It’s no surprise that contact centers today are struggling. High and fluctuating call volumes, labor shortages and frequent employee turnovers, and ever-escalating customer expectations can be significant challenges. Call center outsourcing is one common response and often contains a wide number of components including offshore third-party organizations and automation.
While these contact center tools can alleviate some of the pressure, the best call center outsourcing solution includes conversational artificial intelligence (AI). This technology can recognize multiple caller intents and “understand” more like a human being. This ability allows it to successfully resolve common customer questions and problems without human interaction.
Call Center Automation Solutions – Then and Now
Early contact center automation solutions began with phone trees, which limited responses or resulted in lengthy mazes that often led to no resolution. Interactive voice response (IVR) followed, which provided additional options but still required structure to achieve a satisfactory result.
Today, the best call outsourcing solution employs automation technology that includes conversational AI. This type of solution can understand multiple caller intents while allowing callers to speak naturally.
What is the key differentiator between then and now?
Original human-to-machine technology solutions frequently required people to conform to robotic, structured patterns of speech, which became frustrating and inefficient. In contrast, today’s conversational AI uses
- natural language processing,
- machine learning,
- and big data to enable computers and humans to “talk” with one another more naturally.
This technological advancement increases overall customer engagement and satisfaction.
Replicant’s call center outsourcing solution
Replicant’s Thinking Machine is a conversational AI-driven call center outsourcing solution that can easily resolve common, Tier One customer requests with equal efficacy and at a lower cost than adding more live agents. It can
- scale according to demand,
- handle an unlimited number of simultaneous calls during high-volume periods, and
- free up precious live agent time to focus on high-value requests that require human empathy and creativity.
Contact centers that employ The Thinking Machine can add capacity, pay for only what they use, and save roughly 55% over other outsourcing solutions.
Conversational AI in action
According to Forbes, “Today’s customers want to solve their problems with the fewest number of steps possible. They value quick and ultra-personalized responses and the resolution of queries in their first interaction with a customer service channel or representative.”
Conversational AI technology can play a critical role in just about any industry that operates a customer contact center. For example, when a customer calls a hotel to book a room, Replicant’s Thinking Machine can identify the caller by phone number and address him or her by name.
Understanding the steps required to book a hotel reservation, the Thinking Machine informs the customer it can help. Then, requests the number of nights required as well as the dates of the stay. If the customer has booked a reservation from the hotel in the past, the system then pulls up the customer’s purchase history from a CRM, suggesting the same type of room reserved in the past. After the customer confirms, the payment is collected, the reservation is finalized, and a confirmation email is sent. This process delivers superior customer service from beginning to end.
Learn More
Reach out to Replicant today for more information about call center outsourcing. Calculate the contact center automation ROI for your specific business. Let us look at your current investments, the integrations that would be required, and offer areas of cost savings and efficiency.