Contact Centre: How to integrate artificial intelligence

The meteoric rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is also leaving its mark on the contact centre market. According to a report by the consulting firm Fortune Business Insights, the global AI market volume in the contact centre sector was around 1.6 billion dollars in 2023. Between 2024 and 2032, this market volume is expected to increase from 1.95 to 10.07 billion dollars with a growth rate of almost 23 percent.

There is no question that AI is transforming customer service in the contact centre. For example, AI can automate interactions in a meaningful and customer-oriented way, support agents in providing advice, increase customer satisfaction through accelerated processes, analyse the customer experience (CX), provide 24/7 availability and thus meet customer expectations.

EnghouseAI offers a practical approach to integrating AI into a contact centre environment. Enghouse Interactive’s modular AI solution focuses on two areas to optimise the CX.

– On the one hand, a whole range of functions improve agent productivity and support the CX strategy. These include natural language processing for collaboration with virtual agents, efficient access to verified knowledge databases and coaching using speech analytics.

– EnghouseAI also analyses and evaluates the interactions of agents in order to adapt them to specific business processes if necessary. In addition, EnghouseAI automatically sifts through customer conversations to determine important insights for the CX. For example, customer satisfaction with the service provider, employees and products.

However, before AI can be used to optimise efficiency and customer satisfaction in the contact centre, it is important to consider the most important aspects of successfully integrating AI into a contact centre:

1. Needs analysis. Define goals and analyse processes where AI could bring the greatest benefit.
2. Technology selection. Select AI solutions according to your requirements and ensure that these technologies can be seamlessly integrated into your existing contact centre systems.
3. Data preparation. Collect relevant customer data and call logs for training AI models, ensuring high data quality.
4. Training. Practice with your chosen AI solution using historical data to maximise its accuracy and effectiveness.
5. Pilot project. Test the AI solution using a pilot project to validate its performance and ensure it meets requirements. This way, problems can be identified and adjustments made in time.
6. Employee training. Train your employees on how to use the AI solution and demonstrate its optimal use and benefits.
7. Rollout. Do not implement the AI solution in its entirety straight away, but start with the areas that are most important to you. Only then can you scale up.
8. Monitoring. Constantly check the AI solution for the functionality and performance you expect. Regular optimisations help to improve the efficiency of the AI solution.
9. Compliance. Pay attention to industry standards and the legal regulations regarding data protection (GDPR).
10. Further development. The AI solution may need to be adapted. Therefore, pay attention to new technologies and also to feedback from your employees and customers.

By taking the steps above, contact centre operators can take full advantage of EnghouseAI and provide a better, more efficient and cost-effective experience for their customers. Which in turn can lead to greater loyalty and customer retention – and a competitive advantage.