When It Comes To Gen AI Don’t Just Worry About C Suite Buy-In. Prioritize Getting Your Team On Board
One of Gen AI’s biggest barriers to entry is agent adoption with new technology.
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Bringing Generative AI technology into the contact center is a process, to say the least. Identifying a system that works effectively, allocating the budget and building out a roll-out strategy are just a few things customer contact leaders have to consider when adopting Gen AI into organizational workflows. Beyond these concrete steps, organizations also have to consider external factors like the push of customer demand for AI experiences (or lack thereof), the potential employee learning gaps surrounding automation, and the pressure from competitors to stay on the up-and-up of all things CX.
Over the past year the customer contact space has seen an increased interest in Generative AI tools, and a concerted effort by CX leaders to educate themselves on the best use cases for their organization. Trending news, boardroom meetings, conference keynotes and real-life industry case studies have all played a part in allowing executives to better understand all of the improvements Generative AI can bring to the contact center.
Externally, Gen AI can support customers through their self-service journey, analyze consumer behaviors and improve chatbots across the experience. Internally, it can summarize interaction data, track employee workflows, minimize time spent on administrative tasks and support agent efforts to create meaningful interactions with customers. Overall, if well-deployed, Gen AI can cost effectively increase productivity, save time, strengthen the workforce and increase CSAT scores. This promising potential is creating waves in the C Suite–82% of industry leaders are optimistic that Gen AI will be a game changer for the contact center/CX function.
And although these benefits have become more clear to CX executives, one of Gen AI’s biggest barriers to entry is agent adoption with new technology. Lack of familiarity with the types of AI on the market, ambiguity on what features meet their unique needs, and uncertainty on how to work in tandem with advanced tech can increase hesitations. However, with the right approach, management can bring agents to the understanding that Gen AI is not a replacement tool, but rather a skills development tool that can enrich, streamline and simplify even their own day-to-day struggles in the contact center.
Why Gen AI? Go From A Cost Center To A Value Center
Efficiency and high-level organization are characteristics that lead to top-tier CX within any team, and contact center leaders are ever-searching for ways to make these qualities second-nature for their brand. Demand for omnichannel over the years has put pressure on leaders, prompting them to explore and develop new ways to meet customers while engaging employees effectively.
For some teams, that has meant throwing a multitude of potential solutions at the contact center wall and seeing what sticks. Whether it’s a new hire, a new interface or a new knowledge management strategy, contact centers have spent copious amounts of money and time on trying to find the perfect match for their digital CX.
In those Hail Mary moments the contact center ceases to be a place of value for both customers and agents. Individuals become overwhelmed and disgruntled by new changes, poor agent training, and a lack of context for the how and why of it all. Over time, teams shrink, systems break down and customers find somewhere else to go.
With past attempts at modernization in mind, right now Generative AI is one tool that can address pain points across the board. As a CX tool it can assist customers in self-service and allow brands to gain better insight into consumer behaviors. As a knowledge and workforce management tool, it can help agents become the most productive, professionally satisfied, proactive versions of themselves.
The presence of AI in the contact center will prepare the agents of today to be the exemplary employees of the future. Leaders will want to be strategic in their financial moves and choose the tools they bring to their employees with care. Mindfulness throughout the adoption process is what will set a sub-par AI experience apart from a superior tech-savvy CX interaction.
How Gen AI Can Be The Key To Accelerating EX And CX
Some of the most consistent pain points for customer service agents working in omnichannel are:
- AI Disconnect–agents don’t know the difference between Gen AI tools, or don’t want to know
- Misdirected Training–use cases for unfamiliar technology are unclear to employees, and they don’t know when to turn to Gen AI in their workflows or with customers
- An Unclear Workflow and Path Forward–with multiple data sources and structures in place, agents don't know where their expertise or CX knowledge best fits into the Gen AI landscape
- Personal Preferences–some agents may prefer the legacy systems or workflows of old, and find Gen AI to be a roadblock to their growth in the contact center
When it comes to training and coaching teams on AI, more than half of organizations are prioritizing building Gen AI expertise in the contact center. Deploying Gen AI won’t just help to streamline workflows, but it will empower leaders to create more relevant training material that enhances their knowledge in real-time and gives them opportunities to “wow” the customer, regardless of where they are in their technical AI journey.
Generative AI can internally track and synthesize data from customer interactions, analyze their resolution roadblocks, and pinpoint areas for improvement. It can even identify employee strong suits and pinpoint best practices to inform training and coaching initiatives going forward. As opposed to building out employee training tools from scratch or following structures that might apply to one organization’s workforce but not another’s, contact centers have the opportunity to personalize the employee experience with relevant data and specific insight.
Ninety percent of contact center leaders surveyed agree that Gen AI will jumpstart the process of gathering better data about customer needs & agent performance, leading to better training and development strategies. Leaders also believe that by the end of 2024 Gen AI will impact both cost and customer satisfaction, but this can only be achieved with full organizational buy-in.
While organizations may be able to see the immediate benefits of automation and advanced tech in the contact center, it may overwhelm agents who feel the impact of high-stress customer interactions and may be over encumbered by the systems and screens they’re currently working with.
Gen AI Is An Agent Learning Tool–They Just Don’t Know That Yet
Generative AI can do a multitude of things that agents would normally do themselves–from call summarization to anticipation of customer needs, depending on the platform. It can simplify long processes, and speed up time-consuming internal tasks for agents. In turn, agents have more bandwidth to connect with customers one-on-one and prioritize human connection with each interaction. Gen AI also can expand self-service capabilities, making it easier for customers to resolve their issues without the presence of an agent.
Agents can then become more available to participate in important team conversations, prioritize internal collaboration, and put their energy towards developing their customer service skill sets. Moreover, each of these improvement areas can be reviewed and quantified through data analysis, which also deepens the agent-customer connection by empowering employees with valuable intel on customer needs and sentiment.
In a similar vein, it can enrich agents’ professional development by identifying areas of expertise and opportunities for individual improvement. Being able to review customer interactions, reveal service roadblocks, and understand the agent approach towards solutions–either in real-time or post-interaction with Gen AI, can assist management in offering appropriate just-in-time guidance to contact center employees.
The majority of agents working in contact centers have yet to experience the full capabilities of Generative AI, in large part due to limited exposure to the technology. While contact center leaders spend time exploring and developing strategies to bring advanced tech into the workplace, their teams spend their working hours addressing customer concerns and putting out omnichannel CX fires. Due to this bandwidth discrepancy, more than half of agents struggle to truly understand the differences between AI types causing some efforts to incorporate Gen AI into customer service to fall flat.
To some agents, generative vs. conversational AI might as well be one and the same. Ideally, management that is looking to stay on top of Generative AI’s evolution and current digital trends also want to provide hands-on experience and knowledge training that can help fill in those gaps. Overall, understanding the differences between using Gen AI and knowing what the benefits are is the most important step to seeing long-term success.
Enhancing the Agent Experience by Leveraging Self-Service
Team leaders want their employees to understand how Gen AI can be used most effectively in the contact center, whether it’s used to support employees’ goals or address customers’ self-service needs. Self-service should always offer real resolutions to customers, and if properly adopted and deployed 75% of contact center leaders believe that Gen AI will simplify the self-service experience. Proper deployment of Gen AI in self-service looks like:
- Comprehensive customer journey mapping
- Ability of the chatbot to source accurate data and resolutions from knowledge platforms and resources
- Understanding of customer intention, tone, urgency and sentiment
- Capability to escalate to an agent when/as needed
- Continual learning from each interaction and intelligent routing throughout the experience
As a self-service tool, Gen AI can help customers address more simple issues on their own by providing more accurate data from internal sources in an intuitive format. When Gen AI–in self-service or otherwise–is leveraged as a data collection tool, agents can spend less time troubleshooting simple issues or organizing their call notes, and more time engaging with customers 1-on-1 in ways that make the customer feel important and prioritized.
Because of this, agents will need to adapt to a new digital environment and be willing to lend their knowledge to advanced tech tools so they can not only work more efficiently, but enhance the customers’ experience with more dedicated support. Additionally, with generative AI in the contact center, organizations can offer streamlined and intuitive self-service. When done right, agents will gain even more opportunities to take on complex work and connect with customers during critical interactions.
With an increased availability in the contact center, agents can re-dedicate themselves to creating experiences that are empathetic, solution-oriented and understanding of customers’ needs. In difficult moments–or–joyous ones–agents can offer their intuitive knowledge and product expertise to customers who may be too overwhelmed to find solutions on their own.
