Contact center automation refers to the use of various technologies and workflows to streamline contact center operations by reducing the manual labor involved.
What is contact center automation?
Contact center automation is an umbrella term for any number of software, AI-powered tools, or programmed workflows that reduce the amount of manual effort that human agents and their supervisors need to expend on operations. These can be anything from small macros (a recorded and repeatable list of small actions that are commonly done in sequence) to powerful machine learning algorithms that carry out complex contact center tasks with minimal manual input.
With such variety, contact center automation can be used in various points throughout the lifecycle of customer interaction, whether it be from the first contact, part of how their issue is addressed, or after the interaction for the purposes of documentation and analysis.
A crucial part of using automation in modern contact centers is ensuring that the automations are used to augment the human agents’ abilities and make their work more manageable, and not replace them completely. Human agents have hard-won experience, expertise, and empathy, which are essential elements of a rich customer experience. With powerful automating tools at their disposal, human agents are better able to point their energy toward the emotionally nuanced interactions that require their precise touch.
What are the benefits of contact center automation?
Through automation, a contact center can take the more basic and common interactions off the agents’ plates, decluttering their schedules and leaving them available for the more complex tasks that require their skilled touch.
Improved agent efficiency and productivity
There are plenty of small, repetitive, or annoying tasks throughout the operation of a traditional contact center. However, through automation, a contact center can take the more basic and common interactions off agents’ plates, decluttering their schedules and leaving them available for complex tasks that require empathy, judgment, and problem-solving.
Tasks like documenting calls become much easier through the automatic capture of call summaries, along with notes on the customer’s disposition. Agents can get time back in their day, benefiting from automatically populated CRM records and automatic follow-up emails, all without needing to lift a finger. Because of the greatly reduced after-call work (ACW), agents carry less of the mental burden of constantly mental modes, allowing them to handle more customer interactions in a day without increasing stress and burnout.
Better customer experience (CX)
A thoughtfully implemented contact center automation strategy can also greatly benefit the customers whom the contact center serves. Using a variety of customer-facing automations, such as self-service options, IVRs, and chatbots, customers are given the tools they need to resolve simple problems quickly, without the long wait times.
Additionally, automatic call distribution (ACD) provides more accurate routing, allowing callers to quickly connect with the agent or team that is best suited to address their current concern. Finally, once connected, customers will be speaking with agents who are more able to provide their undivided attention, which leads to better results for customers and higher satisfaction ratings.
Increased accuracy and consistency
Any manual process will be prone to error, and that’s especially true when those processes need to be carried out in high volumes. By automating those repetitive manual processes, contact centers can ensure that each step of the process is done with consistency, allowing for a more uniform and compliant application of various policies and procedures. In highly regulated industries like healthcare, financial services, retail, and utilities, mistakes and inconsistency can quickly lead to compliance violations, which makes accuracy and consistency a crucial asset.
Cost optimization and scalability
Automation in contact centers offers businesses more savings and scalability. As call volumes spike, automated systems are able to deflect many of those interactions from needing active agent involvement, before queueing and prioritizing those that do need a human hand, routing each call intelligently to the best-suited agent, and handling post-call work in a snap.
Contact center automation is useful for cost-effectively boosting many important performance metrics, especially ones like average handle time (AHT), customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores, and first contact resolution (FCR).
Enhanced analytics and insights
Data collection becomes much simpler and smoother through automation, instantly transcribing, tagging, and analyzing interactions, making the reporting of CX, agent performance, and other important trends easier and more enlightening. By gaining a richer understanding of customer pain points and the current bottlenecks in their processes, contact centers are able to find opportunities for training and improvement.
Types of contact center automation
Contact center automation will typically fall into one of the three following categories:
- Customer-facing: These are automations that the customer interacts with directly, like chatbots, IVRs, and various different self-service solutions.
- Agent-facing: Automations that agents use in the course of their work, like agent assist, auto-populating fields in CRMs, and others.
- Backend and operational: Any automations that make the administrative and behind-the-scenes tasks simpler, such as quality assurance tools, automated reports and documentation, and workforce management tools.
Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
An interactive voice response (IVR) system gives incoming callers the ability to answer automated questions, providing key information about their complaints or questions by using either their voice or keypad. These systems can be used for customer self-service for simple tasks and FAQ answers, but they can also be a vital component of an intelligent routing system, collecting the information necessary to route the call to the correct team or agent.
Chatbots and virtual assistants
Within websites, mobile apps, or messaging platforms, chatbots can be a simple way to automatically answer your customers’ most common questions, troubleshoot basic issues, and collect important information before the interaction is handed off to a human agent, who has been briefed on the situation.
Automatic Call Distribution (ACD)
Automatic call distribution (ACD) systems can automatically route incoming calls to the best available agent, based on information given to the IVR, the customer’s past interactions, language, and agent skill sets. This ensures that customers reach their “best bet” as soon as possible, improving both the first call resolution (FCR) rates and customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores.
Agent assist and real-time guidance
Agent assist tools provide agents with real-time coaching and guidance during customer interactions. Agent assist is able to surface relevant information from knowledge base articles live on customer calls, provide suggested next actions, watch out for and alert to possible compliance risks, and even detect the overall sentiment of the call.
Workforce management (WFM) automation
Workforce management (WFM) tools are helpful to keep track of call volumes, make predictions based on past data, and efficiently schedule agents accordingly. By automating WFM tools, contact centers can optimize staffing levels effortlessly and in real-time.
How is contact center automation used in practice?
In the real world, contact centers don’t often implement all of their automation solutions in one go, more typically introducing automation in stages that focus on particular pain points and bottlenecks. Some of the ways that contact center automation seeks to address those pain points include:
Front-end interaction handling
Customer-facing automations are often the first that many contact centers employ, from automated chatbots and other self-help options to help address the most common and simple questions, to IVR systems, which collect initial information and get callers routed to the appropriate agent.
Agent workflow optimization
Through agent-facing automation, contact centers can make impressive productivity gains, like opening the correct customer record automatically when a call comes in, filling out forms based on customer interactions, and creating call transcripts and summaries. Additionally, tech like agent assist can provide real-time coaching and tips. These automations reduce the cognitive load of agents and allow them to maintain attention and effort on the customer inquiries at hand, rather than becoming sidetracked by technical details.
Post-interaction automation
After a call or interaction, automations can update current help tickets or create new ones, trigger follow-up messages or emails, and log important information about the interaction for reporting and analytics purposes. This can cut down on the post-interaction work significantly and gives agents the ability to stay focused on customers instead of administrative busy work.
Risks and limitations
Though contact center automation provides many advantages, it should be used with forethought and caution. When automation is poorly integrated or when contact centers lean too hard on the latest trends, it can lead to a bad experience for both customers and agents, while also harming reputation and the financial bottom line.
Over-automation and customer frustration
A common complaint in the modern world is the growing tendency toward robotic-feeling customer service. Customers can become frustrated or feel a distinct lack of care when they call in for help and receive nothing about automated messages, with not a single human agent in reach. The human touch is still an integral part of the customer experience, and human agents have an empathy, real-world experience, and flexibility that is lacking from a fully automated approach. When integrating automation, ensure that there is always an accessible way for customers to escape the automated tools if they choose to and receive help from a human.
Implementation complexity
Be sure that you have an understanding of your current systems and processes before attempting to implement contact center automation, and carefully plan how the integration will take place. Agents and management should be thoroughly trained on the new systems and processes well ahead of time to minimize technical hiccups.
Impact on agent experience
Automation should never be used as a replacement for human agents, not just for the ethical considerations, but also for the simple fact that human agents are better suited to assist customers with concerns that are past a certain level of complexity or urgency. In contact centers that integrate automation with care, automated tools will support the human agent in a way that reduces burnout, improves the agent’s overall performance, and augments the agent’s knowledge and skillset in real time.