As AI continues to be adopted in industries across America, call centers are already one of the biggest winners. AI-powered systems are a perfect fit for the needs of a modern US contact center, with significant potential to improve service, cut costs, and boost customer satisfaction scores.
Businesses which are quick to adopt call center AI technology are poised to get the leg up on their competitors, and reap the benefits early.
In this article, we’ll take a look at how AI is transforming call centers in the US, as well as offering practical advice on how to select and implement new technology in your own operations.
What Can AI Do For Call Centers?
Contact centers have long been on the forefront of communications technology. From their introduction in the 1960s, to the embrace of IVR systems across the 1980s-90s, businesses have continually sought ways to improve their customer service.
Today, 2/3 of US businesses are either already using AI to enhance their operations, or are actively moving towards it. Customer service centers are one of the driving forces here.
AI systems offer numerous upgrades over previous generations of knowledge management software:
- Centralizing information from across multiple scattered sources, as well as parsing and collating multimedia content such as videos.
- Creating smart contextual links between different information sources, so that agents can find necessary data with fewer clicks.
- Analyzing customer history and previous contacts to improve call routing with fewer transfers.
- Summarizing previous customer contacts and history to provide agents with a quick overview of the account.
- Offering contextual decision-making trees which are far more smart and responsive than static scripts and flowcharts.
- Integrating training systems directly into the core knowledge base software.
- Presenting AI-powered query portals to customers, allowing self-serve access to a wide variety of answers and services.
AI software solutions are always right-sized. From small startups to large multinational organizations, any customer service operation can be enhanced with modern AI call center tools.
What Practical Benefits Can AI Bring to Call Centers?
For many organizations, customer service is their largest expenditure which does not directly bring in revenue. It’s typical for even a large US business to spend upwards of 5% of their revenues on customer service, and that number can go significantly higher for small- or medium-sized businesses.
So above all, the major benefit of AI call center technology is cost savings.
For example:
- Improved FCR: First-call resolutions are critical for reducing CS costs and boosting agent productivity. Follow-up calls are wasting time and money.
- Reduced AHT: Smart data displays put everything an agent needs in one place, significantly reducing the amount of time needed to find accurate information, lowering average handle times by 15% or more.
- Reduced errors: In some fields, like health insurance, agent errors aren’t just inconvenient – they can be life-threatening. AI ensures agents give the right answer the first time.
- Easier content management: Managing a knowledge base is another time- and money-intensive activity, but AI assistance can cut management time by half or more.
- Boosted customer satisfaction: A well-served customer with fast, accurate service can come away with improved opinions of the company. AI-powered CS leads to huge cust-sat gains.
- Faster training: Integrated AI-powered training allows new hires to onboard more quickly, with accurate information, in the same working environment they’ll be using – leading to training time reductions of 50% or more.
- Easier management: AI can also be leveraged on the management side, providing smarter call forecasts and allowing for more precise staffing – preventing needless waste.
In addition, there’s the possibility of adding customer-facing portals powered by smart AI knowledge management systems. From basic FAQ-style inquiries to account management service such as address updates, bots can now shoulder even more of the workload.
What Are Best Practices For Implementing Contact Center AI?
Implementing new contact center software is a major undertaking, which requires substantial thought and planning. These tips and tricks can help ensure you quickly achieve ROI and start seeing the benefits of AI call center software.
I. Planning
1 – Set clear goals and objectives
While AI-powered contact center tools can provide across-the-board improvements, go into the project with some core KPIs that you intend to target, such as FTR or cust-sat scores. Set reasonable goals for improvement, and you may even be happily surprised to overshoot those goals.
2 – Keep security in mind from the start
A new knowledge management system will have access to vast amounts of sensitive data, including internal documentation and protected customer records. Your security team should be active participants from the early planing stages.
3 – Get stakeholder buy-in
A major software update requires significant support from the executive level, especially those who may be directly affected such as your CTO. Once you’ve settled on a product you like, sell it to the execs and – if possible – get enthusiastic support. If they’re invested, the whole project will go more smoothly.
II. Implementation
1 – Prepare full training materials
Training modules for your new software should be ready to go before any rollout begins. Ideally, this also gives you a chance to practice with making training modules within the new knowledge management system itself. This is also your chance to ‘sell’ your workforce on the new software by emphasizing its benefits during training.
2 – Start small
Even the best-planned software rollout will have unexpected issues. Select one group or call center to be your test bed. Start there, and focus on getting them entirely up to speed before moving on. The lessons you learn from this test case will make the larger rollout happen much more efficiently.
3 – Continually monitor performance
Your first weeks and months with your new AI software should be monitored closely, even day-by-day, looking both for improvements and potential problem areas. Constant monitoring will help you spot minor issues before they grow into major problems.
FAQs
Generally, you should focus on finding a KM system which can intelligently handle large amounts of information, with easy knowledge updates, alongside an easy-to-use interface that minimizes agent friction.
Properly implemented, no! We’ve seen call centers train their staff on new AI systems in a matter of hours.
In short, hallucinations are usually the result of inaccurate or contradictory input data. If your data is clean, hallucinations will be minimal. Further, human agent oversight creates guardrails.
Customers are increasingly willing to use chatbots, especially for relatively minor questions or basic account handling. Numbers vary by industry, but many see upwards of 60% of their customers happily using chatbots.
In Conclusion: AI-Powered Call Centers Are The Future
The benefits of AI knowledge management systems in US contact centers are too big to ignore. AI tools can substantially reduce costs in running and managing customer service, while making agents’ jobs easier, and boosting customer satisfaction with excellent service on every call.
KMS can help make that happen, with our cutting-edge knowledge management and training tools. To learn more about how KMS Lighthouse can help your business improve its call center performance with AI-driven solutions, request a demo today.
