The only real constant is change. This is truer than ever within the CX industry. Expectations are increasing, and not just from customers. The Great Resignation has led to a power shift leaning now in agents’ favor.
It’s no longer enough to focus on agent productivity, as agent satisfaction is just as crucial. Agents must be empowered to do their jobs as effortlessly as possible, in order to reduce frustration and churn. This is where AI and automation tools come in to simplify agent experiences.
Of equal importance is recognizing that on the customer side, the expectations for self-service have increased. 80% of customers no longer want to engage with a live agent. Instead, they prefer to start their journey digitally on the channel of their choice and then transition seamlessly to the right agent.
With these industry trends in mind, RingCentral Contact Center has been enhanced to include tools for automation, self-service, and agent assistance.
⭐ Take your contact center to a whole new level ⭐
Next-Gen Cloud Contact Centers for Dummies®, RingCentral Special Edition eBook
The new wave of automation
Conversational AI and automation have a significant impact on both customer and employee experiences in the contact center. In the past, configuring and deploying a chatbot or a virtual agent was time-consuming and tedious. Now, with the addition of Virtual Agent Hub to RingCentral Contact Center, anyone in your company can easily create automated and digital-first experiences that delight your customers.
Virtual Agent Hub simplifies the deployment of conversational chat & voice bots for smarter self-service and automated experiences for customers. It enables businesses to leverage a low or no code orchestration engine to securely register, preview, and customize AI-powered bots with ease for speech-enabled IVR and text-based (chat) interactions.
Happy and productive agents
Empowered agents mean satisfied customers. RingCentral Contact Center now offers AI-driven tools to help agents do their best work.
Real-time interaction guidance and behavioral coaching incorporate AI on every call to help guide agents, detect negative customer sentiments, and make suggestions in real-time to fix potential issues.
Multiple enhancements around workforce engagement management (WEM), such as additional language support, new channels, and improved analytics help enhance agent productivity.
Enhanced routing and omnichannel
We know that contact center managers always want to route a customer interaction to a tight range of proficiency levels to ensure the most capable agent handles the inquiry. However, as the interaction waits in queue for a specified time, managers can now broaden the range of proficiency levels to expand the agent pool available to handle the interaction. This ensures that customers get a qualified agent to help them in the least amount of time.
We have also expanded our omnichannel capabilities to include Instagram Direct and WeChat.
Digital adoption drives AI and video
RingCentral Engage Digital released a beta integration with Google Agent Assist. Built using Google’s best-in-class Google Contact Center AI, this integration empowers agents to respond faster and better with AI-powered Smart Reply and FAQ-Assist capabilities.
RingCentral’s video capabilities in Engage Digital now help customers seamlessly elevate a conversation from any digital channel to a video conversation with an agent. We see new and powerful use cases in Retail and Ed-tech, especially after the pandemic.
More upcoming features
As we continue to expand our contact center capabilities to keep up with changing expectations and demand, here is a sneak peek at what’s coming soon.
Google Agent Assist
Google Agent Assist integrates Google Cloud Contact Center AI (CCAI) with RingCentral Contact Center to monitor voice & digital interactions between live agents and customers. It also provides agents with relevant knowledge articles based on key phrases that a customer says or types. This will vastly improve both the agent and customer experiences.
Guide
- Provides proactive contextual guidance for consumer digital journeys on the web & mobile by engaging consumers as they browse search engines.
Bot builder and BYOB
- Quickly and easily integrate your existing voice & chatbots or build your own bot to provide customers with a smarter self-service experience
Watch our RingCentral Contact Center release recording to learn more about the release. To learn more about the RingCentral contact center, request a demo.
Originally published Mar 10, 2022, updated Jan 17, 2024
