Customer Contact Week: A meeting of the minds for contact center AI
At the end of January, I flew down to Orlando for Customer Contact Week. I was surrounded by people who understood my language (some would call what I do pretty niche. I beg to differ, because customer experience touches all of us, but that's for another time).
I went to Orlando for a few reasons. I wanted to meet some new people, spend some time with partners and clients, and have some real conversations about the latest in contact center AI, the industry and where it's headed.
Here's what I learned
Everyone is calling everything AI - whether it's a new capability or not.
Yes, there are some new features, and yes, there are some amazing things. There are often only minor differences among providers, whether you are calling it AI or not. Those differences can be hard to detect and easy to mistake for something new when indeed it’s just a new name. Let’s use quality and call analytics platforms as an example. Definitely new and exciting capabilities, with vendors highlighting how their platforms could revolutionize call analytics. Call analytics is in the middle of a revolution — it has been for 5-7 years. The subtlety is in what leaders must do to use contact center technologies: you can't just throw in the tech and be done.Traditional call quality processes rely on a manual review of a small percentage of calls.
It used to be that we were able to assess 3%, 5%, 8% if we were lucky, of customer conversations. We now have new platforms that can evaluate 100% of calls using conversational AI, not just keywords. In doing so, it’s an opportunity to understand what all of your customers are calling about, and instead of viewing it as a tool to coach agents about compliance process, we have an amazing chance to go far beyond individual calls and agents to look for trends and an understanding of an entire universe of interactions.Transformation and governance came up often, a topic near and dear to me since this is central to how we at Blue Orbit deliver for our clients.
Attendees crowded into sessions on this topic for how you approach leadership, how you track success, how you communicate change, and what you need to think about as you integrate more platform capabilities and digital agents into your work force.
Beneath the buzz and excitement around new technologies, many attendees, I found, were grappling with the same overarching questions:
How do I make sure I don't fall behind if everyone else is implementing this stuff?
What are best practices?
Where can I get the most controlled bang for my buck?
Do I really need to do a pilot?
How do I even get this done?
Many organizations assume that implementing a new piece of tech will solve their problems. But you're not done there. You have to reenvision the process and the adoption of the technology. Without a clear framework, the platform alone won't give you the outcomes you're hoping for.
The pitfalls of AI-driven coaching
One eye-opening moment at CCW was seeing a demo of AI-driven call coaching. I was talking with the folks from a platform that I adore, and they walked me through the latest and greatest in AI-driven coaching. In this demo, the platform automation reviews the call and makes recommendations on how the agent could have provided better customer service to the customer all without an analyst or supervisor intervening. The demo was startling in its power—and in how wrong the example was. In this health care demo, the digital coach recommended that an agent save time and repetition on the call by confirming the caller’s identity from information in the CRM. In the case of healthcare, also a giant red flag - this is specifically prohibited for confidentiality and data protection. A verification has to be based on information provided by the caller, not read off from the system for agreement. And healthcare isn’t the only industry with these types of requirements or reasons that agents are trained to do things a certain way.
This example underscores a crucial point when you’re thinking about implementation: the people that designed the tech aren't the people that know contact centers. AI-recommended coaching can't be disconnected from the real-world requirements of your business. That's where we step in to ensure that whatever technology you're deploying aligns with your processes, norms, and compliance needs.
Where we come in
Our role is to help organizations navigate this transition. We have set up these quality programs for years. If you don't have a framework for what you're going to do with the information now, the platform is not going to give you the information tomorrow.
It's not just about the technology; it's about the process around it. The example in the demo that I heard gives a great and obvious idea for shortening call length and removing caller frustration – while it was not correct for the specific situation, there’s an opportunity to take these ideas and refine them or adjust them for the situation. That’s where the new capabilities may be a terrific thought starter to rethink core tenets of agent process based on data from all of your calls. What are you listening for? What are the root problems? How are you evaluating agents? The answers to these questions shape how effectively you can leverage new tools.
Final thoughts
CCW reaffirmed that while AI and automation are expanding into new possibilities, the real magic happens when technology is paired with process design and governance. If you don't have a framework for what you're going to do with the information now, the platform is not going to give you that information tomorrow.
Let's make these tools work for your organization.