AI is transforming the contact centre. You’ll be hard pressed surfing news sites without reading about the age of AI and the rise of the bots. While the impact of AI on our lives is debated, the jury is in on AI in contact centres and the verdict is unanimous. AI is transforming contact centres in profoundly positive ways.

Here are three ways in which AI is transforming contact centres:

1. Chatbots are here to stay

Advanced self-service chatbots are becoming a must-have for quick and convenient customer assistance. They are deployed to reduce costs, improve productivity and resolve customer queries quickly and efficiently. They are best placed handling incoming queries that involve repetitive automated tasks and dealing with routine enquiries. They deliver round-the-clock support and immediate responses.

The remarkable thing about bots is that they’re constantly learning and enhancing responses according to what your audience needs. They streamline operations so that you can optimise your most valuable asset – your human agents. This frees up your team to attend to more complex issues, giving your customers the best and most appropriate service matched to their need.

2. Speech activated IVR

AI is simplifying the process for today’s multi-tasking, time stretched customers. Speech activated IVR means customers can be routed using either voice or keypad. This allows customers to simply describe, in their own words, the reason for the call. Natural language understanding technologies capture the caller’s speech and intentions and can reply in a customisable human voice or route the phone call to a human agent.

3. Speech analytics

Your management team can’t listen to every customer conversation, so AI has found a way to “listen in” and improve service. This technology can also be used to analyse the conversation, spotlighting any problems, and enable your managers to gauge agent performance and address issues as they arise.

While the benefits of AI can’t be understated, the deployment requires technical expertise and experience. At 1Stream, we’ve been on the forefront of CX innovation. Our combination of technical expertise, experience and service makes us the ideal partner to optimise your contact centre and deliver on your CX strategy.