Workforce Management Featured Article
75 Percent of European Contact Center Executives Don't Understand AI
Companies once spent a lot of time pursuing what they believed to be effective customer service. The phrase “customer service,” however, recalls a piecemeal effort: to begin anew with the customer each time they call, email or send a message. Increasingly, companies are focusing their efforts on improving the customer experience, or CX. The customer experience is the sum of all the interactions that a customer has with an organization over the life of the relationship. It means being proactive instead of reactive and anticipating customer needs. Increasingly, this is being accomplished with the help of artificial intelligence (AI).
Contact center as-a-service (CCaaS) solutions provider Odigo recently released findings from its annual AI for CX report. The research, conducted by Davies Hickman, surveyed more than 1,000 business executives in Belgium and the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain and the UK. Analysts asked European contact centers how they are leveraging AI to enhance their offerings and their attitudes to new technologies.
“In an increasingly complex environment, where customers interact with brands using multiple communication channels, technologies such AI are becoming essential to increase brands’ performance,” said Thibaud Pietri, Chief Product Officer at Odigo.
The findings revealed that there is a strong appetite in the contact center business to invest in AI and to further grow and improve customer experience (CX) offerings. Most respondents understood the opportunities offered by AI and recognized the need for innovation to make their services more streamlined and effective, and to assist contact center agents. Most respondents, however, admitted that they did not fully understand AI and that the growing skills gap in this area is hindering the adoption of the technology.
Three-quarters of the European executives surveyed agreed that there is indeed a shortage among their workforce, while 69 percent admitted they don’t understand how emerging technologies such as AI could add value to their operation. Only 16 percent of respondents gave their digital transformation a rating of 90 percent or better. The analysts who performed the study noted that call center solutions providers need to help companies fill the gaps.
Petri noted that the study clearly shows the role that companies with AI-based call center offerings can play in bridging the skills and technology gaps by providing business with robust CCaaS solutions and enabling them to deliver excellent customer experience. They can also help brands provide a more qualitative approach that enables contact center agents to be as personal and compassionate as a neighborhood shopkeeper.
Edited by Luke Bellos
