How Call Centers Leverage Machine Learning with Artificial Intelligence 

March 29, 2023

How Call Centers Leverage Machine Learning with Artificial Intelligence 

Machine learning in Call Centers?

A call center is a communication channel where customers report issues or make changes to certain orders. It is a centralized department that handles inbound and outbound calls from current and potential customers. They are therefore built around the concept of the customer’s journey.

Every customer’s journey differs, but you can improve the experiences by incorporating specific strategies. Analysts say the best way to enhance a customer’s journey is by equipping your business with a contact center. Through this, all the customer’s questions and concerns can be addressed. Customers and prospects will feel more comfortable and confident, leading to more conversions.

To most people, a contact center is just where customer service agents are placed, ready to receive calls from customers and prospects. While the idea may not be far from the truth, understanding that more goes on in a contact center is essential. Most activities are doable by humans, but contact centers opt for artificial intelligence and machine learning because of the workload intensity. 

Optimizing Contact Centers with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

While artificial intelligence and machine learning are still advancing, the progress so far is splendid, allowing contact centers to use them for various benefits. 60% of companies incorporate artificial intelligence and machine learning into their systems for better contact center quality assurance, yielding positive results. 

Artificial intelligence and machine learning can help reduce overhead costs, increase agents’ proficiency, and bring forth practicable analytics when used appropriately. The two can be utilized differently for precise results. 

Artificial Intelligence

You can use artificial intelligence in the following ways to benefit your call center;

Predictive Call Routing

Predictive call routing has often been regarded as a technology that redirects a call to a specific department, but there is more to it than that. Predictive call routing involves matching contact center callers with certain customer care representatives who, due to character traits or competence, are uniquely qualified to address a problem.

For a thorough comprehension of the customer experience and consumer personas, the software is equipped with different behavioral profiles, which it uses as a benchmark. Therefore, each client’s engagement with customer service, including the entire customer experience, may be highly customized.

The artificial intelligence software examines natural tendencies and conversational propensities to match every inquiry with the representative best suited to handle particular customer concerns. This will ensure tickets are handled promptly and successfully, freeing time for other issues requiring attention. Businesses must develop measures to gauge the personality traits of particular representatives, the regular ticket response time, and subject matter competence before implementing this AI.

Using AI to Customize Customer Experience

AI-based call routing is just the beginning of a process that will allow users to have a more customized experience and receive more appropriate services. The second approach is customer relationship management (CRM), which reviews and controls a business’s connections with its past, present, and future clients.

With a particular emphasis on retaining customers and increasing revenue volume, this strategy uses client history data analytics to fortify commercial ties with them. Data might be linked to advertisements, activity histories, purchases, and other topics. It originates via various communication platforms, including the business’s social media accounts, webpage, phone numbers, or email.

With a well-equipped CRM and AI call routing, you can personalize service for your customers to meet their expectations. By using a CRM strategy, businesses can better understand their target market and determine how to satisfy their needs. Call center representatives can employ tailored processes and advertise goods that consumers are more inclined to buy rather than pick random products hoping they can sell at least one.

Chatbots

Also referred to as conversational AI, chatbots have changed the game for most businesses operating online. If you have been to a website and a pop-up chat box appeared asking whether you need assistance with anything, then you have an idea of a conversational AI.

According to statistics, 82% of consumers and prospects prefer interacting with brands directly on their websites rather than engaging in call center customer service. This is why companies have chatbots representing agents on their websites.

Through chatbots, consumers can interact with website content and self-service help alternatives in real time without speaking to a service representative. Prospects can handle issues as they occur, which lightens the workload on business agents. Chatbots cut the call volume, freeing call center operators to work on more complex problems rather than basic queries.

Voice Analytics

Voice analytics involves using a voice recognition tool to listen to, assess and document a spoken discussion, usually over the phone. These tools are known to translate speech and analyze audio patterns to understand the speaker’s mood and the call’s purpose.

Going through every call manually to determine whether the agents followed protocol can be tedious. Hundreds to millions of calls go through call centers daily, all needing analysis. Businesses do this to determine if the customer’s concerns were addressed with the first call, which overall helps understand the customer journey. Voice analytics can help ease the process by filtering keywords and highlighting them whenever used and identifying calls that may need further review.

Interactive Voice Response

Most of us have interacted with interactive voice response AI. When you call a customer service line, and an automated voice responds asking you for details like your name, member number, the reason for calling, and so on, you engage with one of these. Though many customers dislike interactive voice response AIs, they help resolve more than 60% of calls without the help of an agent.

A recent study proved that when companies equip such AIs with well-defined answers, the pressure is relieved on agents, making it easier to operate contact centers. If your company receives thousands of calls monthly, this type of AI will help you. 

Machine Learning

The ability of artificial intelligence to analyze information more effectively and quickly than humans makes it a crucial component of call center operations. Machine learning, AI’s most current growth, gives rise to this incredible power.

The goal of machine learning, a subfield of artificial intelligence, is to develop algorithms capable of studying and retaining information from data, identifying particular characteristics, and predicting outcomes. Think of machine learning as teaching a child to differentiate donkeys from horses. During the learning process, you define the horse’s characteristics that make it different from the donkey and vice versa. With time, the child will have a vast knowledge of the two and quickly tell them apart.

This is the same approach used by machine learning. If you supply information such as employee data, customer characteristics and company history, the machine will master what you are dealing with. Any patterns it realizes will be used for predictions. 

Summary

Contact centers can leverage machine learning and artificial intelligence to automate uncomplicated tasks, deepen analysis, aid agents in achieving faster response times, improve first-call resolution, and, most importantly, better the customer experience. The best thing you can do for your customer service team at the contact center is to find the best artificial intelligence and machine learning software in the market to partner with.