Customer Service
Contact centers adopting AI, automation to boost customer experience
April 27, 2021
In a quest to improve customer experience, contact centers are increasingly deploying artificial intelligence as well as automation, according to a CallMiner study conducted by Forrester Consulting.
The study revealed that a majority of businesses intend to maintain remote or hybrid contact centers and are viewing phone support as the "new empathy channel," according to a release on the study findings.
Nearly two-thirds (65%) of companies are increasing attention on boosting the customer experience and aiming to create "empathy agents."
Additional findings include:
- 70% of respondents agree that a good customer-agent experience often deescalates a bad brand experience.
- 68% of respondents agree the phone has become the new empathy channel for customers, and most agree that CSRs are now dealing with more complex customer requests (67%) and emotionally charged customers (70%) than ever before.
- Respondents admit it is challenging for CSRs to anticipate customer needs (57%) and to consider, interpret and even measure a customer's dynamic emotional state (56%). According to the study, 53% of respondents also struggle to understand a customer's full journey, as well as to support supervisors now that are physically separated from their teams (57%).
"The pandemic upended the standard ideas of customer service. To meet these shifting demands, organizations have had to accelerate digitalization, automation and AI strategies," Jeff Gallino, CTO, CallMiner, said in the release. "To effectively arm CSRs for every customer conversation, including the emotionally driven ones, brands must prioritize analyzing every interaction. Being able to interpret emotion and identify patterns from customer interactions at scale enables organizations to more effectively support CSRs and use those insights to drive improved enterprise-wide decisions."
