As your business grows, so too does the demand for exceptional service. In fact, 93% of customer support teams think consumers have higher expectations today than ever before. And, according to Deloitte, your competitors are rising to the challenge. They found that 88% of companies are now laser-focused on improving their support for a better overall customer experience. And more than two-thirds of companies compete primarily based on CX — up from just 36% in 2010.

But with rising costs on, well, everything and rising customer demands, how are you supposed to improve your customer experience without hiring a ton of agents?

Enter AI.

What Exactly is Contact Center AI?

Contact center AI is the technology customer support operations use to identify, understand, and then process insights from daily support conversations. It can automate repetitive tasks, reduce customer wait times, and lower call volume for your agents.

Typically, contact center AI uses advanced algorithms, natural language processing (NLP), and other AI-driven capabilities to automate and optimize the customer journey.

There are a few ways you can use AI in your center. For instance, you can add it to your IVR or use AI-driven virtual assistants and chatbots. These let you engage with your customers in real time without tagging in a human agent. You can also answer questions, provide information, and even help in transactional processes.

You can also use AI to create advanced workflow builders to streamline processes. This makes it easy to manage and automate tasks, so your entire center becomes more efficient and responsive to the customer experience. Hello, CSAT boost.

Learn how to add AI in your call center with advanced IVR and IVA capabilities today.

6 Ways to Scale Your CX Using Contact Center AI

Your customers want answers to their questions before they reach out to you. In fact, if they’re reaching out, they’re already a little frustrated with your process. So, getting them a fast — and accurate — response is absolutely vital to keeping them satisfied. A whopping 82% of people say that getting an immediate response is one of the most important factors of support when contacting a company. AI can help you do that without adding a ton of overhead.

Below are a few ways you can scale your experience using contact center AI.

1. Cut Down Your Hold Times

The average American spends 43 days of their life sitting on hold. That’s 1,032 hours of wasted time customers spend letting their anger and frustration rise.

But AI can slice the time customers spend on hold. Not only does it handle simultaneous interactions, but it can also understand and process information and then trigger actions using that information. So, instead of sitting on hold, your customers get their answers as fast as possible.

2. Provide 24/7 Service and Support

AI doesn’t need a break. It doesn’t sleep, and it doesn’t need a second, third, or fourth cup of coffee. It doesn’t care what time zone you’re in, and it certainly isn’t offended by late requests.

The trouble is, though, that many companies think 24/7 customer support is too difficult or expensive. But it doesn’t have to be. The benefits of always-on service and support far outweigh the hurdles to get there.

Partnering with a vendor (cough, like Broadvoice, cough) can help you add these functionalities without adding a ton of work for your IT or customer service ops.

3. Reduce Your Call Volume

In their 2022 State of Customer Care Survey, McKinsey & Company found that simplifying the customer experience while decreasing call volume is one of the top three priorities for companies today. Adding AI lets you cut call volume without impacting the quality of care your customers receive.

With contact center AI, you can send calls to the right place at the right time without adding a human into the workflow.

4. Serve Up Personalized Experiences (At Scale)

Let’s face it, no one wants to sit on hold for hours or talk to those overly robotic voice machines that can’t really understand what you’re saying. With AI, your contact center can provide a more personalized, human-like touch to your service experience, leaving your customers feeling satisfied and valued.

Your customers are used to (and comfortable with) interacting with self-service tools. But they want these tools to interact with them like a human would — asking and answering questions with variables that can then lead to real resolutions. By adding AI, your contact center can scale the human-like experiences without actually bringing in more humans to handle the interactions.

5. Route Inquiries Faster

Picture this: You’ve called customer support to update your utilities account. You just want to add your spouse to the account, so it should be easy, right? Right…?

An agent answers, but they can’t access your account information and they need to transfer you to their supervisor. You’re put on hold for a few minutes until a supervisor is available. Once they’re on the line, you explain (again) that you need to update your utilities account to add your spouse. Now, they’re telling you there’s an alert on your account, and you need to be transferred (again) to billing to solve it before they can make any changes.

They put you back on hold so they can transfer your call. Then, you’re left to explain your issue to yet another agent. You know the drill.

Transferring customers to different departments or agents doesn’t make for a great customer experience. But with AI, you can create intelligent workflows that collect information once, without tagging in an agent. Then, you can trigger subsequent actions based on that information. This gives your agents more time to focus on the most complex tasks and routes your customers to the resolutions they need.

6. Reduce Agent Burnout

Adding AI to your center can automate some of the most mundane, repetitive tasks your agents would otherwise handle. For instance, several years ago, while I was working at a dental software company, I found that my support team was spending 30 hours a month resetting customer passwords. That’s almost an entire workweek spent resetting passwords. Every. Single. Month.

By automating tasks like call routing, password resets, and other basic customer queries, your agents can focus on more meaningful interactions, improving both customer engagement and agent well-being.

AI can also help your agents manage their workload more efficiently. Interactive virtual assistants and AI-driven workflow builders handle routine inquiries, giving agents a break from repetitive tasks and streamlining their processes.

Tools To Get You Started

This month, we’ve brought our newest feature to the U.S. market: Broadvoice AI. In the simplest terms, it’s an AI-driven workflow builder that can intelligently automate responses, complete tasks, and trigger actions like routing inquiries.

Broadvoice AI uses Advanced Interactive Virtual Agents (IVA) and Advanced Interactive Voice Response (IVR) features to simplify the customer experience and boost operational efficiency.

Here’s a look at each.

Advanced IVA

The Advanced IVA uses natural language voice bots to optimize the customer journey and reduce average hold times and call volume for your agents. It has about an 80% success rate with our international clients and gives you an easy way to add self-service to your experience. What’s more, we manage the workflows with you, so you’re not adding work for an admin or IT.

With it, you can:  

• Intelligently automate responses
• Complete tasks without an agent
• Trigger actions based on collected data
• Understand why customers are calling, then process the information to route customers for faster resolutions

Advanced IVR

Help your customers help themselves with the Advanced IVR. Using dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) automation, your customers can use their dial pad to answer questions and trigger actions without waiting in your agent queue.

With it, you can:  

• Add self-service inside of the IVR using your customers’ dial pad
• Collect information and trigger actions based on the customer’s unique data
• Give customers a way to talk to an agent if an issue is too complex

Want to learn more about Broadvoice AI? Talk to one of our consultants.