How Does Call Center AI Affect Customer Satisfaction?

AI is everywhere in 2022, from self-driving cars to smart assistants to manufacturing robots and beyond. It’s making our work easier, and it’s also improving the experience for customers around the world. 

It used to be that AI was something businesses were reluctant to incorporate, but the brands of today are finding it to be a lucrative addition to their customer service processes, allowing them to provide clients with solutions simpler than ever.  

One of the most popular and powerful kinds of AI on the market today is call center AI. 

What is call center AI? 

AI (or artificial intelligence) is a computer system that is able to perform tasks normally done by humans, including tasks such as speech recognition, automated chat, and more. Call center artificial intelligence is the application of AI to perform tasks typically done by your call center representatives: answering calls, redirecting calls, and providing customers with resolutions for their questions. 

How is call center AI used? 

Many brands are incorporating call center AI from the very beginning of the customer journey. One of the most familiar examples is the use of an IVR (or an interactive voice response) that greets customers once they call into a business, provides them with a menu that guides their experience (i.e. “press one for account information”), and collects data that’s used to direct them to the best agent for their needs. 

AI can also be used after the customer calls to create, search for, and update CRM (customer relationship management) records so agents can move on to the next call quickly rather than be held up documenting information from the previous call. 

How does call center AI affect customer satisfaction? 

Historically, businesses have been reluctant to step into the AI space, largely for fear that it removes the human element of their business that customers love, harming the quality of their service. Customers have also historically been reluctant to engage with AI, feeling that talking with a real representative through every step of the process is far more effective. 

That said, brands are finding success incorporating AI along different touchpoints in their call center business. Rather than causing harm, it’s improving their customer service in powerful ways and filling gaps agents have been unable to fill. 

Here are just a few ways call center artificial intelligence is improving customer satisfaction.  

Call center AI decreases customer hold times

Many customers call into businesses to get simple questions answered, such as “what is my tracking number” or “what time do you close today,” but they’re often left on hold due to the high volume of calls already coming through. Agents are juggling calls, transferring calls, and working on multiple queries at once, making the wait time for customers longer than it has to be. 

Call center artificial intelligence can be leveraged so that the moment a customer calls into a business, IVR can gather their information and direct them through a series of vocal prompts to learn what kind of query they have, potentially resolve that query, or direct them to the right agent if their issue is more complex. 

In this way, customers aren’t waiting on the line all day just to find out where their package is, and more complicated issues are being prioritized by agents. 

Call center AI improves first-call resolution

Because AI gathers specific data about the kind of query a customer has and directs them to the best agent to solve that query, it increases the rate of first-call resolutions. The quicker a customer’s query is resolved, the less friction is in the experience and the more satisfied they’ll feel about interacting with your company. 

Call center AI can predict customer sentiment and intent

AI can combine historical customer data with real-time context to predict customer sentiment and intent, and inform every agent about every interaction at every step of the process. This means that even if a customer is working with a different agent than they were the first time they called, that agent will be able to provide them with an experience that’s just as helpful, consistent, and personal. 

Call center artificial intelligence improves call quality 

You may think that call quality decreases when there isn’t a human picking up the phone, but AI can be leveraged in exciting ways that improve the quality of both the call and the customer service. 

By reducing hold time and providing quick responses to customer FAQs, call center AI not only improves the initial call experience for customers, but it offloads much of the tedious busy work tying up customer service representatives so they have more bandwidth and time to provide personal, quality solutions to customers who call in with complex queries. 

Something as simple as an AI-driven voice message system can make a world of difference in how effectively your team addresses customer issues. 

UJET’s call center AI gives you a competitive edge

One common complaint about AI tech is that it can make the interaction between a customer and a company feel cold and robotic, causing the customer experience to feel as if it offers more roadblocks than solutions. UJET’s AI resolves these concerns.

UJET’s CCaaS Platform supports conversational AI that allows customers to converse with a human-like virtual agent across all phone and digital channels. This software analyzes context and sentiment in real-time to help your reps effectively and efficiently solve customer issues. It also allows your customers to engage with your agents via video call, SMS, live chat, and beyond- making resolution time even quicker.  

UJET recently partnered with Google Cloud to consolidate contact center technologies even further, making the customer experience more accessible, innovative, and efficient than ever. 

Learn more about UJET’s AI features.