How to leverage AWS’s AI expertise to take your call center to the next level
A big frustration we all customers face is making that dreaded call to customer service to address a problem with whatever product they might have. That could mean long wait times on the phone or even using a company’s web chat where they may be inundated with questions from the customer service person before they can even state the problem.
Interacting with customer service agents can be not only frustrating but also highly impersonal as the customer is treated as just another “cog in the wheel,” so to speak. Fortunately, the placement of chatbots on company websites has immensely improved that experience.
However, even though the seeds of chatbots were cultivated by Alan Turing in the 1950s, developed further in the 1960s with Eliza, then first used in 2009 by the Chinese company WeChat, even today chatbots are not a perfect solution. There are, though, ways AI and personalization built with Amazon connect AI can improve call centers with products like Amazon Connect Contact Center.
What is the Amazon Connect Contact Center?
Many companies develop chatbots for use on company websites. Some are more intelligent than others based on the level of AI and machine learning built into the software. All of them, however, are not equal in the results they generate nor the level of customer satisfaction they deliver. Amazon Connect Contact Center differs in its use of sophisticated APIs (application programming interface) and knowledge bases.
Amazon Connect Contact Center can be paired with Amazon Lex, which uses Amazon’s connect AI, so customers can use natural language statements. With this software built-in to Amazon Connect Contact Center, customer service-based workers can quickly achieve three main goals:
- Identify the reason for the call.
- Automate simple and complex tasks.
- Find answers to their most frequently asked questions.
Amazon Connect Contact Center also uses a cloud-based chatbot known as AWS QnA Bot. This chatbot allows users to enhance a contact center’s functionality and puts less pressure on customer service representatives to answer basic questions, such as hours of operation, policy information, etc.
Amazon Connect Contact Center also supports voice options. And lastly, with a feature called Barge-in that can be configured within Amazon Connect, users of the software can interrupt automated responses from the chatbot if more information is needed to address a query. If necessary, they can even route responses to another part of the contact center.
Performance of the Amazon Connect Contact Center Chatbot
Another critical factor in how well a chatbot is doing is performance. Amazon Connect Contact Center includes dashboards that use indicators for how well it responds in chat sessions, specifically to questions where an answer wasn’t provided.
The chatbot allows the user to track the journey from one question to the next. This is particularly useful to see how users interact with the chatbot. This information can work as possible suggestions to improve the experience.
Chatbot personalization and Amazon Connect AI improves customer experience
Typically, customers who interface with customer service call centers experience long wait times. In fact, a 34% increase in customer wait time occurs no matter how simple or complex their issues might be. That is in addition to the time those customers spend stating the reason for their call, verifying their identity, and so on and so forth.
With Amazon connect AI as the backbone behind Amazon Connect Contact Center, those wait times can be significantly reduced. With call center automation and personalization, a call center provides a more dynamic and satisfying customer experience. With the use of a chatbot, customers are served right away and with a level of personalization. That means that redundant but essential tasks like the following can be handled automatically.
- Account details can be updated.
- Booking of appointments.
- Approving payments.
This quick-moving response can occur because the chatbot is well trained in identifying customers and their potential needs. In the end, when customers are made to feel important, brand loyalty increases. Perhaps that is why 48% of customers feel satisfied with using chatbots. That is also why 71% say they would welcome the use of chatbots by companies if it meant an improved customer experience.
Analysis of call or chatbot notes
Another area that may help to improve an Amazon Connect Contact Center is by searching call logs to see which customer questions were answered successfully and which were not. Amazon Connect Contact Center uses the extension Amazon Kendra to quickly find whatever is needed. In essence, it makes sense and adds structure to a plethora of data.
Every customer interaction can be recorded or transcribed. These call or chatbot notes can include indispensable information for improving a call center, such as the following:
- Objectives for the next interaction with old or new customers.
- How to follow up with a customer if an interaction ended in a less than positive way.
- Since these call notes can occur in real-time, representatives can provide instant feedback and be alerted to possible issues.
- Customer service representatives can also choose the next best action for every customer interaction.
Most importantly, with Amazon connect AI and machine learning models, chatbots and customer service representatives have thousands of hours of conversations to learn from due to the Transcribe Call Analytics function within Amazon Connect Contact Center. The result is that customers will hopefully receive deeper and more meaningful personalization when interacting with a call center.
Conclusion
Customers who need to call or chat with customer service reps shouldn’t be exposed to a negative experience. They do not want to feel they are not important or strangers to the brand.
That is why call center software, such as Amazon Connect, can add a rich customer experience via chat and voice with intelligent AI and machine learning. With enhanced chat software, a call center can improve its response time and customer support satisfaction in many ways.
- Fast responses to questions: 59% of those who took part in a chatbot survey stated they liked that they could receive a response in as fast as 5 seconds.
- Reduced customer wait times
- 24/7 support: 64% of those surveyed stated that is the main reason they like using chatbots.
- Performance tracking
- Improved personalization
If your business has a busy call center and you haven’t switched to a cloud-based solution, contact CloudHesive to learn more about Amazon Connect Contact Center and other solutions that could improve your call center. Customer satisfaction and the success of your company could greatly benefit.
