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“Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is a rapidly growing advanced technology. The latest buzzword, that is making waves, it is a definitive technology of the 21st century.

Customer experience is the main competitive differentiator. Real customer experience is expected to be highly personalized, always available, reliable, consistent, and easy to access. With the customers’ expectations soaring up, anticipating 24/7 services; organizations, to stay healthy and robust in the rat-race and to carve a niche for themselves, are vying to please their customers. It is here that artificial intelligence is inching forward and making a considerable headway.

According to the father of Artificial Intelligence, John McCarthy, AI is “The science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs”.

AI is nothing short of a revolution that has pervaded across the globe, in pursuit of customer satisfaction. In the present era of globalization, virtual reality and augmented reality, can a virtual customer be left behind? If virtual customers can exist, virtual customer assistants also need to exist, to serve the customers better. When a customer service number is dialled, a human voice is heard, answering the query and directing or assisting. Is that a real person out there, or a recorded voice? Even when a query is submitted, a chat box pops us, with the sole aim of providing customer help. Isn’t that so? This is where AI hits the nail – It uses virtual customer assistants across umpteen channels. This is the contact centre Interactive Voice Reponses (IVR) system that is available on apps, online communities, kiosks, websites and social media platforms.

A built-in-intelligence that delivers quick, and personalized service to customers and adds value to the interactions, AI engages with the customers on diverse channels and services, and drives-in innovation and application. It is customized and can be tailor-made for exclusive customer bases, at the same time being cost-effective.

It uses data and intelligence, and transforms the services provided. It blends technology with customer service and enhances customer experience. A win-win situation for customers, companies as well as agents, it is a fast and effective way of resolving complex customer queries, by envisaging a host of scenarios and coming up with the best deliverables. A brain child of the human mind, AI, combined with human agents, is one mighty army that paves way for highly improved performance and enhanced efficiency rates.

It is making forays in the business world and is reducing the gap between businesses and customers. All the same, as it is machine learning, the awareness, to an extent, is still in the making.

A boon for the Business Process Outsourcing – BPOs, it helps generate accurate, consistent, quick, and polite responses to an increasing sea of customers.  The benefits of the machine learning technology, the growth of digitalized channels cannot be understated, as these have given wings to various channels like messages, chats, emails etc., It has enriched, enhanced and helped save time in giving solutions to complicated questions. With this technology, the executives can just hit ‘approve’ or ‘personalize’ on the responses and provide quality customer services. It automatically tags posts and categorizes them.

A multi-tasker, AI has largely disrupted the customer service space.

Role of AI in customer care industry (from contact center view-point), in a nutshell:

• Acts as a brand ambassador, by empowering chat boxes with cognitive capacities.
• Forms a thread, based on the history and then acts upon, as it processes on gathered information.
• Understands customers’ behavior patterns, and responds promptly and proactively.
• Offers real-time support viz. FAQs, and suggests discounts and offers.
• Caters to B2B and B2C services.
• Offers uninterrupted flow of service, without the hassle of a wait time.
• Ensures prompt and unbiased resolution, without barriers, and acts as a virtual bridge.
• Offers flawless, precise and polite responses, beyond the realm of negative human emotions.
• Offers minimal Average Handling Time (AHT).
• Matches brand voice and tone.
• Leads to lesser customer abandonment rates.
• Offers pre-emptive action.
• Cuts down the training costs as it is only a one-time investment.
• Works efficiently beyond the bounds of time zones or holidays.
• Offers reliable solutions – it empathizes, personalities, offers immediacy and intelligence.
• Helps business deliver on their promises.
• Provides augmented intelligence in lieu of predictions, references and automations.

An absolute delight for customers who receive accurate responses, it is also helpful in saving time for the agents, as it reduces the monotoneity of the job of a call centre. Due to its automated responses, it renders a hands-free experience, and leads to huge cost-savings by slashing operational costs by as much as 70% – a whopping percentage, indeed!

AI is also useful in gaming, language processing, systems, speech recognition, handwriting recognition, and task performance.  It uses combined brain power and ensures customers get the most helpful self-service content. Many of the companies have started using AI.

Artificial Intelligence creates expert systems. It implements human intelligence using technology in machines – helps systems to comprehend, ponder, absorb and act like human beings. Helpful in answering generic questions, it can also absorb new modifications. However, care needs to be taken in the transcripts with which it is created.

Thus, as technology is getting smarter, AI is very helpful for contact centers due to the large volume of thousands of support conversations. It ensures businesses ease of operations and guarantees their deliverables. AI augmented customer service provides improved employee and customer satisfaction. No doubt, it is an era of AI-powered customer engagement.

AI, is here to grow, and reshape the future. A1 -powered, automated customer service is seamless in operations and can rightly be called the future, that is affecting every consumer application. It is the brand-new face of technology that mirrors customer satisfaction and is meant for the customer.

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