One bad interaction is all it takes to lose a customer’s trust.

Businesses often find it difficult to effectively manage a contact center. If you’re looking to improve your customer engagement without adding more personnel, then contact center automation is just what you need.

It provides a way to automatically resolve certain customer issues quickly and accurately without human intervention. But only if you implement it correctly.

Here you can find all the top contact center automation trends that you can start implementing today.

What is Contact Center Automation?

Automation simply means leveraging technology to perform tasks with minimal human intervention. This has become an increasingly popular trend across various industries, fundamentally transforming how businesses operate. Especially with the rise of artificial intelligence.

Contact centers are no exception. Many tasks related to customer service can be automated in a variety of ways. This shift towards automation allows businesses to optimize their operations, improve cost-effectiveness, and ultimately deliver a superior level of service to their customers.

For example, due to the similarities in different customer experiences, some tasks or inquiries can be repetitive. Call center automation and AI can provide customers with faster resolutions for these common issues. More tickets getting resolved means happier customers and agents.

According to a survey by Dialpad, 60% of customer service agents say AI has saved them time.

Key Techniques for Contact Center Automation

Gone are the days when every customer interaction required a live agent. Today, contact centers leverage a range of automation techniques to optimize efficiency and empower customers.

These techniques not only streamline operations and reduce wait times but also provide 24/7 availability, ultimately enhancing the customer experience. Let's explore some of the biggest contact center automation trends at the moment.

Chatbots

These are virtual agents that simulate conversations with customers through texts or application chat interfaces. Usually, the chat flow is configured beforehand, and they can respond to customer's queries. When the inquiries get complex, they are routed to human agents.

Chatbots can be incredibly helpful for getting responses to common questions and requests. This tool has been available for some time through basic configurations. But with today’s AI technology, chatbots have become more advanced, utilizing contextual data to solve customer queries.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR)

People often reach out to companies through the phone because they want quick answers. This is the way you can give them those answers automatically.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is a contact center tool that responds to customer queries through phone calls via voice. This voice is capable of guiding customers through menus and different prompts to resolve the query.

Self-service is an important aspect of contact centers because some questions don’t require a human. If a person can easily find the answer to their questions without assistance, then that’s a great customer experience.

Self-Service Portals

Just like the name implies, self-service portals enable users to solve their issues on their own without the direct help of a customer service representative.

When you open most service-providing websites, there's usually a section for contact and support. This part could contain a collection of articles and frequently asked questions that address problems that customers may find relatable. It could also contain troubleshooting guides, downloadable resources, and even community forums.

The great thing about this type of automation is that you don’t need new software to implement it. However, it will take some time to build a robust library.

Automatic Call Distribution

Automatic call distribution involves directing incoming calls to the most appropriate agents. This technique optimizes the call-handling process by distributing the call based on previously set criteria. One of the most common call distribution methods is called Round Robin, which is based on pre-defined rules.

The primary goal here is to shorten the time it takes a call to reach the right agent. Instead of having to manually re-route the person, the computer does it for you. The other main goal is to distribute the calls evenly so no agent gets overwhelmed with calls. For this, a queue is determined so that if an agent isn’t available, the call automatically reroutes to the next one, and so on.

Email Automation

Email automation is also very common for all kinds of purposes. You can automate customer communication through email. Additionally, you can automate tasks such as sending welcome emails, order confirmations, and FAQ responses.

This frees up agents to handle other issues. It also improves customer satisfaction by providing prompt and informative communication.

Additionally, email automation allows for 24/7 availability, ensuring customers receive immediate responses even outside of business hours.

Benefits of Automating Contact Centers

Contact centers struggle to improve efficiency and provide excellent service. For so many businesses this area is the source of most of the customers’ frustrations.  

Automation offers a powerful solution that goes beyond optimizing tasks for efficiency. It can improve agent morale, boost customer satisfaction, and contribute to overall business success.

Some of the benefits of automating contact centers can be summarized as seen below:

Improved Customer Satisfaction

No one likes to stop things to wait for a customer service response. When a person is focusing on doing something, not being able to continue due to slow customer service creates frustration. For some people, this is frustrating enough to change providers all together.

According to Zendesk, 73% of people will switch to a competitor after bad customer service experiences.

Not only that, but 75% of consumers say a bad interaction will ruin their day. So, customer satisfaction is a big deal.

With the different automation techniques available, customers have access to 24/7 customer service, low waiting times, and self-service resources, increasing satisfaction.

Increased Job Satisfaction

Agent burnout is also a challenge that businesses need to tackle. It's logical to think that having to handle several phone calls a day addressing almost the same issues can be draining and bring about the feeling of unproductivity. And when dealing with a customer, a happy agent will always be more effective.

A Gitnux Market Data report shows that on average, contact center agents spend 37% of their time doing unproductive work, which leads to burnout. And 51% of agents feel disconnected from their jobs.

With automation, employees can focus more on productivity by dealing only with issues that make their presence felt and their efforts appreciated.

Improved Operational Costs

When many of the tasks at the contact center are automated, the employees have fewer tasks to perform, reducing the need for manual labor. This brings operational costs down.

It is estimated that by 2026 agent labor costs will lower by $80 billion due to conversational artificial intelligence.

Automation can also significantly improve operational efficiency by minimizing errors, optimizing resource allocation, and reducing overhead costs.

Improved Rate of First-Call Resolution

First-Call Resolution (FCR) is key metric used in customer service to measure the ability of resolving customer issues on the first interaction. It can be a call, email, or message. This is the best thing a contact center can do since it means the customer gets a solution quickly.

Automation tools can automate account verification and information gathering (through chatbots and IVR) so agents are able to immediately begin addressing customer concerns.  

Plus, if you have automated customer tools like chatbots or IVR, in some cases they can resolve issues on the first interaction without even involving an agent.

Enhanced Data Security

Contact center automation also helps to keep customer's information safe. By automating tasks instead of relying on people to write things down, there's less chance of data being incorrectly added to the system, stolen, or lost.

Instead, all the information sent by the customer gets automatically stored in the proper fields of your CRM or platform. With an integration like this, you can then unlock more automated workflows. More on this below.

Contact Center Workflow Automation

When you put everything together, your contact center becomes an automated machine that supports customers, gathers data, and boosts efficiency automatically. While exact set-ups depend on the platforms you’re using, in general you can create advanced workflows that streamline the entire customer journey.

Here is a contact center automation workflow you can expect.

Identification

When a customer initiates contact through any channel, the system automatically identifies the customer using their phone number, email address, or other data.

The CRM integration then pulls up the customer’s profile, including previous interactions, purchase history, and any open cases or tickets.

Routing

With this information, the platform automatically routes the call or message to the most appropriate agent, considering if it's a priority or not.

Preparation

Before the agent picks up the call or responds to a message, they are presented with a comprehensive view of the customer’s history, open issues, and potential solutions recommended by the AI. Some AI and contact center automation tools offer insights based on customer data.

Interaction

During the interaction, the CRM system automatically captures and logs the conversation details, customer sentiments, and any new information provided by the customer.

Engagement

After the interaction, automated workflows can be triggered for follow-up actions, such as sending a satisfaction survey, scheduling a callback, or escalating unresolved issues.

Much more can then be done to automate workflows further. For example, adding the contact to another workflow for upselling. This all depends on your goals.

Start Providing Excellent Customer Service

It’s clear that automation is a win for everybody. The customer gets quicker solutions, agents don’t burn out, and businesses spend less.

Implementing these changes to your contact center can be a bit of a challenge at first. Opkalla can guide you through this process to ensure a highly efficient contact center, implementing the best solutions for your needs. Contact us today!