There’s much debate—as well as fear, uncertainty and doubt—around the impact artificial intelligence and automation will have on the future workforce. Will robots replace humans in the contact center and other parts of the company? At QuandaGo, we believe the answer is simple… NO WAY!
While we love cool technology, there is no substitute for empathy, understanding, and the human connection that only people can provide, especially during times of need. Rather, we believe automation—in the contact center and beyond—is a game-changer that can transform the lives of your agents.
Today, automation can effectively offload manual and repetitive tasks for contact center agents, lowering the average handle time (AHT) for interactions. For example, automation can assist agents with completing after call work, updating customer records, and ensuring the proper compliance checks. Now, most companies look at the benefit here in terms of improving agent productivity, and that is indeed one benefit. However, automation’s bigger business benefits lie in the technology’s ability to make life better for your agents, while improving the customer experience.
In the contact center, this means freeing up time for you agents to focus on higher-value or more complex interactions that only a human can solve. As a result, the work your agents do is more engaging, more fulfilling, and more rewarding,
For example, an agent can spend up to 30 seconds or more completing ‘after call work’ following every customer interaction. Over the course of a shift, these moments in time can add up to a significant portion of an agent’s day. In fact, with some agents handling 10 or more interactions per hour, the time spent completing these tasks can really add up, while agent satisfaction and engagement can unfortunately go down.
Let’s look at some examples of what agents could be working on if we could give them all that time back. Instead of searching for the right answers in multiple systems, automation can provide suggested answers to questions directly in the agent desktop. In this case, intelligent process automation not only helps the agent to be more knowledgeable and more responsive, but they can use the extra time saved to more personally engage with customers. This can include seeking customer feedback or making a timely offer that can improve the customer experience and even lead to new business. In the end, the agent spends more time on customer engagement and higher value interactions and less time doing repetitive and manual tasks.
Other examples can be found in common transactional processes that virtually all companies carry out, such as product returns. For a process that often includes several customer questions and the need for clarity on company return policies and procedures, automation can provide a way for agents to more quickly complete these critical interactions in a way that best serves both the customer and the company. By assisting agents with suggested answers to questions and the automation of after call work, such as customer email confirmations and case management updates, you can reduce the time it takes your agents to complete the returns process by up to 50 percent, while enabling them to better focus on the customer satisfaction and the overall experience.
Are you ready to explore how contact center automation can change the lives of your agents?
Check out this QuandaGo Business Impact Guide on the CX Automation Opportunity, and see how your people—and your business—can benefit. Download it here!
