Generative AI in the Contact Center

Generative AI, an emerging type of artificial intelligence, is now a significant factor in the call center. Generative AI can support audio, voice, content, and advanced analytics capabilities to a business model that can benefit mainly from real-time information and intelligent assistance.

Learn more about how generative AI is being utilized in contact centers today and how it could benefit contact centers that use the technology while keeping security and ethics, as well as other good practices, in mind.

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How Is Generative AI Being Used in Contact Centers Today?

Voice Generation for Customer Service and Client Calls

Although most people see the term “generative AI” in terms of image or text generation, technology has progressed in areas such as the generation of audio and voice synthesizers.

With the proper equipment, contact centers can use artificial voices trained to sound human-like and answer calls, addressing complicated questions or directing calls to experienced reps like humans. In contact centers with widespread video calls, artificial intelligence avatars that appear and sound precisely like human employees can be created.

Off-hours Customer Service Support

AI agents can be particularly beneficial for international companies, healthcare institutions, and contact centers that have difficulty hiring staff during regular business hours.

Agents, chatbots, and AI could work all day long and never feel the stress or anger that human employees might think if they worked long hours. As the generative AI abilities of AI agents and service reps are constantly improving, they are increasingly adept at managing complex tasks, customer demands, and customer requests without the intervention of humans.

Generative AI tools for contact centers are commonly used to monitor human reps’ calls and provide them feedback about how their tone is conveyed, how the customers are getting this information and other elements that could affect the outcomes of calls.

In addition, these tools are made to meet managers’ and administrator’s needs in mind. Although artificial intelligence is now able to handle all coaching tasks on their own, they are also able to provide information on:

Evaluations of Contact Center Reps.
Coaching sessions that have been conducted previously.
The number of reviews every worker has been awarded.
Other information is presented in an easily digestible dashboard format so managers can intervene to provide additional coaching or discipline should they need to.

Call Recording and Summarization

Artificial intelligence-based platforms for Generative go beyond simply recording calls to contact centers and utilize their algorithmic learning to aid contact centers in extracting greater intelligence and insight from transcripts of calls.

For instance, if the customer service representative is on a 30-minute phone call with a customer, the call involves various issues and alters the tone of the conversation. In this scenario, specific artificial intelligence (AI) solutions can generate AI solutions that can efficiently sum up the discussion into key bullet points, analyze the customer’s mood at various moments in the conversation, and offer suggestions for what or how a representative at the call center needs to follow up with the customer.

In many instances, these tools are equipped to augment the information in the current conversation with previous conversations, purchasing or patient histories, and other information that can inform employees of who the person has become and what kind of experience they can expect from the company.

Omnichannel Content and Communication Enrichment

Contact centers of the future are rarely confined to phone calls. Often, they offer customers the possibility of communicating with representatives via chatbot threads, email, and social media messages. Suppose contact centers choose to utilize intelligent AI-powered chatbots and analytics tools. In that case, they can more easily integrate competent assistance in all the channels customers select to communicate with them.

Due to this omnichannel strategy enabled by the latest AI chatbots, AI assistants can often use their natural language capabilities along with advanced searching capabilities to provide valuable learning resources and base materials for customers, helping reduce the need for contact centers or customer service escalation.

Live monitoring of calls is used to provide real-time analytics on a range of customer and demographic data points—the ability to assess customers’ feelings and offer suggestions for communicating with them and with customers better.

Automated Follow-Ups and Touchpoints

Contact centers traditionally have required employees to perform manual routine tasks like taking messages from customers and calling them, recording and reviewing the transcripts, and following up with clients regularly.

With intelligent AI tools, many aspects of the tasks listed above, such as reminders to complete these tasks, can be automated to ensure employees can concentrate on more complicated tasks that require customer interaction. While they are at it, AI tools set up calls and emails, among other kinds of follow-ups, to ensure that customers are looked after and connected at crucial points in the lifecycle of a customer.

Benefits Generative AI in the Contact Center

Generative AI in the call center can help businesses improve their organization, automate, and meet customers’ needs. The most significant advantages of using the generative AI within contact centers are the following:

Fill in gaps of Employee shortfalls: Artificial intelligence can assume roles open to performing specific tasks at a contact center, including answering phone calls and making and analyzing call transcripts. Generative AI agents are beneficial for 24/7 coverage of phones and international accessibility.
Real-time Detailed Data Insights: Live coaching and potential for performance tweaking are more achievable through generative AI Data analytics. Both prescriptive and predictive analytics, based on AI-driven recommendations, can be utilized to improve the cadences of future calls and behaviors.
Training and Guidance for Employees: Employees can be taught during conversations to make better choices and instantly enhance their communication skills with AI coaches’ help. The approach doesn’t require humans to listen to recordings and provide feedback later when the input might be more challenging to implement.
Improve and learn after Each interaction with a customer: Generative AI systems are trained to handle customer queries and other inputs and provide customers with the most effective solution. Beyond just answering customer queries, the artificially generated AI agents are trained to use the information from conversations to enhance how they interact with customers in the future.

Generative AI in the Contact Center: Best Practices

Utilizing intelligent AI within the call center could improve the efficiency of employees as well as outcomes for customers. However, due to their nature and how they are trained, a variety of AI-related security and ethical issues must be considered before using the contact center AI tools.

To ensure that your team follows the best practices and takes into account the needs and wants of the client, adhere to these guidelines:

Adhere to relevant data Privacy and Usage Laws. This is crucial in a highly regulated industry, such as a contact center or a healthcare facility. To provide a better customer experience and avoid legal actions, you must surpass the basic requirements of privacy and data compliance laws and implement AI guidelines for privacy, which put the user first.
Integrate and embed Generative AI into existing tool stacks: Contact centers should be well-oiled machines; therefore, it’s a brilliant idea to consider investing in contact center tools that are natively equipped with Generative AI capabilities or that can integrate seamlessly with the generative AI tools such as ChatGPT or GPT-4.
Use proven and purpose-built devices for Contact Centers: Look for leading solutions developed by seasoned AI leaders and well-funded, creative AI startups. Examples of top-rated AI-powered generative AI call centers and E-commerce solutions include Gridspace, Salesforce Einstein, Microsoft Copilot, Cresta, and Observe.ai.
Monitor Customer Feedback Priorand post-AI implementation: Chatbots, agents with Generative AI, and coaches can sometimes make mistakes, particularly when they are learning about how your customers work. To identify their errors and prepare them to be better for the next time, you must continue to observe their performance as well as how people feel about the AI-powered interactions.

Bottom Line: Contact Centers Supported by Generative AI Technology

No matter what software you decide to employ in your call center, your customers do not have to feel you’ve left them “left to the robots.”

For more complicated situations in the call center or high-value customers who are unhappy, human beings must always be on hand to provide them with the attention they need. It’s also beneficial to ensure that human workers constantly evaluate and change pre-trained AI responses to match patients’ changing times, buyers, or patterns and shifting customer expectations.

Ultimately, generative AI can provide exciting new opportunities to improve customer service and automate contact centers. However, this technology should be used carefully and with care. It’s crucial that employees and customers feel the center is assisted by AI instead of being dominated by AI.