TOP 15 Contact Center Automation Trends: Why Your Business Needs Them

The contact center is one of many companies’ most significant expense items. According to Talent.com, businesses spend over $600,000 annually on salaries for the department of 20 agents (the median wage in this sector is $33,150). Add to this the cost of hiring and training employees, as well as the price of the software necessary to operate the contact center. The result is a cosmic sum. 

At the start of a business, one or two operators can handle all interactions. However, as your business grows, contact center costs also increase. Moreover, the more interactions, the greater the burden on staff — operators cannot cope with the volume of calls, you have to hire new ones, and so the circle. At the same time, most of the requests concern the same type of situations. For example, the client wants to know the work schedule, delivery status, or ways of using the product.

Contact center automation can help you change the situation. Businesses have access to IT tools that can optimize the work of the call center and make it more transparent. Routine tasks can be shifted to intelligent technologies, while managers can focus on more important requests.

This article will explore what technologies will help your contact center work more efficiently in 2024.

Why to Automate Contact Center Processes

Contact center automation helps companies, first of all, significantly reduce the cost of maintenance. However, there are also several additional advantages:

TOP 15 Trends of Contact Center Automation

Generative AI is artificial intelligence that creates human-like content in various media, including images, videos, music, and text. The CCW Digital research shows that up to 62% of contact centers are considering investing in automation and artificial intelligence. Additionally, many customers are ready to use self-service options or communicate with voice bots and chatbots, especially if it helps them avoid long wait times.

Generative will hardly replace live agents in the near future. However, it can help you optimize contact center processes, reduce response time, improve customer service, and automate routine agents’ tasks.

Telephone calls have long ceased to be the only way of communication. Nowadays, customers use a variety of channels to communicate with companies, including emails, messengers, social media, etc. According to a Harvard Business Review study, 73% of consumers use multiple shopping channels. And they expect the company to respond to their messages, no matter how they are sent.

To prove the profitability of this approach, we would like to cite our customer’s success. This telecom company experienced a 7x increase in clients and a 27% income increase due to implementing an omnichannel cloud contact center.

According to the Replicant research, 44% of customers are unsatisfied with 5-15 minutes of wait time. Additionally, 56% said long wait times are the most frustrating forms of poor customer service. That’s why 33% switched brands in the past year.

AI-powered voicebots can take over the most frequent requests to contact centers. Understanding people, recognizing interlocutors, considering the context of the conversation, and interacting with CRM and BPM make them full-fledged employees who serve as the first support line.

81% of consumers expect chatbots to become much more widespread by 2030. And this is not surprising! Along with voice assistants, chatbots are a powerful tool to optimize contact center processes and improve customer experience

Moreover, the byVoice Conversational AI Platform includes a no-code solution for creating chatbots. It makes the development process as easy as ABC and enables you to design chatbots that will meet your business needs faster.

Imagine you have a question about your internet service and call your provider. The first thing you hear after connecting is an IVR system, which, after a greeting, lists all existing options. You select the one that relates to your question, and your call is redirected to the necessary department.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is an auto-informer. Contact centers widely use this application, enabling customer interaction without agent involvement.

McKinsey estimates that speech analytics can drive cost savings of up to 30% and deliver customer satisfaction score improvements of 10% or more. How is it possible, you ask? While modern companies track only about 5% of calls they receive, AI speech analytics tools can transcribe about 100% of conversations.

AI speech analytics enables businesses to research the content of dialogues and find targeted information based on predefined key sentences and words. Based on this data, you can increase sales, identify customer dissatisfaction, and set up business processes that reduce maximum efficiency.

Predictive dialing is often used in sales, telemarketing, debt collection, or surveys. Long story short, it means in areas where the caller needs to reach many contacts quickly and has no time for preparation.

Predictive dialing makes several automated outbound calls without reserving agents for each call. Only answered calls are then passed to agents.

Salesforce surveyed customer service employees and found that 71% had considered leaving their current job in the past six months. The study also found that customer service leaders are experiencing this instability first-hand, with 50% saying their department has seen an increase in employee-initiated layoffs.

Creating a comfortable environment, setting clear goals for agents, and competently planning the workload are essential to avoid employee turnover. Workforce management covers all these goals. A WFM solution uses historical data and machine learning to predict future personnel requisition. It then creates schedules that fit the forecasted model and automatically tracks employee time and attendance.

One more reason should be mentioned regarding employee turnover: the significant number of repetitive tasks that consume call center agents’ time, leading to stress and inefficiency.

Any interaction with the client can and should be automated. And this is an area where RPA comes to the rescue. It is software consisting of robots that automate repetitive and routine tasks. RPA is considered a simple tool because it is a non-invasive technology that interacts with all applications and systems without modifying or changing the existing infrastructure.

Only one negative interaction is enough for a customer to decide not to engage with the company. Many contact centers have already implemented solutions for processing customer responses and mechanisms for monitoring the quality of services (for this purpose, many companies have supervisors on staff). However, these processes are often lengthy and labor-intensive since they are performed manually.

Automated interaction scoring uses AI-based technologies and algorithms to evaluate the contact center’s employee work. The information collected during the scoring can be used to optimize contact center activities.

Contact center operations have traditionally been reactive: customers call when they have problems, and agents help them. Today, however, many contact centers are increasingly turning to predictive analytics to implement a proactive approach to customer service.

Predictive analytics uses historical data, statistics, and modeling techniques to predict future outcomes. This approach can help reduce the need for customers to call (for example, by enabling agents to proactively address issues that often lead to repeat contacts).

We have already talked about using AI to analyze conversations with customers. However, there are other areas where artificial intelligence can be used for analysis. Some modern conversational platforms also include features for recognizing emotions during an interaction.

In this case, the analysis is conducted at the vocal and semantic levels when translating speech into text. A solution based on neural network technology recognizes emotions in the voice of customers and calculates a service satisfaction index directly during a conversation with an agent.

Contact center performance is critical for businesses as they deal directly with incoming and outgoing customer interactions. The company must monitor how well the agents perform and whether they comply with the conversation script and business ethics standards.

According to the Salesforce study, 48% of customers switched brands for better quality service at least once last year. These figures emphasize the importance of quick and effective customer support and the high-quality services offered.

Implementing quality management practices helps businesses keep track of agent interactions, provide continuous training and support, and maintain service standards for consistent customer satisfaction.

Traditional user verification technologies (passwords, PIN codes, code words, etc.) do not guarantee results. It isn’t easy to verify whether the person on the other end of the line is the person he claims to be. The contact center agents can only ask clarifying questions and compare the person’s voice with their gender, age, and other characteristics. This is not enough to protect sensitive information.

Therefore, for example, banks, insurance companies, and pension funds are introducing voice biometrics into the work of contact centers.

You need to collect feedback immediately after interacting with your customers to accurately evaluate their experience or highlight at-risk situations. Automated customer feedback software can automatically send surveys immediately after completing a communication. At this point, the experience is on the customer’s mind, which increases the likelihood of a response and the accuracy of the interaction assessment.

Why Is Contact Center Automation The Future?

Businesses are always looking for innovative methods to improve their processes and increase efficiency by setting specific goals, needs, and responsibilities for agents. However, as the workload increases, employees need more help. And this is where call center automation comes into play.

Contact center automation enables you to pay attention to every actual and potential client and not miss a single call or request. Automating contact center processes can reduce the time needed to handle each call, resulting in increased throughput and customer and employee satisfaction.

It also helps improve first-call resolution rates, regulatory compliance, and accuracy and reduces training and staffing costs. However, other benefits are not so obvious. For example, automation makes it possible to collect large amounts of data that would not be possible if calls were handled solely by a human operator. This data can then be leveraged using modern AI technologies such as voice analytics and sentiment analysis to gain valuable insights into your business.

Automate Your Contact Center Processes with Trusted and Seasoned Partner

With the implementation of digital tools, it is easier for a business to compete. Customer demands are growing, and the quality and speed of service are coming to the fore rather than the product’s characteristics. Buyers want answers to their questions quickly. Automation of contact center processes will modernize its work while increasing its efficiency.

Due to our 20-year experience and extensive battle-tested area knowledge, the byVoice team will help you improve your contact center processes by automating them and achieving your business goals. Please contact us if you have any questions or are ready to start your automation projects. We are just one click away!