Pandora's box
Following on from our last blog about the 3 major concerns with integrating generative AI into the customer journey, we are turning the tables and discussing the top 3 advantages of integration.
Part of our mission to closely follow and participate in the generative AI revolution, is to understand how and where we can support our customers with their integration journeys and how, where and when it can create advantages for their contact centre operations.
The top 3 advantages…
While being actively aware of the risks and concerns of integrating generative AI, we are also aware of and excited about the huge advantages it can bring to contact centre operations and, the customer journey.
With our guest host, Gerry Brown, Chief Customer Rescue Officer at The Customer Lifeguard, leading the conversation once more, we asked our four experts from the CX industry about the advantages they can see and predict with generative AI integration.
So, let’s start with one that's highly relevant in the current climate.
1. Releasing valuable resources:
When an AI chatbot is implemented well, with deliberate conversational design, it can help your contact centre team and the whole company to reap the rewards.
AI chatbots work well for high demand, low risk questions. What this means is that you can free up your agents from a large number of simple queries, releasing their time to focus on the more complex queries and adding value to interactions.
‘What AI will allow us to do, is to release that resource, to work on more of those hot topics, damp and mould, heating, ASB etc. That’s really for us as a social housing company, where the benefits are, that we can do more of the stuff our customers are asking us to do…’ Chris Nicholson.
Supporting the more difficult queries, extends to support of those who are most vulnerable, providing human-to-human support for those who need it most.
Sarah Williams explains, 'The efficiencies, the reduced effort that the chatbot can handle multiple contacts, but also then that in itself frees up our staff to deliver that human touch that you’ve talked about.
At Christmas, we get flooded with calls about when do the Christmas lights get switched on, and how can I recycle my Christmas tree.'
Sarah continues, 'If the bot can answer all of those queries, then it leaves our contact centre staff the time to handle those more difficult queries that really require human intervention.’
2. 'Always on' 24/7 service:
With the high demand queries, having a chatbot that can answer your query 24/7 is a huge benefit. It can help support those who are unable to make contact during the working day.
‘I think that always on, the 24/7 availability to resolve customer requests outside business hours is really key…’ Sarah Williams.
Chris Nicholson from Riverside Housing goes on to explain, 'It’s that on-the-go mentality. So, as an organisation, I’m providing an accessible service to a customer, at any point, at any time.
So, you could be down the pub, you could be down the shops, and very quickly, you can send us a synchronous conversation, or we can have an a-synchronous conversation.
I really think it opens up Pandoras box to a better level of service, both at the front end for transactional queries and then also when it gets to the contact centre, we can start to deal with more of the stuff that we really want to.’
3. Customer data insights:
Understanding the needs and demands of your customer, with detailed data insights can create a more responsive customer experience.
‘What I like particularly about chat AI, is that intent recognition, that really rich information data that allows me to go in there and really understand what our customers want us to do. I really understand the pinch points.’ Chris Nicholson.
With the detailed data that generative AI can create, there is potential for insights that drive faster and more efficient resolutions, supporting agents, especially in challenging times, like the cost-of-living crisis, and in particular, can deepen the support for the most vulnerable customers.
‘It’s about ensuring that we support agents with the right information but also have the ability to summarise those calls and save time, pull that data into the back end so that we can use that, so that we can start to build out those potential opportunities further down the line.’ Darren Jeffery.
To summarise…
These three advantages, both separately and together, can offer major benefits to customers. By freeing up resources, providing a 24/7 service, and delivering high-quality data for analysis, it’s possible to enhance the service for all customers, especially the most vulnerable ones.
However, while generative AI has the potential to support the improvement of the customer journey, it’s important to remember the importance of human-to-human interactions.
‘It’s really important that we don’t lose the human touch and there’s a risk if we become overly reliant on bots that we will lose that.’ Sarah Williams. Ensuring that we ‘balance the usage of human interaction.’
What’s next?
With such a valuable point to finish the considerations of the concerns and benefits of integrating generative AI, balancing the human interaction is worthy of further discussion.
After all, we are serving humans in the customer journey!
Our short blog on this topic, ‘Balancing the usage of human interaction’ will follow shortly.
Thank you to…
We’d like to thank all the panellists of the round table for such an informative and invaluable discussion.
- Chris Nicholson, Contact Transformation Manager, Riverside Housing
- Sarah Williams, Chief Customer Experience Officer, Westminster City Council
- Darren Jeffery, Head of Customer Operations, Smartest Energy Business
- Sally Greenaway, Customer Experience Director, Premier CX
And Gerry Brown, Chief Customer Rescue Officer at The Customer Lifeguard, for his great hosting of our panellists.
If you need advice on how to integrate generative AI into your contact centre operations, please get in touch.
Written by:
The Premier CX Team