Alex Smith |
November 7, 2024

In the fairly recent past, consumers were somewhat tolerant when customer service queries took a long time to resolve, being quite accustomed to a slow process. The experience of waiting on hold to speak with a customer service agent, spending time going through a lengthy authentication process, and being transferred to several different departments to find the appropriate help was considered frustrating but necessary .

But that’s no longer the case, says Brian Mistretta, director of product and segment marketing at NICE.

“Tolerance for the call center experience of yesteryear has largely evaporated,” he says. “Any business that isn’t leveraging the reams of data produced by digital journeys and using it to inform engagement with these customers is missing out on huge opportunities. There is plenty of quantifiable evidence that businesses that choose to “lean in” on delivering customer experience (CX) are rewarded.

Finding ways to use customer data to inform the customer experience is therefore an important goal for businesses looking to stay competitive in today’s digital world. However, discovering and using powerful insights from customer data can be difficult when customer service agents spend much of their time performing mundane, repetitive tasks such as scheduling appointments, checking balances and passwords, etc.

“This reality is what prevents agents from engaging more deeply in complex or emotionally charged customer interactions,” Mistretta says. “Empathy, active listening, ownership and exploitation of customer data to personalize the interaction: all these important elements of the experience can end up taking a back seat. This is where customer-facing groups who are measured on customer experience can run into problems.

However, the solution to this long-standing challenge may be on the horizon. Artificial intelligence promises to dramatically increase the number of processes that can be automated, including monotonous tasks that hold agents back.

“AI in its many forms and automation can truly take over these repetitive tasks, allowing human agents to spend more time on complex interactions,” says Mistretta. “This will allow them to achieve their goal of being a true ambassador for the organization rather than a reactive ticket taker who resets passwords.”

NICE’s CXone is the only customer center platform as a service that includes its own native AI engine, Enlighten. According to Mistretta, this gives the platform a unique advantage over its competitors.

“Enlighten is unique in that it focuses on CX data, leveraging decades of interaction data, helping organizations accelerate adoption and successful integration of AI-driven capabilities,” says- he. “Enlighten is integrated into the core of CXone, enabling seamless, intelligent automation and personalized customer experiences across almost every feature of the platform. Unlike other platforms that rely on third-party AI solutions, NICE CXone’s native AI leverages a vast and rich history of customer interactions, large language models, and strong understanding natural language, allowing it to generate more accurate information, optimize agent performance and predict customers. needs with remarkable precision.

Mistretta highlights call summaries, which are either entered into customer relationship management systems or sent to quality managers by agents after a call, as an example of the type of task CXone can assign to agents.

“These summaries take time and can be distorted by human intervention,” he says. “At NICE, we provide turnkey AI-driven generative autosummarization using Enlighten. This removes bias, allows agents to quickly move on to the next interaction, and significantly reduces post-call work while improving accuracy. On a large scale, it’s easy to see how this individual “flavor” of automation can bring significant improvement to any contact center – and that’s just one example.

In addition to freeing up their time through automation, AI also helps agents respond to customer inquiries more effectively by helping them develop their soft skills and knowledge.

“AI is able to actively listen to interactions as they occur and recommend that an agent stop interrupting the customer, or express empathy when it detects the “the customer’s anxiety or frustration,” Mistretta explains. “It can also provide agents with the knowledge they need during an ongoing interaction.” This eliminates the need to search for answers or transfer the customer to different groups and brings efficiency to resolve interactions effectively. It also empowers agents and significantly increases their confidence in their ability to help customers.

The range of uses for AI in CX is set to expand even further in the future, and Mistretta is confident that NICE will be at the forefront of this innovation.

“Through CXone and its deep AI integration, supported by extensive data and industry-leading investments and execution, NICE is enabling businesses to deliver more efficient, consistent and proactive customer services,” he says .

Find out more information like this in the Fall 2024 issue of Technology file. Don’t miss anything – subscribe for free today and receive future issues straight to your inbox!