Maybe you’re a little wary of all the AI chatter in the news. After all, new AI products are rolling out left and right from Google, OpenAI, and nearly every other tech company in the world. But is it really that revolutionary? In the contact center industry, it just might be. As contact center AI becomes more and more advanced, businesses are investing more to stay competitive.

And for good reason.

As many as 72% of contact center and IT leaders believe contact center AI solutions will increase profitability and revenue. And more than half (53%) of those leaders say conversational AI has reduced the overall cost of operations in their contact centers.

Implementing AI in your contact center can boost efficiency and productivity while also cutting costs.

Is AI Taking Over Contact Centers?

Nearly every new technology has its group of promoters and its group of detractors. Even the bicycle and the pencil were controversial inventions when they first hit the scene. It’s a reasonable question to consider — is AI taking over contact centers? Will robots take my job?

In recent months, AI has made its way into almost every workplace, from courtrooms and classrooms to even hospitals. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that AI is altering customer service organizations as well.

Fortunately, adding AI and automation to your contact center won’t steal away any jobs — if done correctly. In fact, it can actually make your jobs easier. One Forbes writer said, “It’s not about how to divide the pie; it’s about how to expand it.”

Customer service teams are plagued by high turnover rates, agent burnout, absenteeism, and stress. Think of contact center AI solutions as a way to alleviate the very real pressure that exists in a contact center.

With a solid strategy, AI and automation become partners to your agents and operations. In fact, recent research shows that augmenting human agents with AI resulted in a significant boost (14%) in worker productivity.

Want to see how it works? Here are four ways contact center AI solutions boost your team’s efficiency.

Did you know that improving your call center efficiency affects your CSAT scores? Learn more in our blog post.

4 Ways Contact Center AI Solutions Boost Your Team’s Efficiency

1. AI Improves Routing and Triage

Every customer should receive the highest level of care. Unfortunately, you can’t treat every customer issue the same. It just wouldn’t be practical. Every contact center needs a triaging and routing process to prioritize the most serious and complex inquiries. And it lets you funnel each customer to the best possible help. With all the other work you’re juggling as a manager, this is very tough to do manually.

Contact center AI solutions can help. With natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning algorithms, AI can analyze incoming customer inquiries and prioritize them. Then, it can automatically route them to the most appropriate agent or department. With automated routing and triage, workloads decrease, hold times drop, and first-call resolution rates improve.

2. AI Provides Better Self-Service

Your customers want to help themselves. In fact, recent reports found that 59% of Gen X, 66% of Millennials, and 61% of Gen Z prefer using self-service options. With contact center AI solutions, you can improve your self-service tools.

AI-powered virtual assistants, like IVAs or chatbots, can handle routine inquiries and transactions without involving agents. These bots provide 24/7 support, answer frequently asked questions, process simple requests, and even assist with basic troubleshooting tasks. And, by offloading these repetitive tasks, contact center AI solutions free agents to focus on more complex and high-value interactions. In the end, overall efficiency improves.

3. AI Offers Agents Real-Time Support

Sometimes, agents don’t know the next step or how to respond to a customer. And let me tell ya, from personal experience, that is a scary moment. As a manager, you want to help every agent while they’re on a call. But you can’t be in multiple places at once to offer this level of support.

Contact center AI solutions can analyze real-time conversations between agents and customers. Then, it can give agents contextual insights and recommendations to improve the interaction. For example, AI can detect customer sentiment and suggest a shift in tone. Or they can help agents identify potential upsell or cross-sell opportunities. It can even suggest relevant knowledge base articles or scripts to help agents during conversations. These real-time insights empower agents to deliver more personalized and effective support, which boosts your efficiency and customer satisfaction too.

4. AI Provides Data-Driven Insights

A business that strategically uses data is a business that wins in the marketplace. Contact center AI solutions support this by capturing and analyzing vast amounts of customer data across multiple channels. No more sifting through spreadsheets to find trends on your own!

AI-powered advanced analytics and reporting offer valuable insights into customer behavior, trends, and preferences. This data empowers you to make informed decisions about resource allocation, process optimization, and performance. The result? Greater operational efficiency and better service.

3 Tips for Using Contact Center AI Solutions to Improve Agent Productivity

Adding new tech is daunting. Don’t be surprised if you’re met with a little bit of hesitation. Consider these three tips to effectively implement contact center AI solutions.

Tip 1: Provide Comprehensive Training and Onboarding

Adding AI and automation can completely shift how your team works. Because of this, you need to ensure your agents receive comprehensive training and onboarding.

Find a vendor who offers hands-on training sessions and provides access to resources such as user guides, tutorials, and demo videos so you’re not leaving agents to figure out how it all works independently. If you want AI solutions to improve agent productivity, your agents need the necessary knowledge and skills to use the technology.

Tip 2: Customize AI to Fit Your Workflows

Adding AI shouldn’t mean you completely overhaul your existing workflows. That would be disastrous and would make adopting new tech impossible. It’s important for AI tools to augment your current operations. Work with your IT team and provider to tailor your AI and automation solutions to align with your existing workflows and processes.

Look for a customizable system that lets you adjust call routing rules and chatbot scripts and offers real-time analytics dashboards. By customizing AI tools to fit your workflows, you’ll streamline agent interactions, minimize disruptions, and maximize productivity.

Tip 3: Encourage Continuous Learning and Feedback

Adding contact center AI solutions isn’t a one-and-done process. An investment like this requires continuous learning and improvement. Encourage agents to continuously refine how they use AI in their daily work. Provide ongoing training (as always) and keep up with best practices and updated features. You don’t want your new tech to trip you up. Keep tabs on whether the tools are working and listen to agent feedback to improve agent experience and satisfaction. Through continuous learning and feedback, you will empower your agents to use AI more effectively and drive productivity.

Want to learn about how Broadvoice AI works in your contact center? Chat with one of our consultants.