Contact Center Automation: Improving Customer Experience

Intro

What Is Contact Center Automation?

Automation refers to creating and applying technology to reduce the need for human input.

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In the context of a contact center that deals with large volumes of customer service requests, automation aims to successfully handle some of those interactions through intelligent algorithms without the interference of a human agent.

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Automation is an incredibly broad term. A basic button-prompt IVR (interactive voice response) system that automates the initial phase of a service call is technically automation, but it fails to accommodate the dynamic needs of modern contact center customers.

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To meet these needs, any contact center automation must aim to achieve the following:

1. Use natural language in digital channels: An automated system needs to be able to interpret natural language, whether that is through spoken or written input. Conversational AI delivers this capability and stands as a core component of contact center automation, shifting the paradigm of self-service away from simply operating a user interface towards engaging in natural dialogue. 
2. Support omnichannel conversation: Contact center automation can span multiple touchpoints such as phone, SMS, messenger, website chatbot, and others. The best-in-class implementations of automation enable you to seamlessly switch between channels whilst retaining a coherent service journey for the customer.
3. Facilitate more engaging experiences: Automation that combines language-based communication with – where applicable – visual elements and point-and-click UI elements makes human-machine interaction much more engaging, convenient, and useful for modern customers.
4. Empower action: Automating simple questions/answers (FAQ bot) is often a starting point for contact center automation. The aim, however, is to automate transactional interactions. Automation that supports users in taking action, whether that’s resetting a password or completing a purchase, provides lasting, tangible value to customers and your team.
5. Accommodate for flexibility: Customer service journeys are not as predictable as filling out a form. Every customer is different and they have a broad range of expressions, pronunciations, and conversational styles. Contact center automation needs to deal with the fuzziness of human communication to maximize the number of successful journeys and minimize friction.

The most efficient way to develop automation that covers all of these areas is to explore AI Agents designed to support the needs of enterprise-level contact centers.

What Are the Benefits of Contact Center Automation?

The balance between customer demand and efficient use of resources is the cornerstone of contact center success. Automation provides the only scalable approach to meeting increasing levels of customer demand without an equal increase in resource drain, which ultimately means increased productivity and profits.

That is, admittedly, a broad summary of the most significant benefit of automation – but there are many other compelling advantages…

Speeds Up Call Efficiency

Automation can impact contact center efficiency on a large scale. From a business perspective, a reduction in average handling time (AHT) is the greatest benefit contact center automation brings to the table.

AHT describes the average time a human agent needs to' handle' a contact. Depending on the use case and business sector, AHT is typically between 240 – 600 seconds, so reducing AHT by a couple of seconds can already greatly impact KPIs.

Many initiatives take a phased approach to incrementally increase the degree of automation, starting with low-hanging fruit and gradually expanding to more complex cases. Here is an example of how contact center automation for incoming calls can impact AHT in multiple steps:

Phase 1: Intent recognition and optimized routing:

Upon call, the customer is asked for their intention and directly routed to the best-fitting pool of agents.

--> - 15 seconds AHT

Phase 2: Automate identification and verification process

All issues that require customer authentication are routed through an automated identification process. If needed, this can include multi-factor authentication and/or processes for forgotten passwords or lost credentials. Upon transfer-to-human, the conversation is fully focused on solving the issue.

--> - 30 seconds AHT

Phase 3: Backend integration for issue handling

Recurring customer issues with well-defined handling processes can be handled fully automated through conversational AI and connections to relevant backend systems while ensuring compliance, security, and traceability. Being able to handle 20% of incoming calls autonomously is a realistic target. This can paradoxically lead to an increase in AHT as human agents get to handle cases that are, on average, more complex. However, this effect is outweighed by the reduction in the total amount of human-handled calls.

Improves Agent Productivity

Though automation helps reduce call handling times, the goal is not to replace human agents but to improve efficiency and utilization.

Automation tackles the simple, repetitive tasks that represent the most significant time sinks for your service team. This, in turn, alleviates some of the time-related pressure a human agent faces and allows them to utilize their expertise better to tackle complex problems, which ultimately leads to higher employee satisfaction.

AI Agents can also help automate some of the more direct issues impacting a human agent’s workflow. Agent Copilot can, for example, identify a customer’s question during the conversation and display the answer for the agent to read out. It can also automatically create a detailed call summary at the end of the case and log it for future use – which, again, helps your human agents become more efficient.

Improves Customer Experience

Modern consumers expect 24/7 availability and fast responses from service teams. Two-thirds of buyers expect a response to any customer service inquiry within 10 minutes, and customers are 2.4 times more likely to continue buying from you if you solve their problem quickly.

Despite these expectations, many contact centers fail to offer instant support. A Microsoft study in the UK found that customers calling contact centers in the energy sector faced an average wait of 35 minutes and 34 seconds!

An automated AI Agent is able to answer calls and begin tackling queries immediately, which slashes wait times. In many cases, customers will be able to fully handle their requests within seconds with the help of a virtual agent. Issues such as “I forgot my password”, “I need a copy of my last statement,” and many more can be handled through the combination of natural language processing (written in chat or spoken over the phone) and smart processes that link customers and backend systems/data.

In other cases, issues need to be solved by human agents. Through intelligent routing, contact center automation bundles all relevant information (such as customer account data and type of inquiry) and transfers customers straight to a qualified agent. This not only means less waiting for customers, but it also reduces the average handle time as customers are pre-qualified, authenticated, and sent to the best-fitting agent.​

Protects Revenue

Poor customer service levels lead to revenue loss. This can happen both directly and indirectly. A direct loss occurs when a customer loses patience or is frustrated by their experience and abandons any intent to purchase from your business. An indirect loss could instead come as a result of a potential customer favoring a competitor because you have too many negative reviews.

To minimize both of these losses, a contact center must find the right balance between service levels and staff costs. Any reduction in customer waiting times will help drive up customer satisfaction, but the increase in labor costs may outweigh any potential uptick in revenue.

Cost isn’t the only factor. Recruiting, training, and deploying staff takes time – which you may not have if your wait times spiral out of control and your customer satisfaction ratings plummet.

AI-powered automation can help shift the needle in favor of higher customer satisfaction and positive returns without increasing overall contact center costs. With AI Agents answering calls instantly, you will reduce wait times, minimize frustration, and improve satisfaction levels.

How Do You Automate Contact Centers?

When it comes to the ‘how to’ of automating your contact center, there’s no definitive step-by-step guide. Every business is different, and your customers, agents, and tech stack will all impact what you can automate and how it will function. 

Speaking broadly, the potential of automation is vast, and existing implementation is still relatively immature – so getting involved now helps you remain competitive and means you won’t be starting far behind. Consider the following steps as a rough guide:

1. To get started, you should identify the common processes and tasks within your contact center that are time-intensive and easily repeatable. 
2. Draw out critical dependencies for these processes and identify any security risks. What systems are involved, and what privacy risks are incurred during the process? For example, an ID&V process usually involves your CRM and sensitive customer data. 
3. Consult with an AI vendor to discuss how any potential automation will impact security and how AI can be trained to follow processes without risking privacy or compliance issues. 
4. Don’t automate for the sake of it. Design and deploy AI Agents around specific use cases and processes rather. Always remember the context of a user’s query and consider how automating any given process will impact their experience. Offering basic automation that might save your organization a small amount of time but fails to meet user needs or leads to frustration will only ever set you back. 
5. Once you deploy an AI Agent, begin monitoring its performance and tracking results. Use real-time data to make improvements and then roll out your learnings across other processes within your team. 

As those steps indicate, automation depends on careful planning where you understand the full scope of how a user’s query interacts with your business. Take, for example, an order tracking query. To effectively automate this process, you need a system that can prompt users to provide order information, check your CRM to verify them and potentially interact with your logistics partners to track down the order – all while conversing with the customer to ensure they feel supported.

To achieve that type of conversation-led, dynamic automated support, you need Conversational AI…

CAI & Voice Technology

Though customers now utilize more platforms than ever before, the vast majority of contact center interactions still occur via voice-based channels (such as SIP Trunk, PSTN/cellular, WebRTC, etc.) 

Voice-based inquiries are relatively costly and often prove inefficient for human agents to handle. By automating simple voice requests, you can save minutes on every call. One solution is to use a tool such as Cognigy Voice Gateway, which allows contact centers to integrate voice bots into their processes.

Having automation that engages with customers using a humanlike voice is key to providing cutting-edge service. However, customers are often involved in multichannel journeys, so you need to ensure that every channel offers the same premium experience. 

Call Initiation & Control

The ability to customize and optimize communication with customers via conversation initiation and call control is invaluable for contact center operations. Conversation initiation includes activities such as SIP messaging, establishing a connection, and ‘welcome’ messages between a bot and a user.

A good conversation initiation process is critical because it is the first step in customer support – without a good connection or the appropriate initial messages, customers may be unable to get the support they need. Similarly, call control abilities such as call transfer are essential because they allow calls to be managed based on customer needs. For example, if the Conversational AI is unable to resolve a customer query, call transfer enables the customer to be seamlessly transferred to a human agent.

An Enterprise Voice Gateway solution, hence, needs to provide features for both conversation initiation and call control. When a user begins a conversation, the Voice Gateway sends an initial activity message to the Conversational AI; the content of this message can be adjusted, or the message can be disabled. Controls are also in place for when the Voice Gateway connects a virtual agent to a user and when/if it sends an initial message to the AI and welcome message to the user.

In contact center setups, it is common for IDs associated with calls to be required by Conversational AI applications and sent to the AI in a SIP header. Furthermore, Voice Gateway can be configured to extract values from the SIP INVITE message and include them in the initial message to the AI. Call transfer and disconnect features are also included, which allow the virtual agent to easily transfer or disconnect the call at any point during a conversation.

Accounting For Behavioral Quirks

For automation to be truly successful, it has to mimic human conversation habits – which means it must be able to account for quirks, deviations, and interruptions. Technology such as automatic speech recognition (ASR), speech synthesis markup language (SSML), and barge-in all help to reduce the chance of errors and keep the conversation flowing without the need for human intervention. 

Cognigy’s Voice Gateway utilizes all of the above technology to provide an automated voice agent that can pause when a person is speaking, make adjustments if context or queries change and continually generate customized responses aimed at resolving the issue. 

If a customer interrupts an AI Agent during the call, it can either ignore the interruption or stop responding and process new speech. In some cases, the AI can also route to a human agent to elevate the case and avoid further frustrating the customer. 

Calculating ROI & Extending Automation

Once you have technology in place to automate specific processes within your contact center, you can begin measuring the impact in terms of call times and customer satisfaction. These figures can be used to calculate cost savings and justify further roll-outs and adoption across your organization – meaning you can base decisions on real data rather than speculation.

Use Cases of Contact Center Automation

Now that you know more about how to automate a contact center by harnessing AI, let’s look at some clear use cases to help contextualize the process…

ID&V 

In almost every single case, you’ll need some form of identification or verification from your customer. Whether that’s asking them for their surname to find their CRM entry or looking up a specific detail like an order number, this ID&V process represents the biggest time sink for human agents and often frustrates or bores customers, too.

ID&V is the perfect place to start with automation. You can deploy an AI Agent to handle the initial stage of the call, collect necessary information via voice or text input, and then authenticate the user by checking the details against your CRM system. The AI can then either resolve the query itself, or hand the call over to a human agent and provide full contextual information so that the customer doesn’t need to repeat themselves.

FAQ Chatbot

Though the term ‘chatbot’ is technically outdated in the wake of the rise of AI, the basic idea behind automated chat agents that could answer basic user queries is still a good use case for automation. 

If anything, Conversational AI makes it even better – allowing a contact center to build a fully automated FAQ chatbot that customers can contact via their preferred channel using either voice or text.

The AI Agent can quickly retrieve answers to common questions, but with the addition of Generative AI it can also create personalized, tailored responses to more specific user questions. 

Case Routing 

AI Agents can recognize context and intent, which means they can quickly interpret a user’s problem and identify the correct team to route the call to where required. This means you can minimize waiting times but still ensure the correct service teams speak to customers directly. 

No matter how good your technology is or how comprehensive your automation might be, some customers will always want to speak to a human. An AI Agent can also recognize when a customer is growing frustrated during the automated parts of it and take appropriate action to route it to a service agent or arrange a call-back if none are available.

Proactive Automation

AI Agents don’t just automate incoming calls. They can also be deployed to carry out proactive elements of your service processes, such as reminding customers of upcoming renewal or appointment dates, asking them to submit a follow-up review, guiding them to make a necessary payment, etc. 

This type of proactive outreach can save your human agents significant time and effort. In many cases, it will also help protect revenue by preventing customers from missing important renewal dates and prompting them to take conversion-focused action. 

Language Support

Contact centers that want to cater to multilingual needs must invest heavily in translators or hiring native speakers. An AI Agent powered by Conversational AI is capable of real-time translation, which means customers can talk or type in their native tongues and get automatic responses that mimic human conversations. This is far more cost-effective than offshoring your language support and helps maximize the utility of your contact center.

Examples of Contact Center Automation

Cognigy.AI has worked with contact centers around the world to automate important processes and transform customer service journeys. Here are some of the best real-world examples of automation in action.

Airline Automates 375,000 Calls Per Day

Lufthansa is Germany’s biggest airline, and its customer service teams are under constant pressure due to the high volume of incoming calls. The brand implemented an AI Agent to significantly increase its interaction capacity and provide self-service options ranging from managing bookings to processing refunds. 

Lufthansa now automates up to 16 million calls every year and has heavily decreased AHT while improving overall levels of customer service. Read the full case study to learn more.

Energy Company Embraces Automation

E.ON is one of the largest energy companies in Europe, with 75,000 employees and over 50 million customers. The organization’s E.ON Digital Technology (EDT) team is responsible for digital innovation. Working with Cognigy.AI, the EDT team developed a portfolio of more than 30 conversational AI solutions that have achieved a 70% automation rate, handling over 200,000 conversations every month.

Not only does this automation benefit customers – it’s also designed to support human agents by creating contextual handovers that save both parties time and improve the likelihood of positive outcomes.

Interested in how automation could benefit your utility business? Read more about E.ON and automation here. 

Proactive Self-Service For Automotive Giant

Toyota is one of the world’s most famous automotive brands and is famed for technological innovation. The team recognized a need for a proactive e-care service offered to customers whose vehicles had developed faults, so they approached Cognigy.AI to help develop them. 

We created AI Agents that are accessible via chat or phone and can hold natural conversations with customers. If a vehicle’s onboard electronics reported an issue, the AI Agent contacts customers to book a service appointment. This makes customers feel valued, alleviates the administrative strain on Toyota’s human service teams, and ensures that vehicles are safe to avoid accidents or further issues. 

Read the full case study here.

Automation Is The Future Of Contact Centers

Automation isn’t an aspirational idea – it’s something that you must embrace now if you want to remain competitive in the future and meet rising customer standards. Already, 72% of CX leaders have either already invested or are planning to invest in automated AI-driven solutions. 

Contact center owners who want to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and improve customer satisfaction need to consider AI Agents as a core part of their strategy. Book a demo with Cognigy.AI today to see how automation can work for you – or try it for yourself by calling our Voice AI Agent.