There is plenty of opportunity for AI and automation in the contact center to drive transformation, both internally for operations and externally to improve customer service. Legacy forms of automation have long been in use, such as IVR for self-service or WFA for workforce automation. With the rise of digital technologies, the limitations of these tools have become evident, and even more so as contact center AI has come to dominate the innovation landscape.
Part of the appeal of AI is the near-limitless potential for automation. There are many applications being deployed in the contact center today, from self-service chatbots to agent assistance.
However, given the human-based nature of customer service, the real challenge is striking the right balance between automation and personalizing interactions. Here are three ways contact center leaders can balance AI-driven automation with humanized experiences.
1. Make Conversational AI More Human – But Not Too Human
Conversational AI and Agentic AI provide self-service options that are dramatically better than legacy IVR and first-generation chatbots. The main improvement is the ability of today’s bots to be conversational in a human-like way that customers are comfortable with. In most cases, the customer knows they are speaking to a bot, so they don’t feel misled.
In addition to sounding human-like, contact center AI can draw from the entire history of a customer, providing the bot with enough information to make the interaction very personable. This means having a detailed conversation about recent purchases or interactions, and showing the customer how a bot can address a wider set of needs specific to them.
When the customer has issues that need to be resolved, the bot can show empathy – a very human quality – an indication that the bot understands how the issue might be impacting the customer, along with a desire to make things right. Customers don’t have experiences like this with IVR, and the more engaging the bot can be, the more automation the contact center can achieve with AI. That said, these bots must also be trained to be personable, but not too personable. There’s a fine line for bots to show a level of empathy that customers can accept, but if crossed, the experience will sour very quickly and could easily derail efforts to further automate self-service.
2. Leverage Contact Center AI for Intelligent Automation
Empathy is a critical part of human-based customer interaction. It shows customers that the agent understands how they feel, and agents can own the situation and take proper steps to resolve it.
Contact center AI now enables bots to show some level of empathy and facilitate corrective action. With intelligent automation, AI can personalize CX in two ways. First, AI can orchestrate internal processes to distill all the relevant data and information needed for a customer interaction – either to support a human agent or an AI-driven bot – in a fully automated manner and in near real-time. This precise level of detail and understanding personalizes the experience in ways contact centers could not do before.
The second aspect of intelligent automation is real-time agent assistance. Aside from automating processes, AI-powered agent assistance can automate insights like sentiment analysis, conversation summaries, intent, and transcripts. In some cases, the AI can also intervene during customer interactions by automatically replying to messaging and email conversations, freeing up agents to work on more complex and meaningful interactions.
3. Provide Customers with Easy Transitions from Bots to Human Agents
Everyone has had bad IVR experiences, feeling stuck with endless phone prompts with no escape to speak with a live agent. Nothing feels more impersonal than not being able to simply say what you want and to get a response that solves your problem. Legacy forms of self-service have kept the CX bar low, but today’s AI can finally raise that bar for self-service and CX in general.
Doing that, however, means finding a balance with automation and personalized service. No vendor can claim contact center AI is the perfect automation solution. A more realistic approach recognizes that conversational AI can now take CX automation further than before, but in most cases, it’s not end-to-end.
For now, though, most inquiries that start with AI automation will need an off-ramp to a live human agent. With AI, agents can focus their time and effort on complex customer inquiries that require human intervention and personalized experiences. In this regard, contact center AI delivers strong business value by making the agent’s workload more manageable. Knowing this, bots must be trained to always give the customer an easy way to reach a human agent. When training bots, you must be aware of their limits and ensure there’s a seamless handoff to live agents when the time comes.