easier to deal with high call volumes.
AI-driven contact centers can help implement an omnichannel strategy by integrating with a wide range of communication channels, including email, social media, voice, and messaging apps. Further, by analyzing customer interactions, they can help identify trends and patterns in customer inquiries, thus, enabling businesses to improve their products and services.
Conversational AI Chatbots like InfiBot can handle a range of customer queries like simple FAQs and provide personalized responses based on customer data. NLP-powered chatbots can help analyze customer sentiments and feedback, enabling agents to resolve queries faster and more efficiently. Predictive analytics and sentiment analysis can help businesses in assessing customer preferences and allow agents to leverage cross-sell & upsell opportunities by recommending products and services as per customer preferences across channels.
Video Chat is becoming increasingly popular in contact centers, allowing customers to interact with agents face-to-face from anywhere using their smartphones and devices. This can help improve customer engagement and provide a more personalized experience. With Live Chat,
customers can chat with agents in real-time, thereby finding faster solutions to their queries, and that too with a hint of personalization. CoBrowse is another tool that allows agents to view a customer’s screen and guide them through online processes such as filling out a form or navigating a website.
To realize a truly omnichannel experience, businesses should have the right technologies in place. Having AI in the mix can help you deliver more intuitive customer experiences and ensure that your contact centers stay on top of the competition curve.
The author is CEO, NovelVox