Integration of intelligent virtual assistant to enhance CX and customer support

Intelligent Virtual Assistants: The digital landscape is changing and intelligent virtual technologies are at the forefront of this revolution. They are fundamentally changing the way customers interact and transact with different businesses.

With the growth of mobile and messaging apps, the number of consumers who are used to having everything connected 24/7 and with single swipes increased exponentially. This creates increased volumes of customer interactions that need to be handled. 

Without modern technology and approaches, the operational costs associated with servicing would skyrocket far above the companies pockets.

As the focus shifts from customer service to customer experience, you can no longer chip away at lowering call or live chat volumes, hence, reducing average agent handling times and missed chats, thus making agents more productive.

With the increase in the number of users across different platforms, increases the complexity of managing them across multiple and everchanging digital channels.

Today’s contact center must evolve and look towards emerging artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to support a shift from customer service to customer experience.

This blog examines the role of Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs) in transforming the customer experience.

6 Performance Improvements from Implementing Intelligent Virtual Agents - Intelligent Virtual Assistants

There’s a lot to be attained by the adoption of IVAs in customer service centers and it’s application beyond just the simple customer interactions. 

The impact of IVAs in digitizing manual workloads and being available 24/7 yields multiple benefits for a customer service organization, as well as improving the satisfaction of both agents and customers. 

The following are six aspects where traditional contact centers are positively impacted by the deployment of AI bots. 

1. Eliminate Wait or Hold Times - Intelligent Virtual Assistants

As the saying goes, “Time is money”, consumers require immediate and fast responses across multiple aspects of their daily lives.

But in contrary to this the waiting time has increased from 4 minutes to 15 minutes, in 2016, and the reality of contact centers is that there are peak periods that are not always predictable.

Agents can get outnumbered responding to a flux of inbound requests, hence requiring incoming customer calls or chats to be placed in a queue.

As queue increases and waiting time stretches customers abandon, indicating frustration, and poor experience

The implementation of a call deflection bot solution can help ease the situation, if not totally eliminate wait times and abandonment at peak periods and out of hours.

It can be designed to handle these interceptions through different workflows

2. Reduce Missed Chats and Abandonment Rates

Live chat abandon rates represent missed business opportunities and poor experience. Many times the connection to the live chat agent breaks down, hence requiring customers to start the chat from scratch.

Chatbots are different as they can operate in an asynchronous mode, i.e, a customer can start a conversation, pause, and continue a conversation hours later without having to start all over again.

So an interaction or transaction can be completed using the chatbot but without forcing a customer into an asynchronous conversation.

Also, as chatbots can work 24/7 and respond to customers when the center is at peak capacity, the volume of missed calls or chats can be reduced dramatically. 

3. Shorten Average Agent Handling Time (AHT) 

There are numerous ways through which AI bots can help reduce handling times on customer engagements.

Firstly, a bot can be used to assist an agent through a live chat engagement, providing them with suggested responses that better support the agent in responding faster.

Because the bot can sense customer intent, they can act as a virtual buddy to the chat agent, speeding up access to the correct information, and automating the live chat interaction.

This is important in making agents more productive, and for resolving customer issues faster.

4. Increase the Accuracy and Consistency of Responses

Once a customer gets through to an agent there is still the problem of not obtaining the right information or getting incomplete information and this can, in turn, have a drastic impact on resolution rates.

Agent training and support are crucial in providing consistent and accurate responses but it can sometimes be difficult for them to keep up with ever-changing situations, regulations, number of different channels, and customer requests.

However, this can be rectified by implementing AI bots that support the agents throughout a customer engagement regardless of their communication channel, understanding the customer’s intent, and providing the correct responses within the chat.

5. Enhance Customer Experience and Retention - Intelligent Virtual Assistants

The use of AI within client support and contact centers delivers much more than the advantages referred to you up until now. Chatbots do substantially more than handle basic client solicitations and work processes.

They have the ability to engage in numerous aspects, for example, client onboarding, enrollment or membership restorations, etc.

They are instrumental in changing conventional inconvenient cycles, utilizing the intensity of advanced informing and voice channels, regular language handling, and AI. 

In doing so they convey generous business advantages, for example, higher maintenance and reestablishment rates, expanded deals transformation rates, quicker goal times and that's just the beginning.

Basically for the present shopper, nonetheless, is that the upgrade the general client experience, improving client reach, comfort, and fulfillment, all at a lower cost of administration conveyance.

6. Improve Agent Productivity and Satisfaction

Chatbots can work alongside support executives, automating routine work processes and permitting operators to deal with more perplexing client issues.

As the agents are mitigated from ordinary assignments their work turns out to be additionally intriguing and satisfying. This can significantly build their individual worth include and lift their fulfillment levels. 

Agent's fulfillment and assurance likewise increments when weight is removed the contact place by the bots catching clients in occupied periods and taking care of their solicitations.

Conclusion

Artificial intelligence technology will play an important role in customer service transformation and intelligent virtual assistants (IVAs) will greatly be adopted to support human agents, automate routine tasks, and offer around-the-clock availability.

Read More: A GUIDE TO USE AI IN RETAIL LANDSCAPE