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It almost goes without saying that we’ve moved beyond the age of telephone-only conversations with customers. These days, customers demand interactions over text, email, social media and yes, even phone calls. The proliferation of such omnichannel customer service together with the scale of interactions means that agents are doing more work than ever before.
Yet even as their workload has increased, how they get their work done often hasn’t changed. After-call summaries and call handoffs can still happen on Post-Its at many organizations. Agents might still be evaluated on a small sample of the hundreds of interactions they engage in every week. And call complexity or the absence of automated processes means agents might have to pause interactions while they complete tasks, increasing Average Handle TIme and raising costs.
Something has to change.
For contact centers who still rely on manual processes, AI-powered tools might be the solution. Such tools can automate manual processes, improve the agent experience and increase the bottom line.
In a recent webinar hosted by NICE, Sheri Greenhaus, managing partner at CrmXchange joined Brooke Phillips, senior project marketing manager and Jared Norwood, customer success leader, both at NICE, for an in-depth conversation about how AI and humans can work together for the best improvements to the customer experience. They explored how AI impacts customer satisfaction scores, uncovered how sentiment analysis can improve the agent experience and detailed how AI can improve agent notetaking and reduce after-call work.
AI’s Impact on CSAT
Customer satisfaction scores (CSAT) are key indicators of how customers feel about your brand. And yet, few contact centers are equipped to be able to make improvements to CSAT at scale. “Organizations know the importance of the agent/customer interaction, but a lot aren’t equipped to execute,” said Phillips.
One area that can negatively affect CSAT is Average Handle Time — no one wants to be on a customer service call any longer than they have to. Even less desirable is the need to repeat your problem to different agents because your information wasn’t passed on efficiently. “Within the contact center there’s an abundance of data and information, which can come across from many different pieces of your tech stack. Getting all that information aligned can be challenging and complex, particularly given today’s omnichannel interactions,” said Norwood.
By capturing data automatically and making it available for the next agent in a clear, consistent manner, AI is well-positioned to make dramatic improvements to CSAT. Notes are cleanly captured, digitally available and color coded to highlight the outcomes of each interaction — no more interpreting handwritten pass-down messages. Giving agents these tools means they’re better equipped for each customer, increasing the likelihood that customers will walk away happy from their interaction.
How Sentiment Analysis Improves the Agent Experience
Let’s face it: without AI tools your contact center managers and leaders simply can’t keep up with the scale of calls to evaluate agents effectively. “When your average agent is taking 60-70 calls a day over the course of a week, reviewing only 2-3 calls of that week isn’t a statistically relevant sample set of agent performance,” said Norwood.
AI models and sentiment analysis give agents insight into each interaction in real time, allowing them to recognize and fix bad behaviors before they become larger problems. “Many companies fail to measure soft skills, which can be subjective and difficult to define,” said Phillips. “AI models that are trained on large datasets can show agents soft skill areas they might be lacking in. This allows agents to self-coach and self-correct on the next interaction, which is a win for your front-line leaders.”
Another win for leaders and agents alike is AI’s ability to evaluate every interaction every time — not just a small sample of the agent’s work. “AI can measure and manage agent performance, getting rid of the need for intermittent agent sampling,” said Phillips. “When agents are being objectively evaluated they feel a greater sense of purpose and take more pride in their work, which ripples into CX.”
How AI Can Improve Agent Note Taking
Contact centers rely on agents to provide a detailed accounting of every interaction. Agents must capture every detail for the next person.
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But this is a lot of manual work. If agents aren’t taking notes while on the call — potentially increasing AHT, then they’re doing it as after-call work, which also increases the cost of each call.
In this environment, AI-enabled note taking should be a no-brainer. “This is one of the most clear examples of AI augmenting the human experience,” said Phillips. “Automated note taking isn’t job replacement; it’s helping agents do their job better through AI assistance.”
AI note taking can have a tremendous effect on the bottom line. A recent NICE survey found that for contact centers with 1,000 agents, even saving 30 seconds per call in AHT contributed to annual savings of $7 million a year. AI makes such time and cost savings possible.
Is It Time to Equip Your Agents with AI?
Bringing your contact center into the modern AI age can have a host of benefits for both agents and customers. On the agent side, reducing the amount of repetitive and manual work they need to perform after each call leads to a higher-quality agent experience, boosting morale and aiding in agent retention. Using sentiment analysis to capture and evaluate every agent call means your agents are judged on the total of their interactions, reducing the chances of a poor evaluation based on one bad call. Finally, improvements to the agent experience have a trickle-down effect on the customer experience. With AI capturing every detail of every call, it ensures smoother handoffs between agents, reducing the customers’ need to repeat themselves to a different agent. This can contribute to faster resolution times and increased CSAT scores.
AI is meant to augment, not replace. Your agents aren’t going away, but with the adoption of AI-powered tools, their manual, repetitive work will soon be gone for good.
Watch the webinar The Dynamic Duo: AI and Humans Amplifying Customer Experiences on demand at nice.com.
