Alex Smith |
Consumers in the fairly recent past were somewhat tolerant when customer service queries took a long time to be resolved, being quite accustomed to a slow process. The experience of waiting on hold to speak with a customer service agent, spending time completing a lengthy authentication process and being transferred to multiple different departments to find the right help was seen as frustrating but necessary.
But that’s no longer the case, says Brian Mistretta, director of product and segment marketing at NICE.
“The tolerance for yesteryear’s call centre experience has largely evaporated,” he says. “Any business that isn’t taking advantage of the reams of data that digital journeys produce and using it to inform engagement with those customers missing out on tremendous opportunity. There is ample, quantifiable evidence that businesses choosing to ‘lean in’ on delivering customer experience (CX) are being rewarded.”
Finding ways to use customer data to inform CX is therefore an important focus for businesses looking to remain competitive in today’s digital world. However, discovering and using powerful insights from customer data can be difficult when customer service agents spend much of their time engaged in mundane, repetitive work such as appointment setting, checking balances and passwords, and more.
“That reality is what prevents agents from being able to engage more thoroughly on complex or emotionally charged customer interactions,” says Mistretta. “Empathy, active listening, taking ownership and leveraging customer data to personalise the interaction – all these important elements of the experience can end up taking a back seat. This is where customer-facing groups that are measured on CX can run into issues.”
However, the solution to this longstanding challenge could be on the horizon. Artificial intelligence promises to significantly expand the number of processes that can be automated, including the monotonous tasks holding agents back.
“AI in its many forms and automation truly can take over those repetitive tasks, freeing human agents to spend more time on complex interactions,” says Mistretta. “This will allow them to realise the goal of being a true ambassador for the organisation rather than a reactive ticket taker who is resetting passwords.”
NICE’s CXone is the only customer-centre-as-a-service platform which includes its own native AI engine, Enlighten. According to Mistretta, this provides the platform with a unique advantage over its competitors.
“Enlighten is unique in that it is focused on CX data, leveraging decades of interaction data, helping organisations to accelerate adoption and successful integration of AI-powered features,” he says. “Enlighten is built into the core of CXone, enabling seamless, intelligent automation and personalised customer experiences across nearly all features of the platform. Unlike other platforms that rely on third-party AI solutions, NICE CXone’s native AI draws from a vast, rich history of customer interactions, large language models and robust natural language understanding, allowing it to generate more accurate insights, optimise agent performance and predict customer needs with remarkable precision.”
Mistretta highlights call summaries, which are either entered into customer relationship management systems or sent to quality managers by agents after a call, as one example of the kind of task CXone can take off the hands of agents.
“These summaries are time consuming and can be biased by human entry,” he says. “At NICE, we provide a turnkey generative AI-powered AutoSummary using Enlighten. This removes bias, allows agents to quickly move to the next interaction and significantly reduces post-call work while also improving accuracy. At scale, it is easy to see how this one individual ‘flavour’ of automation can make a significant improvement in any contact centre – and that’s just one of many examples.”
Beyond freeing up their time through automation, AI is also helping agents become more effective in responding to a customer enquiry by helping them to develop soft skills and knowledge.
“AI is able to actively listen to interactions as they occur and provide recommendations for an agent to stop interrupting the customer, or express empathy when it detects customer angst or frustration,” says Mistretta. “It can also serve up the knowledge agents need during an ongoing interaction. This eliminates the need to hunt for answers or transfer the customer to different groups and brings efficiency to effectively resolving interactions. It also empowers agents and significantly increases their confidence in their ability to help customers.”
The range of uses for AI in CX is set to grow even further in the future, and Mistretta is confident that NICE will be at the forefront of this innovation.
“With CXone and its deep integration of AI, backed by extensive data and market-leading investment and execution, NICE is empowering businesses to deliver more efficient, consistent and proactive customer services,” he says.
Discover more insights like this in the Autumn 2024 issue of Technology Record. Don’t miss out – subscribe for free today and get future issues delivered straight to your inbox!