The customer service industry is huge and growing at one of the most rapid speeds imaginable but traditionally, it has always been customer executives on headsets and answering calls all day long.
This is still the practice in over 90% of all call centres but this is changing.
Introducing AI calling. This is revolutionising how call centres operate and how a simple set up a few feet in size can replace hundreds of sq. feet of call centre space and save you thousands of dollars each month.
You can find out why this is so important to understand because the global telephone call centre market is expected to grow by at least $150 billion by 2029. This will be possible with a CAGR of 2.1%.
It is able to do that with the rise in customer support software solutions and AI.
In order to understand this, we will need to look at the problems with traditional call centre software and how traditional call centres work without AI so that we can find out why AI is the solution.
The Problems with Traditional Call Centre Solutions
High Operational Costs
One of the most prevalent factors that prevents everyone out there from setting up a call centre is going to be high operational costs.
This includes everything from infrastructure to utility bills and also the expenses for agent salaries and training and the expenses can add up very quickly.
Limited Availability
You can only run a call centre within fixed hours and these fixed hours can only be suitable for a certain section of global customers because you cannot have your operations tending to multiple customers at the same time.
This creates large gaps of missed opportunity to reach out to more people and this means losses simply because you are just not available to answer the calls all the time.
Long Wait Times
If you have ever interacted with any customer executive from any popular line such as Amazon, then you will understand how long you have to wait for a human to pick up the phone.
Long wait times have become the new normal when it comes to traditional call centres and this is very frustrating for customers and leaves them with a very negative perception of the brand and experience.
If you want to maintain brand loyalty, then this is something you should never do but you do not have any other options when it comes to traditional call centres.
Inconsistent Service Quality
Not every customer executive agent is going to be an expert and not everyone will have the same level of quality in dealing with clients.
You are always going to get a mixed bag when it comes to the service quality because human agents vary in experience and training and the problem with human agents is also going to be moods.
There is no workaround with this kind of problem if you are dealing with humans.
High Employee Turnover
Truth be told, a call centre job is very stressful and which is why you have a very high turnover rate, because nobody wants to stay with a single company for a long period of time because of the stress involved.
This means that you will have to continuously look for new employees and train them, which is going to take a toll on your expenses and HR costs. This might not be very significant and the beginning but it will add up.
Scalability Challenges
There are other issues in the form of scalability where a traditional call centre needs to expand its operations with increased customer demand but that means expanding everything from employees to infrastructure and that requires expenditure.
Limited Data Utilisation
Traditional call centres do not really utilise the vast amounts of data that they have lying around. This means that they simply have unutilized and underutilised insights, which means missed opportunities in the market.
That data has the potential to be utilised to improve customer experience and optimise operations.
Language and Regional Barriers
Traditional call centres are limited by language and regional barriers and while English might be good for most cases, language is still a limitation for areas where English is not the primary language of effective communication.
Core Advantages of AI Calling Software
AI calling software solutions virtually remove all the limitations of traditional call centres and can provide multiple levels of advantages with very little to negligible expenditure. To run something like this, you are going to need a minimum level of software setup and infrastructure.
The primary areas of advantage are going to be:
24/7 Availability
With an AI calling solution, you are never going to face the issue of availability, as you can run the system autonomously 24 hours a day for 365 days of the year and it will do all the work itself.
Cost Efficiency
With a completely autonomous virtual system like this, you will only need space for your system and that might even be in your house and you can run an entire call centre from the luxury of your home with existing systems.
Scalability
It all depends on the kind of package you choose because it is hosted on the cloud and it is run from the cloud with computing power on the cloud and this means it is completely up to you on the kind of configuration you need.
Consistent Quality
You can expect the same level of quality each time every call goes through.
Multilingual Capabilities
Since we are talking about AI, you can expect the same level of high-quality performance in any language you desire, even in a language you do not really understand.
Data-Driven Insights
You can finally utilise all the data that you gather from your call centre. Analyse it and you will have enough information on customer behaviour and sentiment as well as frequently asked questions. This will help you improve the performance of the AI.
Key Technologies Powering AI Call Centers
Natural Language Processing (NLP):
This is utilised by the AI for the understanding of human language.
Speech-to-Text and Text-to-Speech:
Helps in the conversion of spoken language into text and vice versa.
Sentiment Analysis:
Helps in understanding the emotional tone of a conversation in order to provide the appropriate responses.
Machine Learning:
Helps the system store and learn from each and every interaction in order to improve its performance.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA):
Helps in the automation of backend tasks.
AI calling is here to revolutionise the calling software industry and while we might not see the complete integration of autonomous AI systems just at this moment but we are definitely seeing a hybrid model of human and AI working together.
However, there are still challenges with this technology in the areas of compliance and implementation cause but it is nowhere as complicated as a traditional call centre.
If you are looking to implement a system like this then we can help you out. We are Think To Share IT Solutions and we can help you with AI calling through our very own proprietary AI calling software solution.
Our industry-recognised AI calling software solution can help you completely automate your call centre needs.
We would love to explain you more once you contact us regarding this.
