Some people have this notion that the more technology is embraced, the less human-centered it will be. Thanks to futuristic movies and films, we’ve come to associate robots and technology as villains to humankind.
With people still raising eyebrows at contact centers that embrace machine learning and AI, automation has proved that there is a middle ground. Technology isn’t replacing agents, but it is certainly improving customer experiences with smarter and automated processes.
Table of Contents
What is contact center automation?
Contact center automation is composed of processes and systems that aid in improving contact center operations by eliminating some manual tasks. Automation uses machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to see and learn patterns of repetitive tasks, allowing computers to do the work with little or no help from humans.
If you think this is all new to you, automation in contact centers has in fact started long before we recognize it as such. Contact centers had started automating customer responders through the use of interactive voice responders (IVRs) which gave birth to automatic speech recognition (ASR). Now prevalent in almost all contact centers and big businesses, it has proven its usefulness in directing phone calls to the right agents or departments, taking this task off the receptionist’s shoulders.
While communication technology advances, automation has become useful in creating better customer experiences. There are chatbots that made interaction on messaging platforms faster and available round-the-clock.
Businesses are given cheaper ways to accommodate more customers making other agent tasks superfluous. This means that agents are given more time to interact with high-value leads, score better sales, and tend to customer requests without worrying about other tasks piling up their desks.
How can automation humanize customer experience?
It may seem like an irony to many, but automation has the power to humanize customer interactions and therefore improve customer satisfaction.
With people learning to interact with businesses digitally, contact centers are faced with tons of customers demanding immediate attention. Automation helps agents manage calls, texts, and other communications more efficiently. Here’s how.
1 – Understanding customer purchase journey
At the top of your sales funnel is the ‘awareness’ phase or ‘prospecting’ phase for sales where potential customers are discovering your brand for the first time. During this stage, automation can help by tracking customer’s behavior. Through ready-made data and analytics that agents can access, they can study behaviors and patterns to see how to approach each customer, helping them sell effectively.
Recorded calls and texts, like any other data, help businesses assess the effectiveness of their business model. Through recorded conversations, the management is able to see how customers are responding to their efforts and view it from their agents’ eyes. Understanding your customers is key to acquiring more and keeping them for the long haul.
2 -Boosting valuable connections
Automation also helps businesses adapt to customers’ demands. There’s local presence that detects a customer’s location and displays its specific area code in accordance with it. Customers perceive a number specific to their area code as more trustworthy, therefore can increase your connection rates.
For dialing numbers, automation plays a vital role through automated dialers. Now widely used among contact centers, dialers were also developed to improve the value of calls. One example of these developments is the power dialer that was made smarter and more advanced while still keeping agents in full control. Apart from eliminating manual dials, a power dialer can auto-skip voicemails and bad numbers so agents are connected to real customers.
3 – Increasing customer talk time
The more agents have work to do, the less likely they’d have time to talk to customers. If talking to customers is just a ‘part of the job’ and not the entirety of it, you might be creating unnecessary challenges to your CX or sales team. Building customer relationships is an integral part of your sales process, and therefore agents should have all their time allotted to it.
When business is growing, tasks are expected to multiply. However, you shouldn’t expect your agents to take it all in. With automation, you are giving your agents the opportunity to manage their time well. Instead of manually following up through calls, emails, or texts like they normally do, you can let them set up automation triggers for scheduled text blasts and voicemail follow-ups. Agents can also collaborate better through automated call dispositions and contact information that are instantly recorded in your system.
4 – Managing call queues
No matter how skillful your CX team is, if callers are too many to handle, there will be consequences for the process and the whole business. Through automation, you can let the computer manage call queues and waiting times as well.
For instance, you can trigger callback text messages on every customer waiting in the queue. Automatically sending a text message to a customer for a callback can reduce irate calls during peak times. You can also rely on automation during the call routing process. You can direct calls to their right destination based on agent skill or time of availability.
5 – Maximizing all available channels
Digital communication opened up a new world for customers. This requires businesses to keep up with such trends. While this created more chances to reach customers, managing customers across channels can get difficult for your agents.
Automation provided solutions for this. Agents can now handle phone calls, texts, chats, and emails in one place. Turn-key omnichannel contact centers help teams respond to customers faster. With everything organized for you, you are able to maximize the use of different channels in reaching out to customers. One unanswered call or text will not be the end of it. You’ll have a chance to set up automated follow-ups and engage with customers using the channels they prefer.
Automation inside Aloware
Customer satisfaction is nothing new to us at Aloware. To us, it’s a necessary step that businesses should work on to keep up with a rapidly changing world. That’s why we’ve built tools and features that can help your contact center adapt and work with automation. Here, you can experience automation at its full potential.
Discover our smartest and fastest Power Dialer engineered to help sales teams triple their sales goals. Our ready-made tools for workflow automation allow you to find better ways to manage communications while keeping customers engaged. Our friendly platform is also adaptive to major CRMs, which you can integrate, manage, and use as one.
Automation is our lifeline at Aloware. We’re here to help you embrace it and use it to humanize your business. To know more about Aloware, you can book a demo with one of our friendly, human representatives.
