Guest contributor |
What is successful customer service? For us, it involves more than simply resolving issues. It is about delivering personalised interactions and engaging experiences that foster meaningful connections with customers.
More organisations are turning to generative artificial intelligence technology, which allows them to analyse vast volumes of data from multiple sources and generate automated, relevant responses to customer queries. Certainly, AI can streamline processes, enhance agent productivity and elevate the overall customer experience. However, for AI to deliver exceptional dialogues, it will still need people. AI in the context of customer experience should therefore be used as a force multiplier to assist, rather than replace, human agents.
Anywhere365, which provides Microsoft Teams-native enterprise dialogue management and cloud contact centre solutions, has capitalised on generative AI technology to help our customers significantly improve omnichannel interactions. In 2023, we integrated Deepdesk’s AI agent assist technology into our Teams-native solutions and in 2024, we acquired the company. Together, we aim to empower businesses to accommodate ever-evolving customer demands, deliver personalised experiences at scale and ensure consistent quality of service across channels and touchpoints.
Although generative AI only really gained traction in 2023, Deepdesk has been providing AI-based technology to contact centres since April 2019. In essence, Deepdesk uses natural language processing algorithms, machine learning technology and large language models (LLMs) to understand and generate natural language text. By combining these capabilities, Deepdesk can analyse customer questions alongside historical data to extract relevant information and generate contextually appropriate responses in real time, empowering customer service agents to resolve queries quickly.
Deepdesk’s AI is a composable layer on top of LLMs such as Microsoft’s various copilots but can use any LLM and even bridge multiple platforms. Users have lauded its innovative features as being intuitive, flexible and easy to use. And this is no surprise. Deepdesk is designed with a laser-like focus to boost agent productivity, efficiency and happiness. In short, it automates simple, repetitive tasks and empowers people with the right information at the right time.
For instance, the autocomplete feature enables agents to hit ‘tab’ to automatically finish a sentence with precise and relevant wording, halving their response time and freeing them up to focus on high-value, complex interactions. Meanwhile, Knowledge Assist, an open text search function that automatically finds information from any connected source – such as a company’s intranet, internal knowledge resources or public website – provides agents with the best possible responses to client queries, all from a single screen. In the case of a voice call, Knowledge Assist will transcribe what is being said and automatically supply agents with the information they need to assist the customer in real time.
Using generative AI solutions like Deepdesk in customer engagement has several business benefits. By reducing more than 50 per cent of the manual work traditionally involved in searching for and typing answers, AI assistant technology significantly decreases the average handling time for customer interactions and increases first-time resolution rates. This boosts agent happiness, operational efficiency, customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.
In addition, AI analytics and metrics engines derive real-time and historical insights from customer interactions. Generative AI turns them into highly actionable insights to identify trends, drive process optimisation and improve the performance of agents. Deepdesk also captures all the existing knowledge of its users, which expedites the onboarding and training processes for new employees, saving operational costs, lowering attrition rates and increasing staff tenure.
All these benefits come at a much lower risk than direct touch chatbots, which makes Deepdesk AI Agent Assist a much-wanted solution. Now that a growing number of organisations are recognising the benefits of this technology, it is becoming more pervasive in customer support operations.
Are you concerned about issues such as data security, algorithmic bias, ethics and regulatory compliance? To ensure its technology consistently delivers high-quality, ethical and compliant responses, Deepdesk creates custom models based on the company’s own data. Next, it requires managers, supervisors or senior agents to review the quality, bias and compliance of suggested answers before agents can access them.
Managers can check both the wording and the tone of the suggested responses to verify that they are precise, helpful and in keeping with the company ethos and tone of voice. If an agent response is deemed inappropriate – for example if an emoji has been used but the brand requires communication to be formal – Deepdesk suggests how it might be corrected. This functionality ensures interactions are always compliant and ‘on brand’, yet empathetic and tailored to individuals.
For example, a large financial services firm implemented Deepdesk to empower its wealth advisors with real-time investment insights and client recommendations, which resulted in a 25 per cent boost in client retention and a 30 per cent increase in assets under management. Similarly, a large European telecommunications provider reduced customer churn by 15 per cent and enhanced brand perception by using Deepdesk to proactively inform customers about network outages and service disruptions.
Using Deepdesk AI Agent Assist technology in combination with a cloud-based contact centre solution like Anywhere365 enables organisations to capitalise on all the automation, productivity and efficiency benefits of AI technology, while retaining the human experience which is crucial for both agents and customers. After all, research shows that happier agents make happier customers, and happier customers make a happier business.
Hans Kramer is chief brand evangelist at Anywhere365
This article was originally published in the Summer 2024 issue of Technology Record. To get future issues delivered directly to your inbox, sign up for a free subscription.