Artificial Intelligence (AI) is something every company should consider leveraging. The most significant impacts of integrating AI with your phone system are more efficient contact centers and improved customer service. AI lives and breathes around contact center phone systems, as this is where most customers have the greatest need and where you can learn the most from the data.
In today's world, it's hard to miss some of the major advancements in AI, with the release of ChatGPT. This technology has taken the world by storm and has many wondering what's next and how can it work for them.
Many people forget that AI doesn't have to be complicated. AI is a trained algorithm that operates on a data set. Once we give this algorithm a name such as anti-lock braking systems, lane departure warning or customer service assistant, AI doesn’t seem so foreign.
Too often AI can overwhelm people as they see advanced use cases of ChatGPT, robotics or other advanced AI applications. In reality, many AI implementations are straightforward from the perspective of your company's business process. It’s important to remember that AI can be viewed as an algorithm built around a specific data set with a name associated.
How Can You Use Data From AI To Improve Your Phone Systems?
One great application for integrating AI with your business phone system is predictive routing in a call center. While it is AI in its simplest form, it can have a high impact on your clients calling the customer service center.
Recently, I was speaking with a prospective customer, a credit union. When this credit union’s calls come in, they know who is calling, what services they have and what they called in about last time. Why are callers just being routed to the next available agent? That doesn't make sense. If they notice the customer is in loan default, send them to collections while on hold. Why not tell callers about the products they don't have instead of having the same static on-hold music as advertising? For example, the credit union could tell them they're about to overdraw their checking account. Use the data you have to shape your customers’ experiences. These examples sound different from AI because we're used to them, but they are absolutely all forms of AI.
If you have an extensive data set about a customer or member, use that to improve their experience. We've done that for many clients, encouraging them to use data to improve the customer experience when interacting with their brand.
How Can You Improve Customer Service Using AI?
There are many roles that AI is beginning to play in customer service. AI's primary function is to fill in the gap in qualified employees. These gaps are often found in AI-powered chatbots or voice assistants. Brands are looking to these AI-driven agents to fill the gap where their team can't serve their clientele.
In a recent implementation by BCS, we were able to mitigate inbound phone calls by over 75% by giving customers the option to self-service via an AI-powered bot. Processes like this may sound like your clients are getting a reduced level of service, but it’s actually being increased.
When agents become stressed and customers become irritated from long hold times, they are likely to interact negatively with staff. You can mitigate this by using an AI bot to handle routine interactions. When you use this approach, you enable your customer service department to resolve everyday interactions quickly and handle large volumes of calls in a timely and cost-effective fashion.
BCS recently enabled a call center with the ability to allow customers a self-service reorder of products via voice or SMS bots. The bot validates the user, takes their order, adjusts product quantities, pushes the order to the backend ordering systems and schedules delivery dates. The user also has the option to opt-out and speak with an agent instead.
These changes may seem small, but clients have saved nearly $250k per year on their customer service teams. These costs don't even account for their reduced staffing needs. To say there is a benefit to customers and the internal business is an understatement.
For more information on how you can integrate AI with your business phone system, schedule a call with us.
Topics: Business Phone Systems, AI
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