The Future Contact Center: Bots, AI Build On IVR

… their limitations and escalate customers to a live agent when necessary. Other terms related to these AI applications include buzzwords such as “machine learning” and “AI-bots.”

These systems can deliver highly individualized service, conserving human resources while enhancing customer satisfaction. Let’s keep in mind that superior customer engagement is always the end goal of artificial intelligence and automation. Contact-center solutions must deliver satisfactory outcomes. A report from NewVoiceMedia reveals that an estimated $62 billion is lost by U.S. companies each year due to bad customer experiences.

Bots tend to be applied to non-voice channels such as chat and email, making them relevant to the omnichannel customer engagement experience that many contact centers hope to implement. While voice is still the primary means of communication in the contact center (up to 68 percent of interactions, according to data from Salesforce.com), text messaging is gaining momentum as a preferred medium for customer service. A great window of opportunity exists in applying advanced bot technology to text messaging in a contact-center environment. But the challenge for bots is clear: They need to transcend the typical IVR experience and evolve to a more conversational, specialized style of interaction. That will drive the self-service paradigm forward while maintaining the highest level of service for customers, the true goal of any contact-center solution.

As for artificial intelligence, or “learning” bots in the contact center, the industry hasn’t quite evolved to this level yet. However, with recent advances in speech analytics and AI in other areas of technology, the time may be near when we’ll see this technology in the contact-center market, facilitating even more personalized service through cost-effective, automated technologies.

Whether we define these models as breakthroughs or new incarnations of well-worn tools like IVR, it’s the task of integrators, resellers and dealers in the channel to stay up to date on contact-center advances and deliver these capabilities to customers.

Rick McFarland is president and chief executive officer of Dallas-based Voice4Net, a provider of customer interaction and voice communications solutions for businesses. Rick is responsible for the strategic direction, growth and overall success of the company. Prior to founding Voice4Net in 1996, he helped to pioneer one of the first IVR banking application solutions in the market.