When it comes to AI in the contact centre, the first steps are the most critical…

For example, there's been a lot of media attention (and debate!) around the use of chatbots for customer interactions. This is certainly an area that warrants exploring, but only if it's implanted intelligently and empathetically. The nature of contact centre environments means that certain points of contact will inevitably be emotionally charged and may require a more complex process to achieve a successful resolution. These are the times where agents' experience, expertise, and empathy are most important, and so they will not be suitable for full-scale automation.

Consider instead the areas of low emotional value – the relatively straightforward, routine interactions where an agent's direct input is unlikely to be needed and a chatbot can comfortably handle things. These make an ideal first step into the world of AI-powered automation, immediately delivering tangible time savings that can be reinvested in areas where the personal touch is critical.

Now, let's consider the other face of the contact centre... 

When establishing suitable areas for automation, it is important that the backend – the areas where agents communicate and collaborate with colleagues to deliver successful resolutions – is given equal attention. There two primary dimensions to this: first, ensuring that agents have all the information and resources needed to deliver a successful resolution to each customer interaction. This means full case histories for each customer, collating information across all channels through which they have made contact and making it available through a single pane of glass, as soon as it is required. Secondly, agents' performance and wellbeing should be monitored on an ongoing basis. This will provide managers with actionable insights into how effective training can be delivered, processes continually refined, and agents properly supported.

AI's potential in this regard is huge, allowing the ever-growing volumes of data generated across contact centre operations each day to be analysed in real-time, providing micro and macro pictures of the entire customer journey that will help drive a culture of ongoing improvement. In other words, once your foundation is in place, it's time to build on it, by which I mean measure everything! If you've implemented AI correctly, in line with your contact centre's specific processes and long-term goals, you will enjoy a steady stream of high-quality data that will paint a clear picture of where systems and processes are working well, and where it could be improved.

All this time establishing a strong foundation for AI will certainly deliver plenty of immediate benefits, but never lose sight of the fact that this is very much a journey, not a one-off project. Contact centres are highly diverse, dynamic environments, which means systems and processes must constantly evolve to ensure agents are able to deliver their best, customers' changing needs are taken into account, and failure demand can be tracked, managed, and kept to the absolute minimum.

It's certainly a lot to consider, but the potential rewards for organisations, agents, and – ultimately – customers are enormous. If you would like to find out more about getting your own AI journey off to the best possible start, I have recently published a white paper – Humans, Machines, and a Tech-powered Customer Experience: A Practical Guide to AI in the Contact Centre – which not only covers all the topics we've looked at here in greater depth, but provides a proven, practical roadmap for getting those all-important first steps right. It's available for download here.