Want to Automate Your Contact Center? Start Here!

Automating your contact center lowers costs, reduces churn, increases sales, and creates a wealth of data for improving processes.

But implementing automation involves much more than plugging in the latest AI tools and hoping for the best. Automation tech is undoubtedly valuable, and it’s tempting to jump straight into choosing your tools and integrating them into your contact center. 

There’s more to it than that. To ensure your automation accomplishes the goals you’ve set, you’ll need to define a comprehensive plan that lays out how automations and technologies fit together.

Here are three steps you can take right away to automate your contact center for maximum ROI in a short timeline.

Step 1: Create a holistic solution stack and analyze existing data

Automation is one piece of a larger puzzle that will improve your contact center. In order to ensure you’re enacting automations that will work, you first need to create a holistic solution stack that takes into consideration not only the available technologies but also the unique requirements of your business.

A solution stack is a collection of tools that accomplish your contact center’s goals. Components include your workforce, automation tools, software systems, and systems and processes put in place to run daily operations.

Start by listening to what the data is telling you.

You’ll need to do an in-depth analysis of your contact center solution stack before you deploy any new technology. Start by collecting data from your existing solution stack and use AI technologies to analyze that data quickly. 

Data analytics will reveal where your business is strong and where it needs improvement. Parsing that data using automated tools speeds up the process. For example, call data can track when your customers ask to speak to a live representative, or when they say key phrases like “this isn’t helping.” From that data, you can identify customer pain points and adjust your processes according to your goals, such as using AI tools to reduce handling time.

Using data analytics to strengthen your solution stack may also involve an analysis of how, when, and on what devices your customers reach out to your contact center. Understanding the tools through which your customers make contact with your company allows you to tailor automations and increase personalization for them.

Here’s another example: if your customer starts by engaging a chatbot on their phone, you can create automations that work best for mobile devices. And if that customer then engages your contact center through email afterward, you can ensure the information collected by the chatbot is available to your live agents for a smooth, pain-free transition. Your agent will have better information more quickly, and your customer will experience less friction in the CX journey.

This data analysis accelerates your new solution stack strategy and gets you on the road to ROI faster.

Step 2: Consider automation technology options

Now that you have a solid understanding of your goals and a general understanding of the solution stack you want to enact, it’s time to analyze automation options. Think of these as the tools that will strengthen your solution stack — chatbots, interactive voice response (IVR), omnichannel routing, knowledge bases, and robotic process automation (RPA) — as well as your CX journey.

Automations can serve your customers on the front end of the CX journey, but they can also act as a tool set on the back end for your contact center agents. These tools increase the speed and efficiency of collecting information, training, and reacting to customer needs.

Omnichannel routing is a good example of how your agents can react more quickly to customer needs. Regardless of how your customers contact you — via chatbot, social media, email, phone calls, contact forms, or even text — an automated routing tool will direct questions to the right agent or resource based on availability and skills.

And your agents and QC professionals can benefit from the heaps of data that sentiment analysis tools can collect in real time. This data provides the foundation for revisions to your solution stack and any changes you might make to the CX journey in order to better serve your customers.

Sentiment analysis tools can collect and summarize massive amounts of data almost immediately and deliver that data to QC agents. Instead of agents culling through that data themselves—which is time-consuming and costly—they can use the insights distilled from that data to create agent training processes or address issues in a more timely manner.

Your customers reach your contact center through different channels, which is an important consideration when choosing specific automation tools. Beyond that, however, you’ll also need to consider what devices your customers use when they contact you. 

Customers may use their phones or their computers to contact your business, and both options present challenges and opportunities for improving the CX journey. Your contact center must meet customers on their terms.

Are your customers using mobile devices to engage chatbots? Do they use PCs to write emails? All of the above? Streamline your contact center best practices by not only understanding your customers’ habits but also making that data immediately available for live agents who can then personalize a call for that customer and expedite handling time.

Reducing handling time is valuable because customers may have just waited on hold to speak with an agent. If your agents are overwhelmed or don’t have the right tools at their fingertips to solve a customer’s problem in a timely manner, you’re bound to lose that customer’s business.

You may also end up with high turnover as agents become overwhelmed. Remember: the fast track to ROI means reducing churn. When a customer has access to automated tools like knowledge bases that can deliver valuable information, live agents are free to handle more complex customer needs.

Consistency is key—day or night

Your customers will reach out to your contact center on different devices and through different means depending on what issue they need addressed. Customers may, for example, engage with a chatbot for simple problems, but for more in-depth issues, they will want to talk to a real human, likely over the phone. That means you will need to facilitate transitions from one device and communication path to another, and you’ll also need to track data during the transition to ensure consistency for the customer and accurate data for your call center agent.

Another automation opportunity is round-the-clock availability. While you may not be able to populate a physical call center with live agents 24 hours a day, automated AI tools can be on call for your customers when live agents are not. This enables you to serve customers on their schedules, reduces wait times, and produces data about your customers’ needs so you can adjust for high-volume times and events.

These are all examples of automation options that can benefit your business, but you’ll need to measure these tools against your contact center’s specific needs and goals. AI tools are powerful when deployed correctly, but they can simply add to a problem if implementation is rushed or done poorly. While plug-and-play AI tools are available — and are likely your best option for getting started — it’s still important to ensure they are the best solution for your contact center’s needs.

Step 3: Get deployment right

You’ve assessed existing processes and pain points. Your automation selection is clear. And,  you know what needs to happen in order to make automation work for your contact center, but  getting deployment right is daunting.

An inefficient deployment can be costly, and it can lead to further delays. If, for example, the data indicates your customers want easier contact with a live agent but you choose to integrate more chatbots into the CX journey instead, you’ve just wasted valuable time and money, frustrated your customers, and damaged your live agents’ trust in the system.

But if you instead use predictive analytics to identify repeated customer behaviors that can inform future processes, you can please your customers by routing them to resources before they need them. Making suggestions for accessing information already on your website can prevent a call to a live agent, for example, and reduce call center volume.

In order to get deployment right, take small bites. Implement some tools you know will make an immediate impact, even if they’re small. If your data indicates your customers want 24-7 support, chatbots can do the job. Implement that tool, assess its effectiveness, and either adjust or add from there.

Small steps toward ROI may feel slow, but they also prevent larger issues that can hamper progress. Prioritize quick wins and long-term improvements.

Ensure your deployment goes smoothly by working with a trusted partner like CGS. With vast expertise in business process outsourcing and automation, data analytics, and strategic deployment, CGS’s collaborative approach can help you navigate these tricky waters.

Automating your contact center is more than just adding AI tools. For more actionable recommendations on how to unlock efficiencies with automation, download our latest e-book.