Opinion


before they seriously impact CX, qual- ity management and brand reputation. And of course, the complexity of tack- ling these challenges scales in line with the size of business and contact centre – think any organisation that handles a very high volume of calls – insurers, banks and utilities. Regulatory requirements such as GDPR, specific national legislation and an increasing focus in European Courts on data and privacy-related issues are intensifying the focus on contact centre compliance. Compli- ance becomes even more critical in sensitive industries such as financial services, which must comply with ded- icated regulations such as MiFID II. Simply hiring large numbers of new contact centre agents is not a viable long-term solution to these challeng- es. Seasonal demand, training and costs – all intensified by business disruptions caused by the pandemic – mean contact centres must embrace new technology for a rapid, cost-effec- tive solution. Advanced technologies such as AI, deployed in the cloud, are leading the charge.


AI is now within reach


AI has previously been viewed as high- ly technical, challenging or too cost- ly to deploy. But a new generation of cloud-based deployments of AI solu- tions specifically tailored to customer service requirements and supporting multiple languages are now available – providing a rapidly available, fit-for- purpose contact centre AI solution. Language engines can now leverage deep neural networks and machine learning algorithms that can accurate- ly process speech to text and recog- nize specific keywords. When trained exclusively on real contact centre in-


puts, these tailored solutions become far more efficient at processing than generic AI solutions. The same tech- nology can transcribe customer-agent interactions and analyse more subtle acoustic information – ‘understanding’ silent periods during conversation, speech rate and specific emotions. This allows agents to receive real-time analysis and suggestions to help steer the conversation towards a satisfying outcome.


In the UK, customers such as insur- ance brokers are already using this technology to support customer-facing operations, analysing and transcrib- ing all customer communications to detect emotions and help agents re- spond accordingly. The stage is set for a dramatic growth in the use of AI for customer service applications.


Technology holds the key


Looking beyond the satisfied custom- er, this blend of AI and voice analytics can deliver benefits to both agents and management, boosting contact centre productivity and individual agent per- formance alike through automated quality management. For example, if AI analysis identifies anger in a customer’s speech pattern and any references to leaving their contract, these calls can be routed to a dedicated customer retention team with specialist skillsets. Agents can also benefit from AI’s real-time assis- tance within the software, with remote supervision and coaching built in to help supervisors deal with specifical- ly challenging interactions or identify upsell opportunities.


Business leaders gain detailed in- sights into their contact centre oper- ations and agent conversations, high- lighting room for improvement at the


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contact centre and individual agent levels. This means that management can set specific KPIs and gauge suc- cess based on processing agent con- versations to measure factors such as language use and emotional reso- nance. AI voice analytics solutions can also be used for more targeted appli- cations, scanning recorded conversa- tions for specific phrases relating to regulatory compliance, such as ensur- ing personal details covered by GDPR are kept private.


AI-powered voice analytics is here to stay


The shift towards remote operations is set to continue in 2021 and be- yond, and this has cemented the role of contact centre agents as a critical touchpoint for customers. Accelerated digital transformation efforts are pro- viding the perfect framework to deploy contact centre-specific AI technolo- gy, providing contact centre operators with new ways of managing employees and gauging productivity – and agents themselves with the tools needed to better serve customers and ensure consistently


positive outcomes from


customer engagements. What does the future hold? We are already seeing AI-powered facial an- alytics developments, and greater ap- plications of this advanced technology across relevant customer channels to benefit customers and agents alike is already in progress by contact centre solution providers, but organisations should first look to future-proof con- tact centre performance and manage- ment with AI and voice analytics.


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