When Contact Center A.I. Drives Your Self-Service Game
As contact center A.I. improves, organizations are looking to cut costs—and shorten and enhance CX by answering straightforward questions faster and extending service hours—by migrating interactions like calls, live chats, and emails to robust self-service channels.
Long call queues and high abandonment rates were a '90s norm. The world was far more call-center-telephony-centric then: The main alternatives were a letter, a fax, or—in a few cases—an email. Organizations were focused on adopting call and contact centers, reducing call volumes, smoothing out peaks and troughs, and exploring emerging self-service technologies.
Call-volume mitigation tactics included:
Connecting callers to agents via early interactive voice response (IVR) systems
Assisting agents with call-back services and/or recorded messages
Deterring frivolous callers with premium-rate phone numbers
Extending operating hours to spread the call load
Reducing costs by embracing an off-shoring trend
Meanwhile, faxback technology debuted. This technology required an organization to install a server, populate it with FAQ documents, and encourage callers to engage with the faxback technology instead of calling. Though initially successful, and still in specialized use today, it was made obsolete by website FAQs.
Today, human and A.I.-based communications channels—and the ability for more advanced contact centers to absorb them—have proliferated. And this is where Vonage for Service Cloud Voice—which seamlessly blends voice calls, Vonage’s intelligent IVR, and the full range of Salesforce digital channels—comes in.
When the IVR uses automated speech recognition (ASR) and becomes voice driven, it understands the customer’s problem in their own language, promptly directs them to a corresponding answer, and does it all regardless of how the customer makes contact. Phone, email, SMS, chat, chatbot, or social media—everything comes into Service Cloud Voice for subsequent processing.
The possibilities for self-service are limited only by one’s imagination, yet Vonage expands even those possibilities with its many years of experience deploying the full range of self-service solutions.
Additionally, Vonage’s A.I. Virtual Assistant—a.k.a. a voicebot or Voice A.I. representative—can complement Service Cloud Voice by:
Immediately answering every call
Delivering enhanced, conversational, self-serving A.I. interactions that engage callers in natural language
Facilitating conversations to understand customer needs and executing appropriate actions
Adding contact center capacity without increasing headcount
Providing 24-hour service
Reducing hold times
Lowering average handling time (AHT)
Improving the first contact resolution rate (FCR)
Increasing customer satisfaction
Ensuring business phone continuity
Handling high volumes of calls during emergencies, disasters, or queue peaks
Freeing up agents for higher-value inquiries by handling high-frequency and automatable calls (e.g., delivery-slot changes, order statuses, meter-reading updates, etc.)
Monitoring for intent, clarity, and recommended response, and—in the event of an escalation—enabling live-agent intervention
Eliminating the possibility of callers getting stuck in endless bot loops
Is your contact center delivering the most cost-effective CX? Contact Vonage today!
