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This blog post was co-authored by Genesys technology partner, Shelf.
As contact centers adjust to the new normal of remote work, they struggle with efficiency more than ever. With 89% of consumers ready to switch to a competitor following a poor customer experience, customer service processes are under the microscope to detect inefficiencies.
Poor customer experiences have a direct correlation with time management. And, according to McKinsey, the biggest time waster is how long it takes reps to find information or track down critical knowledge — a whopping 19% of their time.
Imagine if you could remove some of the unnecessary steps bogging down your agents and admins. Doing so would make it faster and easier to find and manage accurate information to resolve issues. That’s where knowledge automation comes in.
Let’s dive in and explore how artificial intelligence (AI), knowledge automation and enhanced Genesys integrations can improve contact center efficiency, allowing companies to stop wasting time and start dominating their markets in 2021.
- Use Agent-Assist to Ramp Faster and Churn Less
Turning new hires into functioning, highly productive members of an organization is daunting. And doing it all remotely has reached a whole new level of difficulty. Managers who already have a laundry list of other responsibilities must take on even more. And new hires are isolated and stressed out, relying on keyword cheat sheets for faster content searches.
New Agent-Assist functionality in the Genesys CloudTM platform alleviates the burdens of training and onboarding by putting answers at your team’s fingertips. Using AI and knowledge automation, your company’s knowledge base automatically delivers recommendations directly into Genesys Cloud based on customer messages. This enables agents to get through interactions faster and achieve proficiency weeks sooner. Moreover, any complicated processes can be easily turned into guided workflows that automatically suggest all necessary steps to resolve an issue.
So, while your new hires feel confident in what they’re doing and saying, your managers can focus on their core tasks rather than act as “backseat drivers” all day long.
2. Deploy Knowledge Automation to Reduce Average Handle Time
Seventy-one percent of consumers expect their problems to be solved immediately upon contacting customer service. That means no on-hold time, no transfers, no “we’ll get back to you.” In 2020, that’s now a realistic expectation. In fact, knowledge automation with AI-powered recommendations can help you battle all of these issues at once.
Recommend answers across channels. Agents can get real-time suggestions in their Genesys Cloud workspace, whether customers reach out via chat, social media, messenger apps or even voice. AI-powered content recommendations can live within their usual workflow, eliminating the need to switch tabs or even run manual searches. And customers can contact your team on their preferred channels, which makes everyone happy.
Power your IVR to recommend answers based on customer input. Even if your IVR segments incoming calls and forwards them to specific departments to lower your escalation rates, reps still need to research information. But by passing the caller’s intent through the Shelf knowledge automation platform, it immediately provides agents with specific information or guided help. This means that your agents will have relevant knowledge in front of them before speaking with a customer.
This creates a more efficient and effective operation that can handle larger quantities of conversations with satisfied customers. And that translates into ROI.
3. Automated Content Maintenance Frees Up Managers and Supervisors
Admins are already up to their necks in responsibilities related to hiring, training, handling call escalations, and managing teams by teaching policies and tracking performance. Still, they also must carve out a few hours per week toward managing knowledge and updating resources.
By automating cumbersome knowledge management processes, companies can save managers and supervisors at least six to 10 hours of valuable time each month. And they can provide them with helpful insights into how their agents are interacting with their knowledge, what’s missing and what needs to be updated.
With your senior call center personnel focusing more energy on key initiatives, you can achieve tangible ROI.
4. Power Chatbots and Self-Service with Knowledge Automation
It’s no secret we’d all rather fill out a form or even interact with a bot to avoid a customer service interaction. It’s not that everyone is antisocial; we simply feel smart enough to find the answers ourselves. So, when customers can’t do it on their own, the frustration is understandable. As their search habits become even more complex, it’s vital to arm your FAQs and chatbots with an AI-enabled knowledge backbone.
Now you can easily do this without hiring an additional department to reconstruct your existing chatbot and website. Breakthroughs in knowledge automation connect your self-service portal to your entire library of content, including any content type that serves the needs of your business. This makes your chatbots and “Contact us” forms smart. Based on customer behavior, AI automatically recommends relevant content that your customers couldn’t locate manually. Surfacing the right information to your clients not only deflects up to 20% of inbound interactions, it also powers relevant answers on the spot. And that creates a better customer experience.
Future-Proof Your Contact Center with AI
With nearly 90% of your customers are ready to switch to a competitor after a single poor experience. And it likely won’t be long before the remaining 10% also switch. If you fail to keep up with your customers’ expectations, they’ll find someone who can.
Companies manage three times as much data as they did five years ago. Expecting the same humans to cope with that is naive. By adopting the right technology, customer service and call centers can thrive in the digital communication era.
In addition, 89% of leaders say that the COVID-19 crisis has changed the contact center industry forever. You have to keep up with the changes.
Join us for a live webinar on “Improve efficiency with AI and automation in 2021” on Wednesday, November 18 at 8 am PT to learn more. Or visit Shelf in the AppFoundry Marketplace for a free consultation.
