No matter your industry segment or organization’s size, there’s a high likelihood that “artificial intelligence” has entered into your lexicon as the mother of all technology buzzwords. The contact center certainly isn’t spared, and no one has time to be concerned with buzzwords that don’t deliver on their promise, particularly in the midst of a continued global pandemic where customer service and demands have never been more spotlighted on center stage.
If you believe everything you read, you might be convinced that AI is the panacea for all challenges that the modern day contact center faces, from “deflecting” call volume overload to quality and efficiency of agent interactions to leveraging predictive analytics and forecasting. Some of those applications are indeed improved through the introduction of AI, but it’s equally frequent that contact center leaders end up burdening themselves with complex, expensive AI deployments that yield no measurable, impactful results.
In some ways, it’s time to take AI applications and integrations back to basics, focusing implementations on core competencies for contact center platforms: routing customer calls more efficiently and reducing operational costs. With that backdrop, today we’re excited to formally announce a partnership and integration with the conversational AI innovators at Omilia.
Improving the Customer Experience
Anyone who has called into a contact center to receive direct customer service by phone knows that the experience can be incredibly convoluted. The interactive voice response (IVR) system that customers are often greeted by might not understand their needs or might misroute their call to a live agent who doesn’t have the right skill set to address the issue. Pass the customer around a couple of times and the experience becomes not only inefficient but negative and frustrating for both the customer and the agents.
That’s where Omilia comes in with its AI-powered virtual assistant. That “virtual agent” focuses on customer care tasks and self-service when a customer first calls in, resolving issues immediately or automatically routing customers to the proper live agent in the most natural, efficient way possible. Handle times are reduced, both parties are off the phone faster and everyone is happy. And as we know, the better the customer service experience, the more of a chance brands have to build long-lasting customer loyalty.
Reducing Costs
Just as critical as the softer customer experience benefits are the hard cost savings that contact center leaders can realize by using virtual agents and conversational AI. Did you know that the aforementioned misrouted calls and transferring customers back and forth between agents can cost a single company up to $2 million every year? That’s a hefty tax to pay when there are plug-and-play technology solutions like the ones Omilia offers to help mitigate those inefficiencies and associated expenses.
There’s also a component to our partnership under which joint customers can implement Omilia voice biometrics to authenticate caller identity based on voice patterns within the IVR system. Beyond making CX even more seamless, this eliminates costly fraud and again cuts back on the time live agents have to spend on each call. In the contact center, agent time is money.
Tailored by Industry
All AI implementations are not created equal, and Omilia takes great pride in working closely with organizations to customize deployments to their respective industry. For example, while the insurance industry might have 300 different customer intents to build around, the banking industry has an entirely different set of more like 400 intents. Omilia experts will work with CxEngage customers to develop a virtual agent that meets their unique business needs and gets them maximum return on investment.
Not all industries are ready for AI in the contact center, but many – be they financial services, insurance, healthcare, utilities, travel, retail or food service – are champing at the bit for help in handling skyrocketing call volumes and meeting rising customer expectations. The key lies in selecting and implementing an AI solution that doesn’t just integrate with your current contact center platform and flows but delivers real, measurable business impact in the form of enhanced customer experiences and reduced costs.
For more information on the CxEngage partnership with Omilia, read today’s press release or visit Lifesize integrations page.
Author: Andy Bird, Director of Product Management CCaaS at Lifesize
