Rather than fear robots taking over the contact centre, Teleopti’s Business Manager for UK and Ireland Nick Smith says it’s time to harness the power of both worlds to improve the customer’s experience.
Smith said Teleopti’s experience suggests that both human agents and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have a powerful role to play. On the one hand, AI and chatbots are simultaneously revolutionising customer service and elevating the status of agents.
WeChat in China is one of the most successful pioneers of chatbots supplying 10 million businesses and enabling people to hail a taxi, order food, pay a bill and book a doctor’s appointment without human intervention. However AI is only as good as the data that fuels it and the things AI finds hard are the qualities that make humans unique: conversation, empathy, creativity, intuition and negotiation, Smith said.
He said a combination of AI and well scheduled human agents, with the right skills, might be the silver bullet for effective customer service.
Smith said by the time a customer gets to speak to a live agent, the chances are they have already used their mobile app, searched for answers on websites and trawled numerous YouTube clips to no avail.
“They are frustrated and want to speak to someone who knows all the steps they’ve taken, why they are frustrated and how to solve their query from one single encounter of the human kind. In short, they are looking for a superagent”, he said.
To create a team of superagents, organizations need to re-think their learning environment, capture an organization-wide talent pool in a centralized Workforce Management (WFM) solution and then add Real-Time Adherence (RTA) to re-allocate idle time to training. Through advanced forecasting, scheduling and competence management, human agents will remain more productive and valuable than robots can ever be.
While AI is radically transforming customer interactions but there is no substitute for the human touch when it comes to closing sales calls or delivering an exceptional, personal customer experience, Smith said.
