Don’t Wait, Automate
A few years ago, 76% of contact centers were planning to invest in artificial intelligence within the next two years.
The trend was accelerated by the pandemic and the Great Resignation. Fast forward to now, and the trend hasn’t stopped climbing. In 2024, more than half of contact center and IT leaders (53%) report that conversational AI capabilities have reduced the overall cost of operations at their contact centers.
And six months from now? Contact centers that haven’t moved to adopt an automation solution will likely be regretting it.
Contact Center Automation is an emerging category in which companies automate tier 1 customer service while empowering agents to focus on more complex and nuanced customer challenges.
It helps augment customer service and allows brands to stand out among consumers by providing always-on, rapid service for everyday questions over any channel.
It frees up agents to be more engaged and more available for customers who truly need human assistance.
And, it allows contact centers to begin reaping the compounding benefits of automation faster than their competition.
6 Reasons To Start Now
Here’s 6 reasons why contact centers who start using automation now will benefit most, and why those who wait will be kicking themselves six months down the road:
1. Your Competition Is Already Automating
Just over half (59%) of companies surveyed in IBM’s 2024 Global AI Adoption Index are exploring or deploying AI and plan to accelerate their investments in such projects. This looks at all industries, not just contact centers…
Contact centers who adopt automation are making a transformational decision. They’re not simply adding another tool that adds incremental efficiency gains to agent workflows, routing trees, or channel-specific interactions.
They’re getting a rapidly deployable platform that completely offloads tier 1 requests from their agents and adds unprecedented analytics that allow managers to make smarter decisions. They’re able to completely eliminate wait times in an era where many brands are losing customers due to a nationwide agent shortage.
2. Implementation Can Take Just Weeks
Replicant’s Contact Center Automation solution comes 80% ready to deploy right out of the box, because it’s purpose-built for customer service. This means that contact centers who begin implementing now don’t need to wait months to go live. They simply have to focus on customizing their solution for their brand’s support conversations.
The only work needed to deploy Replicant’s Thinking Machine is integrating the solution into your systems and personalizing the solution for your business. A weeks-long deployment means that you can start seeing a return on your investment as soon as the Thinking Machine is taking calls.
3. Agent Wellness Improves Instantly
Contact Center Automation can remove all repetitive, tier 1 requests from your representatives’ plates. This is an unprecedented value-add for a group of employees that is seen as one of the most stressed in the world.
83% of agents in one study cited a lack of data and/or appropriate tech tools as the largest barrier to resolving customer issues. 96% feel acutely stressed at least once a week. Almost half cite ‘too many calls’ as their biggest challenge. They’re being asked to manage 7.2 more calls per day.
Imagine you’re a contact center agent who has spent years taking wall-to-wall requests every day, with the majority of them being the same question over and over. All of a sudden, you’re completely liberated from these conversations and tasked with only focusing on engaging, creativity-driven requests. That’s the power of Contact Center Automation.
4. Your Busy Season Becomes Manageable
Both the Great Resignation and pandemic-related spikes in call volumes have made forecasting staff requirements a difficult task. Throw in seasonality for industries like ecommerce, insurance, healthcare, etc., and planning for high demand becomes downright impossible.
Traditional solutions like temporary employees and Business Process Outsourcing (BPOs) no longer deliver the value they used to. They’re expensive, come with long training tails, and often lead to scoping and cultural challenges.
Contact Center Automation helps managers plan for seasonality by providing a catch-all solution for repetitive use cases – order updates, requests for documents, account management – that make up the majority of inbound requests.
5. Valuable Datasets Get Built Faster
Arguably the most important benefit of beginning automation sooner rather than later is the data you’ll begin to build. One reason for this is that automation solutions utilize conversational AI to power interactions. Conversational AI relies on continuous learning models that allow it to get better at conversing with every interaction it has.
Another reason is that Contact Center Automation provides user-friendly insights to managers that surface new automation opportunities, unseen customer patterns, and KPIs for every call or chat it takes. Contact centers who are already accruing this data will be able to scale quicker and smarter than their competitors.
6. Costs Are Never Out of Your Control
Replicant’s Contact Center Automation platform is elastic, meaning it can scale up infinitely, or be completely offline and cost you nothing while not in use. Contact centers with Replicant in place gain the peace of mind that no spike in requests or shortage of agents will hinder their ability to provide stellar service.
They also gain a forecastable ROI that builds a business case to automate further flows, or even replace their IVR as a whole. With every automated flow, ROI builds and contact centers essentially gain a greater pool of cost-effective, predictable tier 1 agents.