In the new normal, contact centers face many challenges impacting their ability to deliver optimal customer experiences. According to a study by ICMI, the industry is experiencing a 58% agent churn rate, causing significant disruptions in contact center operations. The shift to remote and distributed staffing strategies has led to a 39% increase in workforce management systems usage. Contact centers must support call routing from live and asynchronous chat, robotic process automation (RPA), digital process automation (DPA), and chatbots to keep up with the changing landscape.
Call centers are adopting new technologies to enhance and automate operations. One focus area is AI self-service, which involves designing customer experience (CX) and user experience (UX) for omnichannel interactions using digital experience platforms (DXP). Conversational AI, email intelligence, smarter bots, intelligent search, and digital humans are tools used to build a platform for self-service.
Another focus area for call center automation is AI analytics. This involves using cloud-native analytics and business intelligence tools to analyze data and provide insights into call center operations. AI-driven agent dashboards, chatbot analytics, and agent experience analytics are some of the tools used for this purpose.
The third focus area is the agent experience. Call centers can redesign their processes and workflows, optimize their agent desktop user interface and experience, and integrate computer telephony with service and customer relationship management platforms. Additionally, implementing intelligent search can help agents quickly find relevant information and identify knowledge gaps, leading to better training opportunities.
