Why the Future of Customer Contact Is AI-Powered

As customer care becomes a competitive differentiator, contact centre leaders have a unique opportunity to address the needs of today’s customers, frontline teams and operational managers. By adopting an AI-powered, cloud-hosted contact centre solution, you can now develop a contact strategy that transforms service experiences, eases workloads and reduces operating costs. 

This begins by building customer trust in contact options beyond voice alone.  

Until recently, the majority of customer service traffic came through the voice channel. Yet in terms of service design, live assistance (especially voice) is best used in customer situations that are emotive, complex, urgent, or will benefit from the loyalty-building advantages of person-to-person conversation. 

We can now help teams focus on those use cases by servicing less demanding customer needs in ways that don’t require human intervention. 

Enhance customer satisfaction with self-service

Modern customers seek effective alternatives. They want the option to resolve their own service issues quickly and at a time that suits them, while avoiding the uncertainty of queuing for live assistance. A Microsoft-commissioned report     on wait times shows how the experience of waiting in a queue varies greatly within and between sectors. This frustrating experience can range from a matter of minutes to over an hour at some of the country’s largest providers of consumer goods and services.   

The rarity of a straightforward path to self-service resolution is even more striking now that intelligent tools are within reach. Performance benchmarks show that today’s interactive voice response (IVR) systems and virtual assistants, powered by advanced natural language capabilities, are far more effective at guiding users than earlier solutions.  To optimise the self-service experience, leaders should invest in skilled, cross-functional teams focused on making service outcomes easy and intuitive. 

We can also help customers get more out of self-service by offering a choice in their mode of communication. These are often situation-specific. If a customer needs to describe a personal issue on a busy train, an IVR-only option may be unsatisfactory; at other times, leaving a quick voice message in a WhatsApp self-service channel can offer a more satisfying alternative to texting.

Choices will always vary for customers and those with frequent service needs will expect consistency in their experience across different channels. 

However, while choice of channels matters, effectiveness is what’s remembered. The freedom to engage across voice, SMS, chat, email, and social media apps means ensuring there is a clear path to each customer’s desired outcome with minimum transfers. 

Generative AI has helped us reinvent how this can be achieved. It replaces standardised, rules-based bot engagement with context-aware, personalised dialogue. It also offers the benefits of access to trusted knowledge sources, websites, and business applications, with results delivered consistently to support a seamless customer journey. 

Unleash your people’s potential with AI

Generative AI is just as important to the success of live assistance. Less than 10% of contact centres can train new joiners to proficiency level within two months, according to Call Centre Helper research. But by using Microsoft AI-powered copilots, you can rapidly upskill them with knowledge, suggestions and coaching tips. In an industry known for attrition levels of 20% and above, this can have a significant impact in supporting consistent staff performance.

Generative AI also helps everyone focus on more fulfilling activity.

The 2023 Microsoft Work Trend Index reports that “63% of frontline workers struggle with repetitive or menial tasks that take time away from meaningful work.” An AI-powered Microsoft Copilot can help workers overcome this challenge before, during and even after customer interactions:

• Beforehand, Copilot can help dynamically compile a full customer profile from diverse internal sources .
• During the interaction, the conversation interface of Copilot enables everyone in a service team to research and resolve customer issues in faster, more intuitive ways.
• After engaging with a customer, Copilot can summarise conversations, automate dispositions and draft any associated customer or internal communications for approval.

Our Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solution also helps make workers’ lives easier and more productive by providing unified desktops and inboxes in place of multiple, disparate locations – a common frustration..

91% of companies report their agents must access multiple screens during an interaction. (CCW 2022) 

The new generation of AI-powered Microsoft technology can also help promote well-being.

Changing the status quo for customer service teams is a priority and in need of urgent attention, according to insights from a recent Microsoft survey How we can modernise UK contact centres with the cloud and AI. Most respondents agreed that customer demand was increasing, as was the complexity of customer needs. In response they were witnessing declining motivation, burn-out, time off for stress-related illness and increased attrition.  

When Generative AI is put to work in the context of a full end-to-end CCaaS solution, managers rapidly see such negative trends reversed and experience a more stable and productive workforce.

Modernise your contact centre with CCaaS

We believe that a fragmented contact centre experience has, for too long, resulted in poor customer service, workflow inefficiencies and disengaged employees. That’s why we’re helping our customers reimagine their experience with a new, scalable business model called Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS).

This Copilot-first solution, running in the cloud and compatible with existing CRMs, will rapidly transform contact centre services by connecting and synthesising your data, automating everyday tasks and surfacing actionable insights.

Read our report to discover how you can better meet evolving customer needs while supporting your service staff and enhancing operational efficiency.

Download the report: Modernise UK Contact Centres