Rising customer expectations
With ever-increasing customer expectations, it’s becoming harder and harder to secure customer loyalty, but it’s well worth the effort. Businesses have a 60-70 percent chance of selling to an existing customer, compared to only 5-20 percent for a new prospect.
Customers today are so valuable that you need to be upping your all-round game to boost the profitability of the business. That means ensuring existing customers always feel well looked after and that new prospects have positive first interactions to lay the foundations needed to get them over the line as soon as possible.
Contact Centre AI can help address the new challenges
Within many sectors, including retail, e-commerce, insurance and healthcare, the contact centre plays a key role on the front line of customer interaction.
New AI capabilities can help contact centres deliver faster resolutions to many standard enquiries, reducing queueing times and increasing customer satisfaction with higher-quality outcomes. Agents’ workflows can be faster and simpler with features such as speech-to-text, language translation, post-call conversation summaries, performance analytics for training and quality assurance.
So, let’s dig a little deeper to see how this can work in a range of different industry sectors…
Serving customers more effectively in retail
So, let’s say a bookstore is struggling with a high number of unclaimed orders. A voicebot is likely to provide a very efficient solution to such a problem, making outbound calls to remind customers about their orders. Similar examples in the real world have delivered success rates with over 85%, of customers contacted by a voicebot collecting their orders. Using a voicebot in this way proved to be very cost-effective.
Maintaining customer service excellence in e-commerce
Many e-commerce businesses are now using AI to handle standard information requests, such as stock availability, the returns process and product recommendations. AI also makes possible real-time customer updates for things like order status and delivery queries.
Currently, a common use case in e-commerce is introducing chatbot support during busy periods. This not only enables the business to handle more requests, but it’s also an effective way of protecting the customer service reputation when faced with sudden spikes in enquiries. The latest generation of chatbots is capable of human-like communication, speaking in full sentences and offering a positive experience for the customers. Better still, by handling thousands of requests every month, the chatbots can also provide a surprisingly fast return on investment.
It's not unusual for a chatbot to look after more than 70% of the incoming requests for an e-business, which can save well over a thousand agent hours every month, depending on the size of the company.
Faster claim resolutions for insurance customers
Following a minor car crash, the insurance company is contacted by one of their customers who wants to report the damage to her vehicle.
This first interaction is managed by a voicebot that checks the client details and records a description of the accident. When the customer asks to speak to a human agent, the voicebot makes the connection.
Before the agent takes the call, AI has already summarised all the information provided which is instantly available. The client is relieved that she doesn’t have to repeat herself and the agent can quickly get down to answering her questions.
The result? Fewer delays and a faster resolution for the client who is impressed by this step up in the quality of customer service.
Improved patient outcomes in healthcare
After the unique pressures caused by the pandemic, there has been a significant increase in time-saving AI solutions being used in healthcare.
Virtual agents provide the perfect remedy for high call volumes, now able to intelligently understand the nuances of human conversations and handle delicate patient health concerns appropriately. Calls with patients can often be long and unfocused. Solving this problem, AI can summarise calls for healthcare professionals, saving considerable time.
With a range of user-friendly self-service options for patients, AI can provide standard information, process e-prescriptions, book appointments and connect them with human contact centre agents when the need arises.
With fewer calls to field themselves, human agents have extra time to dedicate to the patients who need more attention.
The impact of AI across all industries
Of course, many of the benefits of AI technology are relevant for a wide range of industries. Take the bots, for example. They can be used to handle all kinds of repetitive and mundane tasks, no matter the area, giving agents more time to add value for customers with a more personalised service.
The bots can operate 24/7 without the need for agents to be present. This ensures that customers can receive support or information whenever they need it, regardless of the time zone or business hours, or even of the channel chosen (phone, email, chat, social media, messaging apps).
Examples like the ones we’ve shared above aren’t just good news for customers. The bots can also significantly enhance the agents’ experience and give them more purpose and satisfaction in their day-to-day job, either by equipping them with the right information fast, or by allowing them to focus on more valuable tasks. The happiness of agents is an important consideration at a time when good people are difficult to find (and keep) and is strongly linked with the capability to deliver high-quality customer service.
NFON provides the AI features needed in your industry
We’ve looked at retail, e-commerce, insurance and healthcare, but AI is equally invaluable in all service industries. Think tourism, banking and education, for starters.
Gartner predicts that, by 2025, 80% of customer service and support organisations will be using Gen AI in some form to improve agent productivity and customer experience.
NFON can help you embrace the new opportunities presented by AI and take your business to the next level. We’ve upgraded our NFON Contact Center Hub with the latest AI features to help your team answer customer requests faster and more effectively, improving customer satisfaction, whichever sector you happen to be in.
Reach out to us and we can talk through all the opportunities AI in contact centre is bringing to businesses in your industry.
