It’s been an unprecedented year for contact centers, having to contend with not only their own shifts to teleworking, but dealing with heightened customer expectations and anxiety as they try to get help or information. It’s meant an even greater focus on technology to enable both workforce agility as well as better customer interactions.
“We’re witnessing the digital acceleration of the contact center in real-time,” said Paul Jarman, CEO, NICE inContact. “The vast range of digital channels customers have come to expect – chat, SMS text, Twitter, WhatsApp – are now cornerstones of positive customer experiences.”
Indeed, customer service organizations have to be able to navigate the many engagement channels customers use, while delivering consistent, positive, and contextual experiences across all of them. The ability to deliver continuity of experience across channels has become increasingly important as customers have increased their use of digital channels this year, including a significant increase in the use of self-service tools.
Enhanced remote workforce agility & agent engagement – An advanced workforce engagement suite that is part of the CXone cloud platform enables contact centers to avoid disruptions and to continuously manage productivity and agent performance in any location – including all those working from their homes currently. Contact center leaders are able to manage, engage, and coach their teams remotely, just as if they were in their physical contact centers, with new digital coaching with real-time screen monitoring tools. New features also include agent-initiated schedule changes, rotational schedules, and other agent-centric remote features, particularly helpful for managing and supporting WFM agents.
Autodiscovery of trends across interactions – New end-to-end analytics across all interactions – voice and digital – increase opportunities to identify recurring issues and spot patterns across interactions that were previously unrecognizable. Using machine learning and AI, CXone is able to generate actionable intelligence to improve agent performance and address customer trends through automated identification, categorization, and visualization to create process improvement opportunities.
New Business Intelligence (BI) features – Advanced analytics are embedded directly in the CXone platform, including graphic visualizations and both pre-defined and custom reporting options. The BI tools give contact center leaders increased visibility into their operations and allow them to more effectively leverage workforce management and quality management tools to deliver optimal customer interactions.
Real-time customer authentication – Voice biometrics and advance AI help streamline interactions and deliver positive experiences more efficiently. CXone now offers a passive authentication method to quickly confirm customer identity, without requiring repeated passphrases or other authentication signals. The result is a reduction in AHT, increased customer satisfaction, and a better customer experience, especially within self-service applications.
“Seamless, exceptional experiences are vital in attracting new customers, fostering existing relationships and building a community of brand advocates,” added Jarman. “The Fall 2020 CXone release takes a holistic approach to improving both agent and customer experiences and to helping organizations of all sizes modernize and remain agile in today’s increasingly digital world.”
The pandemic has certainly created challenges for contact centers, but it has also provided momentum for the introduction and adoption of new, AI-driven features and capabilities to drive better, more efficient interactions. The pandemic has most certainly reduced customer tolerance for poor experiences – stress levels are at an all-time high for many – increasing the need for contact centers to be able to manage customer needs faster and more effectively than ever. The added intelligence and flexibility the latest release of CXone delivers helps customer service teams meet that objective.
The latest trends in communications and customer engagement and experience, including automation, AI, and messaging/communication tools, and how Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning can benefit organizations and their communities of customers and users, is the crux of Future of Work Expo 2021. Taking place at the brand new Miami Beach Convention Center, June 22-25, 2021 as part of the #TechSuperShow. Future of Work will again sit beside its collocated events – ITEXPO, SD-WAN Expo, MSP Expo, IoT Evolution, The Blockchain Event, and more – to deliver a compete learning and networking opportunity for business leaders who need to know what new technologies will drive their companies into the future.
Edited by
Erik Linask
