Call centers have faced the difficulty of attracting and retaining staff for several years, forcing them to continuously train new people. Agents who often do not wish to stay in this type of position for very long consider the work unattractive and unrewarding, impacting the quality of services.
This is why call centers have begun to innovate and also rely on technologies to improve and facilitate the work of agents and ultimately improve the customer experience.
But where are we, and how far will call centers be able to innovate to constantly improve this agent and customer experience?
An increasingly intelligent customer relationship thanks to AI
In customer relations, virtual agents, also called “chatbots”, are among the most well-known and widespread AI solutions today. They can answer simple questions that don’t require extensive research or answering a complex problem. You can question the AI to find out the status of an order, solve minor technical problems or even talk about billing.
Conversational AI, on the other hand, has emerged more recently in call centers to enable agents to be more efficient through the transcription of telephone exchanges in real time and the understanding of emotions on the phone.
Since November 2022, ChatGPT has appeared and has since caused a lot of ink to flow. It is an AI capable of answering, in an often relevant way, almost any query in natural language. ChatGPT is able to correctly answer simple questions, but also more complex questions. He can provide elements of reasoning, express himself in different languages, analyze or produce computer code, among other things. A revolution that could also happen in the world of customer relations.
Who should not be dehumanized
Technology analyst Gartner predicts that within three years, one in ten interactions with call center agents will be with bots thanks to advances in conversational artificial intelligence (AI), as well as the labor shortages and high human resource costs. But let’s not forget that consumers are more and more demanding and are looking for a harmonious and personalized customer experience. But above all, they want to talk to an agent with human emotional intelligence, who can help and reassure them.
We must not lose sight of the fact that AI must support call center agents and provide them with additional elements to enable them to better personalize interactions. Not everything should be black or white, you have to keep a good balance between new technologies and people in the customer relationship.
The human and technology duo will remain an absolute priority for companies. Innovations will continue to grow, and they will have to be used to improve the experience of agents and reduce the existing high turnover in call centers as a priority. The human, augmented by AI, promises to be the driving force of customer relations for many years to come.