Call Center Technology Trends: 4 futuristic trends to look out for
Anita Raghav
Nov 2, 2023
Is the future becoming the present faster than ever before? It may just be. AI is revving changes in the ever-evolving contact center. And by year-end, you can expect a complete upheaval in the way your contact center works and delivers customer experience.
With such rapid changes on the horizon, it’s important to stay informed. This article looks at the 4 latest disruptions in the contact center, and the quantum leaps they will trigger.
Goodbye IVR, Hello Voice Bots.
A voice bot now greets, helps and connects your customers faster and better than ever before.
Features to adopt right away: Smart IVR
It is your IVR that will transform into your voice bot.
Few months down the line:
It will be easier than talking to Google Voice, Alexa or Siri.
Smart IVR’s are the first step in this evolution. As of today, your smart IVR can:
- Recognize and respond to simple “yes”, “no”, inputs.
- Ask for and understand verification details.
- Give basic self-service: Now customers calling to check the ticket status/balance /delivery status of their order—just need to ask, and your Smart IVR will fill them on all the details they need.
Your voice bot will answer calls and give your customers:
- Advanced self-help options.
- Quick answers to common technical problems, and faqs.
- An invisible interface. The menu will disappear. Customers will just state their problem and the bot will route them to the best agent for the job.
Call routers with HR skills.
Good Call routing systems will consider more than just queues, wait times and customer priority. Powered by AI, bots will also match on customer sentiment and agent capability.
Features to adopt right away: Speech analytics & Sentiment Analysis
Start developing your AI’s Human resource capabilities now. Use these tools to develop new metrics for your call center—ones that focus on delivering finer customer experiences:
Few months down the line:
We’ve already mentioned how customers will speak naturally to your voice bots about their requirements. Now they will also reach right person faster with AI-powered call routing
Digital assistants that superpowers agents.
Set a person to shovel snow with a spoon in their hand, and you won’t even get a clear driveway. But seat them in a snow blower, and watch them blaze trails across the city. AI will empower your agents the same way. Agents can expect work to be more challenging, rewarding than ever before. And customers will be blown away.
Features to adopt right away: Smart Dashboards
Speech and Sentiment analysis can be combined with your screen-pops and agent dashboard right away to give:
Few months down the line:
Digital assistant prototypes are already being prototyped and customized by businesses and call centers of every size. These assistants will:
Data Ninja Skills for CC managers
Contact centers get a lot of data. But for the first time in history, we have the computing power and tools to harness the data in every single call. You don’t need to categorize or tabulate data anymore. AI will take or of it. And managers will query in simple language. For example, Hey Kookoo, how many leads did campaign x generate?
Features to adopt right away: Analytics & Voice Prompts
Few months down the line: The world is your oyster.
Every AI solution will be customized. How businesses adopt, train and use their AI will determine their success. Managers need to start working with their contact center providers today to get winning AI tools tomorrow.
The future is here.
- Speech analytics is already capable of analyzing your agents’ turnaround abilities (best technical skills, best at calming angry customer, best sales capabilities)
- Sentiment analysis gives an instant analysis of customer sentiment during the call. Keeping tab of sentiment before and after calls will identify agents adroitness at handling irate customers.
- Call routing will continue to consider customer priority, call waits, agent queues.
- It will consider customer sentiment (angry, neutral, happy),
- It will consider customer history (priority customer, recurring complaint, impulsive shopper)
- And match to the best agent as per department (sales, service, technical, support, escalation) and capability (can calm angry customers, is good at upselling, empowered for escalations etc.).
- Instant feedback on every call. Instant feedback will help your agent train far more effectively than quarterly or monthly audits.
- Reduced ACW. SA driven dashboards are auto-filled for agents who can approve with a single click.
- CRM integrated dashboards prompt agents with all the gen they need for improved sales/service.
- Voice power. Speaking is 3x faster than typing. Your agents can now ask their dashboards for tools or information. No more typing and toggling. There is less cognitive load, higher speed and higher efficiency for everyone.
- Study each and every customer and take customization to dizzying heights, prompting agents across the board with upselling & cross-sell opportunities.
- Deep personalization will help agents fine-tune the pitch based on customer history, past purchase patterns, credit scores and more.
- Agents can be empowered to fine-tune price, products, and promotions dramatically altering marketing paradigms.
- Intelligent Barge Ins. Your smart digital assistant will organize smart barge-ins to rescue agents when the going gets tough, or when other work beckons.
- Managers can intelligently seek insights, by asking their Contact Center bots in natural language.
- Analytics lets you analyze by keyword, sentiment, campaign, product and more
