AI Best Practices to Improve Customer Service and Agent Productivity
AI-guided self-service, AI-infused knowledge and AI-led process guidance help you do the impossible: Improve service productivity and the customer experience while reducing costs
1. Control agent churn
Contact center attrition rate is as high as 35% to 40%. US contact centers alone spend $10 billion a year in agent attrition costs, a lose-lose-lose for the contact center, the business, and end customers. Cut that cost with a knowledge + AI system.
2. Deflect calls from the interactive voice response (IVR) system
You can offer customers on hold in an IVR-fronted queue an SMS link to answers or to an AI-enabled online interaction that will guide them to the answer or through the resolution process. Importantly, callers don’t lose their place in the queue.
3. Deflect calls, email, and chat traffic from the contact center
AI reasoning, with or without a natural language or virtual assistant frontend, improves digital self-service as it handles more complex questions than what simple search can. eGain’s clients report being able to deflect up to 60 percent of such requests.
4. Boost first contact resolution (FCR)
A modern AI knowledge system allows agents to handle a broader and deeper set of customer queries, reducing repeat calls and transfers. A leading mobile operator and eGain client achieved a 37 percent improvement in first-contact resolution with AI-guided resolution.
5. Reduce agent training need
Contextual knowledge or AI-enabled process guidance served exactly when the agent is interacting with the customer—proactively or on demand by the agent—helps reduce the need for agent training and speeds up time to competency.
Whether your agents come in sober or hungover, Artificial Intelligence, combined with knowledge, (or simply, AI + Knowledge) will guide them to deliver customer service as effectively as the best agent!
Hear this hilarious, but true, incident from the field, as told by eGain’s Director of Digital Transformation.
6. Optimize field service visits
Called truck rolls, these field visits cost $150 on average and are often initiated after the contact center failed to solve customer problems. Again, smart knowledge helps.
7. Avoid product returns
Use AI knowledge in the contact center to remotely troubleshoot and guide the customer to a resolution. This is especially useful in products with high return incidents, like phones and appliances. For example, a leading telecom client could reduce handset exchanges and returns by 38% through effective problem resolution in its contact center.
