By Harmandeep Singh Matharu, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Mihup
One essential factor driving the success of every modern business, irrespective of size, location, and industry, is ‘superior customer service.’ In this era of competitive excellence, there are multiple brands that provide similar products/services and in the same price ranges, after all, the customer matters. Despite this, businesses continue to struggle due to a lack of unrivalled visibility into customer interaction data that can keep them above competitors.
Need for conversation intelligence
The evolution of digital commerce has increased the reach and visibility of brands considerably. With the right marketing campaigns, customers would be eager to know more about your offerings, and then there will be those who are looking for support around the products. When businesses fail to handle customer queries, it leads to customer churn and a fall in revenue-generating opportunities. Manual training processes are time-consuming, error-prone, and less satisfactory.
However, once you take the strategic decision of using Conversation Intelligence to augment your customer service processes, you can be assured of incredible and incremental benefits. Let’s look at some ways in which the AI-powered Conversation Intelligence platform can boost your customer experience and brand values.
Continuous performance improvement– Superior customer service happens when the customers feel heard and valued. This is possible only when the agents are well-trained in common customer queries and concerns. However, with thousands of such calls received daily, even with a quality analysis team in place, a conventional contact center doesn’t get to analyse more than 5% of them. Consequently, 95% of the conversations go unheard, which results in brands getting a very skewed understanding of their customers. They also fail to get an accurate picture of the performance of their agents. For instance, in random evaluation, QAs might end up picking a conversation wherein the representative delivered a great response and scored on all parameters. However, the other 10 calls received might have been less than satisfactory and error-prone.
With conversation intelligence, the AI works with the same consistency and can listen to each and every call, judging it on the same parameters without getting bored or distracted. Thus, irrespective of the number of calls, the agents and the brand, therefore, can get a complete understanding of customers’ concerns or needs. This helps enterprises review their customer service processes, products and services, and make changes and improvements accordingly. Thus, there is a continuous enhancement of efficiency and service levels which boosts the overall brand reputation.
Real-time Support to Agents – Putting calls on hold for a long duration, inability to find the information a customer is looking for, etc., are common scenarios. Today, businesses are dynamically looking at increasing conversions and coverage of new audience segments by introducing new products and features. However, agents who continue to provide support on the basis of training they received months back or the product information shared earlier, might be unaware of recent updates. This failure to provide accurate information to customers, can hamper brand reputation and a possible conversion.
Conversation intelligence comes as an enabler here too. The platform can listen to calls in real-time, identify the caller’s intent and emotions automatically, and even understand what they are seeking. The platform would be integrated with the organization’s CRM, and automatically search and pull out the information that the customer is looking for. It will share the information or suggested steps on the representative’s screen in the form of cues. Thus, agents don’t necessarily need to undertake a manual search or put callers on hold. Even the accuracy of the information provided is very high. Thus, agents feel more confident and deliver the desired information and help in a much shorter turn-around time. The conversation intelligence platform can also take notes, bookmark important moments and make call summaries reducing agent efforts and fatigue, making it a win-win situation for all!
Conclusion
Times have changed, and there is a humongous rise in digital transactions. Changing customer behaviour and expectations necessitate that brands become more efficient in servicing their users. Conversation intelligence is one of the most advanced forms of technology that can help enterprises enhance their abilities, reduce long-term operational costs, and experience superior customer as well as talent retention. This is the trend of our times, and organizations that make the switch will stay relevant in the times to come.