The growing digitalization trend and the advent of competent technologies have shifted customer expectations. They yearn for efficient, effective, and faster customer service, especially since the emergence of agile automation technologies in the contact center landscape.

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Customers no longer seek agents' assistance for simple queries, instead, they prefer solving it themselves. What has also been remarkable about these expectations is that customers have come to tie their loyalty to a brand based on the quality of customer support they receive. Thus, failing to offer an at-par customer experience in this competitive environment can compel them to switch brands.

The unfolding of this customer experience trend has precisely necessitated the need for contact centers to adopt self-service tools in consonance with Artificial intelligence (AI).

Limitations of human-only service

Amit Gandhi, CEO, NovelVox noted that the contact centers, of late, have been struggling to handle high call volumes proactively. It’s only natural that a limited work pool can deal with a certain amount of calls in a day, and that too for dedicated hours. Now, if customers were to reach out for every simple query, then agents would be swamped with call-handling tasks throughout the day. This means failing to deliver the convenience and speed of support that customers today lookout for."

Customers might be required to wait for hours in the queue, making them feel they are not a priority. There are no two ways about the fact that customers want immediate service, and if agents fail to deliver, customers might take their business elsewhere. This is not just about dissatisfied customers but also thousands of dollars walking out of the door simply because customers were made to wait too long."

Amit Gandhi said, "Instant gratification is the reality of our world today. Customers are used to faster and more efficient services, thanks to automation technologies becoming a part of routine lifestyles. Given this evolving background, self-service is not just a nice to have” anymore. It has become a necessity to transform customer experience positively."

Efficiency meets convenience with Self-service

Whether it is cutting down operational costs or improving Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) like lower AHT, better CSAT scores, First Call Resolutions, or reduced Agent churn, self-service can ensure better agent performance and customer experience. It enables customers to resolve simple queries independently, allowing agents to dedicate their work hours to convert more leads.

Self-service options like Knowledge Base (including FAQs), IVR, Chatbots, and Interactive onboardings are available round-the-clock, more cost-effective, and support different learning styles empowering customers to solve problems through their preferred mode: audio, video, text, etc.

While most contact centers have some sort of self-service capabilities, it is mainly used as a call deflection tool to reduce agent burden. But this is a gross underuse of its potential.

"To ensure better Return on Investment (ROI) on your self-service implementations, it is critical to use agile technologies like AI, ML, etc., to proactively assist customers by understanding their needs and exceeding their expectations," Gandhi noted.  

The future of Self-service with AI

Innovative self-service solutions have the unique capability of offering a seamless and standardized customer experience across channels.

The Visual IVR tool from NovelVox, for example, streamlines customer service by allowing customers to touch their way through menus rather than listening to long menus. This eliminates the need for customers to be re-routed from one agent to the next, saving time spent in queues.

Going forward, as Metaverse gains ground in the mainstream space, there is a possibility of AI-driven chatbots and Avatars to stimulate interpersonal conversations in an immersive environment. This can partially compensate for the lack of human touch through content personalization optimized by a data-driven approach

Amit Gandhi from NovelVox said that empowering self-service tools with the power of AI, ML, and NLP can offer contextual assistance specific to customers by capturing their journeys. Further, the in-built AI and ML can also empower virtual assistants to collect vast amounts of data. Thus, making it easier to derive customer insights and doling out support services that are in sync with customer expectations. Self-service AI is a need today, and contact centers should leverage this before the window of opportunity shifts.