{"id":223145,"date":"2020-02-27T06:53:37","date_gmt":"2020-02-27T14:53:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.genesys.com\/?post_type=blog&p=223145"},"modified":"2020-02-05T06:51:10","modified_gmt":"2020-02-05T14:51:10","slug":"expert-qa-genesys-cloud-google-cloud-and-ai-in-the-contact-centre","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.genesys.com\/en-gb\/blog\/post\/expert-qa-genesys-cloud-google-cloud-and-ai-in-the-contact-centre","title":{"rendered":"Expert Q&A: Genesys Cloud, Google Cloud and AI in the Contact Centre"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_section full_width=”stretch_row”][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Contact centres are in the midst of a massive transition with artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud technologies. And competition continues to heat up as personalisation takes centre stage. Businesses need a solid strategy to harness AI and the cloud to make customer experiences personal, efficient and satisfying.<\/p>\n

I discussed these topics with Antony Passemard, Conversational AI and Contact Centre AI lead for Google Cloud<\/a>, and Steve Leaden, president of Leaden Associates, <\/a>an independent consultancy for contact centres. Here\u2019s a summary of our Fireside Chat.<\/p>\n

What are some of the AI developments you\u2019re seeing with clients?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Steve Leaden<\/strong>: People have become comfortable interacting with chatbots<\/a>. And now, with the rise of voicebots, we\u2019re seeing the beginnings of dramatic changes in what\u2019s needed, including staff augmentation and related costs \u2014 and how to manage them. For example, we\u2019re helping customers adapt voicebot technology from mobile devices and use those assistants for day-to-day tasks in the contact centre. With the power of Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and conversational AI, mainstream adoption is coming soon.<\/p>\n

Can you explain conversational AI?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Antony Passemard:<\/strong> It\u2019s all about voice technology that engages in natural language conversations, and 80% of contacts are through voice. Voice is everywhere: in the home, on phones with instant voice transcription and video transcriptions on YouTube. The best thing is that all that work we did to understand voice on IVRs<\/a> is paying off in conversational AI. It\u2019s an opportunity to balance operational costs with customer satisfaction. In the past, businesses had to choose one or the other \u2014 and if you went with fewer staff, it meant lower satisfaction scores. Not any more, as we use all of that history in the IVR from millions of users to power AI.<\/p>\n

How is this ability to leverage existing data impacting AI implementations? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Passemard<\/strong>: Implementations are definitely faster, with a lot less tuning than previous models based on all of the heavy lifting we\u2019ve done on the backend. Now we have our cloud-to-text API. When it\u2019s integrated with the contact centre, as part of the IVR or using conversational AI and Dialogflow \u2013 or part of Agent Assist \u2013 it\u2019s out of the box. It\u2019s very easy to enable Google Cloud AI solutions in the contact centre<\/a> through our partners like Genesys.<\/p>\n

What can Agent Assist help with?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Passamard: <\/strong>As the live agent and customer conversations progress, it provides a transcription in real-time. From there, we use the Google Cloud NLU engine to detect intent and proactively propose information to the agent so there\u2019s less time spent searching. Agents are also guided and coached on how to answer questions. This reduces the average handle time and call disposition because all those intents are captured. It also gives managers a full picture of contact centre customer interactions.<\/p>\n

Can you share any use cases you\u2019re seeing with clients?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Leaden:<\/strong> Some of them are very simple, such as augmenting IVRs and getting customers to engage more with self-service. One client wanted to commit 30% of their environment for chat and voicebots to front end all transactions, using webchat to drive to the app. Voicebots are handling basic transactions without having to go to a live rep. These use cases address the big question of how to manage staffing levels during this era of customer experience that pushes you to improve KPIs and SLAs.<\/p>\n

There are lots of use cases by industry. How does Google Cloud address all the unique terminology?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Passemard<\/strong>: When you build a standard model, you must train those models. For example, in healthcare, cobra is not a snake; COBRA is a type of insurance. Google Cloud does this with speech adaptation, which takes terms you provide the system and then biases the speech recognition model by weighting terms differently.<\/p>\n

Genesys offers a Build a Bot workshop for businesses to get started with AI. What else do you recommend to your clients?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Leaden:<\/strong> First, look at how and where you want to transform your contact centre, then consider the technology. It might be chat and voicebots, separate from IVR. We look at justifying costs through AI components, including optimisation and front-ending conversations with voicebots. This management of staff helps manage licensing costs as well. It\u2019s a shift to an omnichannel model and, with these improvements, we\u2019ve seen huge cost savings.<\/p>\n

In addition to cost savings, what are some of the benefits of voicebots over an IVR? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Passemard<\/strong>: Giving customers a more personalised and engaging experience. You can\u2019t do that with the \u201crigid tree\u201d of the IVR. Whereas, conversational AI lets customers speak in a natural way with a natural voice \u2014 we offer nearly 200 voices to choose from. And bots keep the context, so if there is an escalation, you can pass it on to an agent. Remember, the number one customer frustration is having to repeat information.<\/p>\n

Take this quick Genesys<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>AI Assessment quiz<\/em><\/a>\u00a0to see where you are on your AI journey, where you need the advice of an expert \u2014 and the next best steps to take.<\/em><\/p>\n

Watch the full Fireside Chat<\/em><\/a> for more details from the AI experts on:<\/em><\/p>\n