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Although contact centers have come a long way since their earliest days, they are seen by today’s consumers – particularly younger ones like Millennials and Gen Z – as outdated, inconvenient, and even intimidating. (CBS News, 2023). To stay relevant, companies must implement the changes customers actually want to see in customer service, and that means being automated and available 24/7. Contact center automation, while seemingly complex and expansive on it’s face, is actually easy to implement, drastically improves self-service capabilities, and delivers significant ROI in just a few short months.
Buckle in, and we’ll learn about what contact center automation is, the challenges faced by traditional contact centers with legacy technology, and some high-level benefits of implementing this technology into your customer experience (CX) workflow.
What is Contact Center Automation?
Contact center automation uses communications and workflow automation tools to complete repetitive tasks like data entry, call routing, appointment scheduling, and more. The primary goals of call center automation are:
- Reducing frustration and challenges for customers to make interactions easy and saving customers time.
- Providing a seamless customer journey to unlock the ultimate customer experience and therefore heightening customer loyalty.
- Streamlining and enhancing business workflows and offloading boring and repetitive tasks.
- Freeing up agent time for more skilled tasks and cutting costs where it counts.
Challenges of Traditional Contact Centers
Attempting to reach an agent who can answer the specific question a customer wants an answer to can be frustrating. Legacy technology is full of generic ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions that can leave customers’ heads spinning. And, after finally reaching someone, the agent asks the customer to repeat the information— as if they hadn’t already done that three steps earlier.
These frustrating, repeated instances have pushed organizations to prioritize improving their customer experiences. In fact, as more customers flock to digital channels to resolve their inquiries, CX has become the fastest-growing operational priority across industries (McKinsey, 2022). However, this is proving to be a challenge, with significant roadblocks slowing down any momentum of improving the system.
Further, the impact of “The Great Attrition” have made it increasingly difficult for contact centers to maintain consistent, quality CX. This influx of employees vacating their jobs – citing burnout, dissatisfaction and lack of growth opportunities – widens the gap between expectations and reality. To make matters worse, companies are now reporting higher call volumes, with projections inferring this volume will continue to increase (McKinsey, 2022). Now, more than ever, is the time for organizations to take advantage of the latest and greatest technology and move towards automation to alleviate some of those concerns.
Key Benefits of Contact Center Automation
Automating manual tasks:
Contact centers can use communications automation to automate manual tasks like call routing, appointment scheduling, and customer data entry. This high degree of automation decreases the reliance on human intervention, leading to a reduction in the required number of agents. Ultimately, this increases productivity and allows for organizations to run on leaner staff—helping out during moments like The Great Attrition.
Flexible scalability:
In times of peak demand, communications automation with AI supplements the insufficient staffing models that may result in extended wait times and reduced customer satisfaction due to the surge in incoming inquiries. During periods of low demand, intelligent communications automation safeguards against excessive staffing and the underutilization of resources. This reduces the ever-pressing hold times and provides around-the-clock-support, even when contact centers wouldn’t normally be staffed.
Virtual AI agents:
With virtual ai agents, contact centers can deliver instant responses and tackle the routine interactions that were previously handled by human agents. Chatbots have the capability to address routine inquiries, frequently asked questions,and basic problem-solving tasks by delivering instantaneous responses. And, with the advent of generative AI, AI agents are even more powerful. This allows for better human agent engagement as they deal with less repetitive tasks—and reduces the human errors in those tasks. By doing so, even a small workforce becomes more efficient at improving the overall customer experience.
Self-service:
62% of customers prefer self-service options over contacting a live agent.In addition to quicker resolution rates and higher customer satisfaction, self-service reduces the number of calls in need of agent help, directly influencing staff size. With self-service, organizations can provide a completely customer-driven support experience.
Contact Center Automation with IntelePeer’s Communications Automation Platform
With the cloud-based, AI-powered IntelePeer CAP solution, you can automate your contact center and usher in a new era of efficiency and customer satisfaction. The IntelePeer platform is designed with contact centers in mind, offering a tailored solution that streamlines processes, enhances agent performance, saves costs, and delights customers. Our rapid deployment, plug-and-play applications are no-code/low-code, and will help you optimize call routing, handle routine inquiries with AI-powered virtual agents, and reduce average handle times.
You are one click away from solving your business challenges.
Do you want to learn more about accelerating your customer engagement with communications automation and AI? Schedule a discussion with IntelePeer now.
Paula Rivera
Paula brings 15+ years of communications experience to the IntelePeer team. Overseeing IntelePeer’s public relations efforts, she is focused on elevating the Company’s brand through strategic media, influencer, and third-party outreach.