Highlights:
- Customers expect and demand automated communication channels when dealing with customer service.
- Contact centers can realize improvements in both employee and customer experience with the implementation of AI and automation.
- RingCentral offers digital solutions to modernize your contact center that boost agent performance and enhance customer satisfaction.
A successful contact center is one in which both agents and customers are satisfied with their experience. Implementing artificial intelligence (AI) and automation can help make that happen. As Mark Vogel, Senior Product Marketing Manager, CX and Alex Manzano, Senior Product Marketing Manager both of RingCentral explained at this year’s Enterprise Connect. Their breakout session highlighted how businesses can transform their EX & CX with the embedded AI and automation capabilities of RingCentral Contact Center.
Given the rapid evolution of the world to depend more and more on digital platforms, customer expectations are changing significantly. Today, customers have come to expect service around the clock. They also prefer a variety of communication channels from which to choose aside from the traditional telephone.
That said, optimal customer experience (CX) starts with an excellent employee experience (EX). When contact center agents are well-equipped with the right training, expertise, and tools, they’re better able to perform at their best. In turn, they’ll feel more engaged with their work and be more satisfied in the workplace.
This positive work experience will trickle down to the customer, delivering the type of service clients expect and demand.
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1/3 of your customers will leave after just one bad experience! See how RingCentral contact center helped these 6 companies better serve their customers
Companies can improve their EX and CX with the application of AI and automation. Here’s how.
Market trends
The following are some key market trends, according to CCW Digital’s Market Study on Modernizing Service Experiences with AI and Digital:
- 65% of businesses say very few of their customer interactions are resolved without the help of agents.
- 73% of businesses say many of their digital interactions eventually end up involving traditional telephone agents.
- 54% of businesses believe at least 40% of caller issues will be entirely dealt with via self-service tools by 2025.
- 54% of businesses have plans to update their operations with AI and automation.
Many times, companies do not feel they have the means to offer excellent self-service options on their own. Their version of digital engagement still means that their customers continue to be connected to live agents rather than automated bots, despite having adopted some form of modern technology.
Based on the stats above, most companies believe that self-service platforms are the way of the future, with many believing that their entire customer service environments will be handled via automated tools soon.
More importantly, more than half of companies believe that they can update their businesses and enhance their EX and CX through the implementation of AI and automation.
According to Harvard Business Review research, here’s how customer connection to contact centers breaks down:
- 19% of customers intend to seek a live agent for assistance. They may be connected via Interactive Voice Response (IVR) or chatbot first, then directed to the appropriate agent to help resolve their issues.
- 81% of customers first began their communication with a contact center via digital-first interactions. In this case, customers may start off their communications with mobile apps, websites, or search engines. Following this, their interactions are optimized through the use of conversational bots, smart proactive outreach, or journey guidance until their issues are resolved, entirely through automation and AI.
Given how many customers prefer to keep their journey within the digital world rather than be moved to a contact center, it’s important for companies to connect with their customers earlier on in the process. This can easily be done with the right digital tools in place.
Digital innovations put companies in a more competitive position
Businesses that upgrade their platforms with cloud-based digital solutions are better able to ensure a positive customer experience from the moment customers make their initial contact to the end result of their interactions.
These solutions can take the customer through various entry points with AI-based knowledge, starting with self-service options. If the self-service option fails to resolve the customer’s issue, AI can seamlessly route the customer to the appropriate agents in voice, digital, or a combination of the two.
Automation and AI provide agents with tools to cut down on mundane work and keep them busy with tasks that agents are fully trained and comfortable handling. This helps keep agents more engaged at work and performing at their best and helps agents keep up with a high volume of customers.
What contact centers are left with are satisfied customers and agents who feel more empowered at work.
RingCentral’s digital cloud-based solutions transform CX and EX in the contact center
RingCentral’s AI automation capabilities can help improve the contact center in several ways:
Self-service automated tools. Customers can begin their journey with a contact center through self-service options. AI tools like chatbots and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) create the right scripted experience for customers and interact with customers in a natural conversational way. Customers expect and prefer to have these human-like conversations in both text and speech when they connect with a bot, and RingCentral’s AI can provide that.
Agent Assist. When a customer’s interaction with a contact center must be escalated to a live agent, RingCentral’s Agent Assist can kick in. AI routing can be used to connect customers to the appropriate agent with the skills and knowledge that the specific customer needs, leading to smarter, more personalized connections.
Agents are provided with the right information to offer exceptional customer service, including the customer’s profile and the transcript with a virtual agent. Relevant articles or FAQ documents can also be automatically displayed for the agents based on specific keywords that the customer says or types. Armed with this information, agents will have just what they need at their fingertips to enhance both employee and customer experience.
Knowledge management. The continual process of gathering, storing, maintaining, and sharing information with agents and other team members is the crux of knowledge management. Projecting help to agents in their moment of need is key, as is how AI is leveraged to provide a single source of relevant data to both agents and customers.
Workforce Engagement Management. WEM focuses on increasing agent engagement to leverage AI in such a way as to optimize agent schedules and forecasting, automate quality plans, and provide customized omnichannel analytics.
Proactive Outreach. Reducing customer calls can be achieved by anticipating a customer’s need and proactively reaching out to them via their preferred communication channel before they need to reach out themselves. Oftentimes customers don’t want to bother making a callback. Instead, proactive outreach removes that obligation while providing customers with the solutions they were looking for.
Thanks to RingCentral’s solutions, our clients are seeing a 95% improvement in customer satisfaction score (CSAT), a 30% gain in productivity, and a 30% reduction in cost. We offer everything your business needs to succeed when it comes to customer service.
Get in touch with a representative today and request your free demo.
Originally published Apr 01, 2022, updated Nov 03, 2023
