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The use of AI in business applications has been one of the main talking points of 2024. AI-enabled solutions are the current driving force across many industries and job functions. According to CMSWire research, 30% of CX professionals believe the impact of AI and machine learning will be more transformative or significant on their business this year than compared to last year.
Yet humans are still indispensable to the customer experience, and will continue to be for the near future. According to Deloitte research, 67% of all CX interactions still require some form of human support.
The key takeaway here is to treat AI as a tool, not a wholesale human replacement. Like any tool, AI (specifically business-grade AI with large language models tailored to your datasets, as opposed to generative AI trained on the open web) has specific use cases and areas where it can excel in giving agents and contact centers a leg up on the competition.
In a recent webinar hosted by NICE, Sheri Greenhaus, managing partner at CrmXchange joined Lauren Maschio, senior product marketing team manager and Nick DelleCave, lead business consultant, both at NICE, for an in-depth conversation about how a holistic AI solution can empower contact center agents and improve both the employee and the customer experience. They shared 6 concrete ways where AI can improve agent work, through automating tasks, saving time and applying objective evaluations consistently.
Eliminate Roadblocks With Automatic Discovery
Organizations want to get better at measuring subjective things — things like customer sentiment and customer satisfaction (CSAT). Many already capture the data that would give them the answers they need. But can they take action on all this data? AI helps you discover what’s in your data that you may not be aware of — allowing you to remove product and process roadblocks.
The data you’re probably already collecting can be used to identify trends. But the sheer volume of data collected is inactionable without automating the process to some degree. “AI helps dive down insights to really uncover customer intent. Why are people calling about what they’re calling about?” said DelleCave.
Improve Agent Soft Skills, Improve CX
Another subjective area organizations want to get better at is soft skills evaluation. According to NICE research, 94% of organizations think agent soft skills are important, but 58% of organizations aren’t evaluating agents on soft skills. What’s the disconnect? For many, soft skills are hard to define by definition. This makes buy-in challenging.
To better quantify and evaluate soft skills, AI creates an objective analysis, which is uniformly applied on every interaction. (Prebuilt AI tools exist specifically for this purpose.) By reviewing every interaction on the same objective analysis, AI can better identify agent performance based on all their soft skills — not just a few good or bad interactions. “Being able to sift through the unsaid elements of an interaction to provide an objective outcome is difficult without AI,” said DelleCave.
Give Agents Real-time Interaction Guidance
Agents have a tough job. Many handle dozens of interactions each day and need to use as many as 3-6 different applications during a single interaction. In this environment, AI is invaluable in monitoring every interaction to provide guidance in the moment.
“Real-time guidance reinforces positive behaviors,” said Maschio. “AI gives us the ability to be proactive and serve info to agents live, so they can make course corrections during the conversation.”
Empower Supervisors, Both In Real Time and Post Interaction
Improving the employee experience doesn’t start and end with contact center agents. Supervisors and managers also need a helping hand to objectively evaluate their agents at the scale agents are working.
By analyzing every call and every interaction, AI can identify behavioral trends and offer coaching guidance to managers. This gives managers real-time guidance to deliver more frequently, rather than waiting to give feedback at the next performance review. “You need the consistent feedback to drive change,” said DelleCave.
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Leverage AI To Automate Agent Summaries
Call summaries are essential. They provide information and context about an interaction, which is critical to mitigating callbacks and preventing similar issues. Yet call summaries are time consuming to create, increasing Average Handle Time and contributing to agent burnout.
AI’s ability to automatically generate call summaries and summarize interactions for you instantly and consistently is a powerful resource, and a great example of ROI justification for AI investment. By delegating the task of creating call summaries to AI, organizations can realize an immediate impact on EX and CSAT. “It allows the agent to focus on the customer and not the work,” said Maschio.
The benefits of time savings can be massive. NICE research suggests that for contact centers with 1,000 agents, even a 30-second decrease in Average Handle Time can result in savings of $3.5 million annually.
Maximize CSAT and EX Before, During and After Interactions
Improving customer satisfaction and the employee experience doesn’t just happen once. Rather, successful organizations recognize the importance of a holistic approach to effect positive change within your business.
AI shouldn’t be deployed in only a single area. The customer experience gets better when organizations improve things throughout the entire customer interaction. Tools like AI routing, real-time interaction guidance, supervisor alerts, auto-generated call summaries, interaction analytics and quality management all contribute to better customer experiences and higher levels of agent and customer satisfaction. “Using AI holistically puts you in a better position to identify and address bottlenecks in your processes,” said DelleCave.
Watch the webinar Fueling CX Success: 6 Ways AI Empowers Agents on demand at nice.com.
