Humans need to remain core to AI’s sustainable growth in the contact center
By Cláudio Rodrigues, Chief Product Officer at Omilia
Today, businesses are successfully using AI in their daily operations and are announcing even more ambitious plans just around the corner. Asana, for example,recently unveiled more AI features to take on increasingly complex workflows and drive worker efficiency. The idea is that AI will adapt to the unique way that individuals and teams work to assist them on where to focus and action work.
The CEO of Zoom went a step further and recently explained his vision on digital twins – an AI version of each worker eventually helping with 90% of meetings and other tasks that currently make up a traditional employees’ daily calendar. This allows for more meaningful in-person interactions and gives more freedom to explore life outside of a five-day workweek.
Despite the exciting progress that is being made, AI is still in its infancy. There are many responsibilities that AI can take on today, but it is important that humans continue to be at the core of its sustainable growth. The responsibilities that companies need to reserve for humans are those that require empathy, authenticity, and emotional intelligence.
AI as we know it today
Today, contact centers are using advanced virtual assistants to manage increasingly complex customer interactions. For example, in a financial institution, common customer inquiries like “how much is in my account” and “I need to schedule a payment” are being handled by virtual agents quickly, and often more efficiently than if served by a human.
AI has also been particularly helpful at ensuring compliance in the contact center as it’s much more difficult to bypass a virtual assistant than it is a human. This is because a human’s same superpower against AI - empathy - can also be a human’s greatest weakness. In some cases, another human or AI, like a voice deepfake along with some social engineering, can deceive a human leading to confidential information being shared. In leveraging AI and voice biometrics, contact center managers can receive timely alerts that identify potential breaches, allowing them to take action and prevent those from escalating. AI is also supporting human agents by providing them essential information and real-time guidance during calls, for example, by ensuring they stick to compliance scripts or have quick access to answers customers need, to ensure they efficiently and effectively fulfill customers’ requests, whilst ensuring regulatory requirements are adhered to.
With appropriate guardrails, we now know that we can ensure less stochasticity in an AI-driven contact center than in one driven exclusively by humans. With AI providing this support, human agents are more empowered to free up their time to manage interactions that require higher-levels of empathy and skill, for example, dealing with a customer case of an account being hacked.
The importance of keeping humans in the contact center
Leveraging AI while preserving the human connection in customer interactions will be key for future business success. While AI serves as a valuable tool for automating routine tasks and streamlining operations, it is the human touch that imbues interactions with empathy, authenticity, and emotional intelligence. This is core for any brand to build strong customer relationships. It’s about applying efficiency in the right areas of business to help show customers that they are valued. However, the human touch is also something that brands need to keep investing in for high-value or highly complex interactions that require more empathy.
The use of AI, coupled with the collaboration of agents and AI, will also produce more customer interaction data and with it the opportunity for organizations to uncover a wealth of insights on customer needs. This intelligence can inform service strategies and enhance the level of customer service an agent can provide along with their AI-powered assistants. By providing human agents with more insights to do their job better, not only will it create happier employees but it will elevate their role to one of brand ambassadors, empowering them to enhance customers’ experience and ultimately drive brand loyalty.
A perfect blend of human and machine
Over the next five years, human agents’ roles in the contact center will be transformed as they continue to harness the power of AI and leverage virtual assistants. Contrary to the belief that AI threatens the human touch and displaces workers, it actually preserves human interaction where it is most valuable—improving agents' work lives, fostering empathy, and driving growth.
Contact center agents will see their roles evolve as they utilize AI tools to manage and instruct bots. This will result in a convergence of three service channels: human agents, virtual agents, and human agents controlling virtual agents, delivering an exceptional customer experience.
While many fear the future of AI, we need to embrace and adapt. Humans have overcome technological obsolescence many times in the past and will continue to in the future.