The State of Artificial Intelligence in Contact Centers

DMG Consulting LLC's special report on ‘The State of Artificial Intelligence in the Contact Center’ analyzes how artificial intelligence (AI) can be applied to transform the customer experience (CX), drive a new era in servicing, and significantly improve the performance of contact centers. It explains AI, its underlying technologies and how it enhances contact center systems and applications. The Report provides use cases for AI today and looks ahead to discuss the exciting future of this technology, also analyzing the value proposition and payback for its adoption in each application.

The inclusion of AI technology in contact center and CX solutions is driving the most rapid pace of innovation and improvement ever seen in the service sector. Artificial intelligence is being added to all of the systems and applications used by contact center agents. It has already introduced a basic form of human-like understanding and intelligence into self-service solutions and is on its way to delivering practical and quantifiable improvements to many other applications. Although in the early days of use by service environments, AI is demonstrating its ability to enhance the CX while improving quality, productivity and employee engagement.

AI is already making important contributions to many facets of the service experience. Computer vision is being used to "see" and make recommendations for action based on visual input. Machine learning is detecting patterns in massive data sets to identify tasks and activities that can be handled better with intelligent automation. Speech analytics is delivering valuable insights based on its ability to structure customer conversations and understand callers' wants and needs. Next-best-action capabilities guide agents to achieve optimal outcomes in the first contact. And predictive behavioral routing is identifying customers' conversation styles and matching them with the best-fit agent.

Artificial intelligence is an expanding group of technologies that, when supported by an appropriate data repository, can discern patterns and emulate human reasoning and behaviors. Once the processing steps for each type of customer inquiry or transaction are recognized, AI can enhance, or possibly fully automate, the handling and resolution of future transactions. This frees up agents to perform higher-value and more complex activities. At least 50% of contact center tasks are repetitive, so this means that applying AI technology to resolve them will be beneficial for customers, agents and the company's bottom line.

This Report also provides a maturity model for the service experience in contact centers, looking ahead to the next 15 years. It describes how AI can and should be used, application by application, to enhance contact center performance and provides recommendations and best practices for implementing AI-enabled solutions. It provides both a strategic perspective and tactical guidance to help companies realize the maximum benefits from their AI initiatives.

SAMPLE VIEW

Key Reasons to Buy This Report:

• Explanation of what AI means and how it works in contact center systems and applications, including the distinction between AI and rules-based solutions; the synergies and benefits of AI-enabled automation; and essential role of data in powering AI initiatives

• How AI is fundamental in enhancing the CX due to its ability to decipher customer expectations and deliver this information to agents

• An explanation of DMG's concept of a centralized contact center "AI hub/brain" and its operational contributions and benefits

• An analysis of the maturity and impact of AI in 20 of the most commonly used contact center solutions, plotted by quadrant - AI-enabled, targeted AI, emerging AI, and contributing AI

• An in-depth review and analysis of how AI is being applied in each of the top 20 contact center solutions, including a discussion of how it enhances each one, current and future use cases, as well as the value proposition and benefits

• A contact center maturity model that looks 15 years into the future to enable contact center leaders to appreciate how they are perceived today and their next steps in the service continuum

• A visionary examination of the massive potential of AI to revolutionize contact centers and the service experience in the future