How to make the most of contact center AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) is here to stay, and it's going to transform how organizations and customers engage with each other. According to Zendesk's CX Trends Report 2024, 59% of global consumers say they expect AI to completely alter how they interact with businesses. Yet, 62% of customer experience (CX) leaders feel they are behind in providing the more instant experiences consumers expect.

If your organization isn't certain how to bridge this gap, contact center AI may be able to help you. Today's AI contact center can help improve your CX at scale while unlocking greater agility for your team. Here's how you can make the most of contact center AI solutions and create a strong foundation for future CX success.
 

Use contact center AI to elevate your CX

Implementing a cloud-based AI solution for your contact center can help provide your customers with a better experience across voice and digital channels alike, from the moment they first engage with your business. When a customer calls your contact center in search of assistance, they likely want your help right away. In fact, their request may be more urgent if they take the time to call you. But they're worried about ricocheting endlessly across an unhelpful, impersonal phone system or being put on a lengthy hold.

An AI contact center can help resolve a wide range of customer complaints and even help customers in ways they never considered. This helps provide a better experience for your customers and employees.
 

How contact center AI solutions could benefit customers

AI-enabled interactive voice response (IVR) tools (also known as AI-powered conversational IVR) bring together speech recognition technology and AI to alleviate common pain points such as selecting the right menu option or being bounced from one agent to another. These AI contact center solutions let the customer ask for what they need in their own words and then connect them with the right resources. Thanks to the power of AI, these modern IVR systems get steadily better at interpreting caller intent, allowing you to give your customers an even better experience while reducing the workload placed on the human agents who handle their requests day in and day out.

AI-enabled chatbots serve as an efficient 24/7 self-service option that enables customers to quickly resolve queries across multiple digital channels, from messaging apps to SMS messaging and the web. In fact, just over half (51%) of consumers prefer to interact with a bot when they want immediate customer service. In addition to resolving problems, chatbots can provide quotes for products and services.
 

How contact center AI solutions benefit customer service employees

Of course, sometimes only human expertise can resolve a customer's question or problem. Contact center AI solutions improve the employee experience associated with these interactions as well. Because these AI solutions reduce the volume of incoming requests—whether through chatbot or IVR—they give your agents more time to deliver expert customer care. AI contact center technology also eliminates repetitive tasks that would otherwise bog them down, freeing your agents to deliver even faster and more personalized service.

AI tools can also provide agents with key customer information and even suggest resources that accelerate time to resolution. AI-powered systems can even recommend products or services that your customer might find useful, adding further value to the conversation.

All of these advancements directly translate to a better experience for your customers, who can get what they need when they need it on the channel that is most convenient for them.
 

Network infrastructure is crucial to AI contact center success

If your organization plans to maximize the benefits that an AI contact center can provide, you must have a robust and modern network infrastructure to match.

Even the most sophisticated AI contact center roadmap and technology plans can't meet customer expectations for a great experience if the underlying network infrastructure does not support it. Your customers expect prompt answers and satisfying service on an ever-increasing number of digital channels, requiring smooth interactions in order to deliver a great customer experience. For example, imagine if your customer is on a voice or video call with a human agent troubleshooting a problem. Then, right at the point of receiving the information they need to resolve their issue, they experience jitter or the call drops. The result? They are going to come away disappointed and frustrated. Even though AI might have been working perfectly behind the scenes to streamline that experience, it won't matter in the end if the conversation was interrupted, degraded or cut short.

Accordingly, it's wise to conduct an IT review of your bandwidth, connectivity and network performance requirements before implementing any new contact center AI. That way, you are in the best possible position to select the network services that can facilitate your business goals. For example, a private 5G network lets you create a private wireless network with higher transmission speeds, lower latency and more resilient connections than you usually find with Wi-Fi or 4G. You can also tailor your private 5G implementations to enable specific contact center use cases, ensuring a high standard of network performance.
 

Make the most of contact center AI solutions

Customers fully expect that AI will play a central role in their interactions with businesses, but the organizations themselves feel like they're behind the curve. With competition for customer attention and loyalty more intense than ever, it's important to identify and pursue any advantage that can help your organization stay relevant.

AI contact center tools can help you do this at scale while building crucial agility to enable future CX innovation. A robust and modern network infrastructure makes it all possible, helping your customer interactions go smoothly. That way, your customers can get the great experience they deserve—and your contact center AI solutions can deliver maximum return on investment (ROI) for your organization.

Learn how Verizon's Customer Experience solutions can help you improve CX and build greater brand loyalty.

The author of this content is a paid contributor for Verizon.