When large language models (LLMs) really started making waves in 2022 with the popular emergence of ChatGPT, it seemed a foregone conclusion that by now we would all be relaxing on the sofa while our personal AI assistants did our work for us.
Yet here I am, writing this blog on a laptop, with my own two hands, the old-fashioned way. What happened? Where’s the kaboom?
While generative AI is perfectly good at things like writing boilerplate blogs (my own two hands notwithstanding), its most exciting, kaboom-worthy capabilities emerge when directed to augment human activity within a defined workflow. Nowhere is that more evident than in the customer service industry.
How much time could your contact center save if you could automate entire stages of every interaction? How much higher would your customer satisfaction scores be if you could ensure that Customer service representatives (CSRs) never copied down the wrong address or spelled a name incorrectly? What if you could direct customers to ask questions in self-service the same way they can ask questions of ChatGPT?
Kaboom, indeed.
Below are six examples of how AI is already evolving the way work happens in the contact center – and how much you stand to gain from it.
1. Slash interaction times
Without AI: After any customer interaction ends, CSRs spend a few minutes writing up notes, next steps, and action items. Even if the rep has a full transcript, pulling out and summarizing the most important points is necessary, but time consuming.
With AI: Automate the interaction wrap-up and summarization step with gen AI. This is no trivial number. If you have 1,000 reps handling 40 interactions per day, and you can save 90 seconds from every interaction, that’s 1,000 hours per day. What could you do with that extra time?
2. Accelerate onboarding
Without AI: Getting new CSRs onboarded and up to speed so they can start fielding and resolving inquiries is a never-ending challenge. High turnover rates mean you’re always onboarding new reps, and those new employees take time to become as seasoned and effective as your most tenured agents.
With AI: Make every agent your best agent – faster – by using AI to guide new CSRs through workflows, suggest replies, and serve as the training wheels while they get comfortable. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, novice and low-skilled contact center workers were 34% more effective in resolving interactions when they had access to AI tools.
3. Unlock better self-service
Without AI: Customers tend to avoid self-service because self-service tends not to work. So they end up bringing routine questions and inquiries to the contact center and your CSRs’ work lists, contributing to high volumes and long wait times.
With AI: Give concise, conversational answers to customer inquiries through self-service and chat using gen AI that’s grounded in your enterprise content, knowledge, and data. Action cases directly from chat and deliver resolutions without ever escalating to a live CSR.
4. Reduce human error
Without AI: Often the only thing standing between a happy customer and an angry customer is your agents’ ability to transcribe information accurately. That may sound simple enough but give any person enough words to type and eventually some of them will contain errors – even for the most experienced professionals.
With AI: Autonomously copy information that the customer provides to the correct fields, even when the customer speaks it over the phone. Or give agents live script guidance and suggested responses to cut down the amount of memorizing required for smooth interactions.
5. Uncover revenue-generating opportunities
Without AI: Customers give signals all the time for things they may be interested in without even realizing it. But your agents also might not realize it. Customer service professionals typically aren’t trained to recognize buying intent or how to pitch products and services, so those opportunities go unfulfilled.
With AI: Embed analytical AI to read and react to customers’ signals, then surface the recommended corresponding offer in real time. Virgin Media did this and boosted cross-sell and upsell opportunities by 30% without wasting a dime on additional CSR training.
6. Simplify digital transformation
Without AI: Stop me if this sounds familiar: A dozen business stakeholders get in a room together to whiteboard out a set of steps they think best matches a given customer journey. After a few months they bring their output to the IT leaders and the process starts anew. Once they sniff consensus, the Operations leads join and it’s back to the drawing board.
With AI: Generate workflows in minutes with AI-generated steps, personas, data objects, and more that draw from proven industry templates. Iterate on the fly with simple prompts and a user-friendly interface that shows you what your application will look like as you go. Rinse and repeat for every process you plan to digitalize, downsizing your effort from months or years to days or weeks.
Get started
A lot of these claims might feel like they’re two, three, or twenty years away. Not so. Everything you’ve read above is available today, and much of it is already making a mark in contact centers that have opted to lead the way on innovation.
Fortunately, getting started does not mean throwing out everything you have and starting anew. Our Pega Customer Service™ offerings are built to enhance and integrate, delivering immediate value while setting you up for long-term success.
In fact, you can get started right now for free by heading to pega.com/blueprint to see how Pega Blueprint™ can produce customer service workflows (and more!) in seconds with your own real-world inputs. The best part? You’ll walk away with a working application that you can import right into your Pega instance. Not using Pega yet? Well, you know what to do.