The operative word here is “shrink”, as this implies that AI will lead to scaled-back contact centers. At face value, this means having fewer agents, which AI makes possible via automation that can replace human agents in a variety of ways.
This remains a touchy subject, since the optics of smaller contact centers being the rationale for AI are not good for vendors: and contact center leaders will quickly alienate their agents if they toe that line as well.
Complicating matters is the silver bullet view held by those in executive management that AI is mainly about cost reduction. Since they make the investment decisions, this needs to be part of the calculus with AI, especially as their AI spend keeps rising and tangible forms of ROI are few and far between.
Here’s why. Cost reduction is a tangible ROI metric to maintain executive management’s support for AI. One that can be achieved quickly with workforce cuts.
The contact center has long been one of the best use cases for AI, so it’s not surprising to connect the dots between deploying AI there and automating away agent jobs.
While the rationale is sound – especially to top management – the realities on the ground for contact center leaders are more challenging.
How AI Can Really Provide Value
Post-COVID-19 pandemic, contact centers have seen steadily rising traffic volumes: and they don’t have the luxury to simply hire more agents to manage this.
- One driver is the growth of eCommerce and digital transactions, where consumer activity is shifting from in-store to online, making the contact center the prime point of contact.
- Another factor is the adoption of digital channels that give consumers more options than ever before to inquire for help.
In lieu of adding human agents, automation is clearly the best response, for which AI is well-suited. Contact center automation can take many forms, both for giving customers better self-service options and to improve operational workflows.
The contact center has long been one of the best use cases for AI, so it's not surprising to connect the dots...
This is why AI can be transformative: and go beyond incremental gains that may reduce costs here and there. Therefore, AI needs to be viewed strategically rather than as a point solution: and this means thinking beyond shrinking the contact center to save cost.
Invariably, some agents and supervisors will be replaced by AI. But if anything, the role of the contact center will expand, not contract.
Why? Because AI provides far richer value to the business by leveraging the vast amounts of data tied to customer interactions into enabling better customer experiences (CXs).
Staff who can/will not adapt to AI will be at risk of losing their positions. But those who do will be able to perform more effectively and enable higher-value outcomes for the business.
Thinking Beyond Reducing Labor Costs
The challenge here is for contact center leaders to broaden the thinking among business leaders that AI is more than just cost savings from headcount reduction and process automation.
By shifting the focus to making CX better, other forms of savings will emerge, such as training for new agents, since current agents will be happier in their work and less likely to leave.
As CX levels rise, customer retention improves, reducing the costs to replace them. In regulated sectors, AI will help improve compliance around customer communications: and lower the costs for violations for not being compliant.
Perhaps most of all, AI can easily scale, and when deployed effectively, the contact center will have greater capacity to handle growth: without needing to add more human agents.
...AI needs to be viewed strategically rather than as a point solution...
These are just a few examples of cost reductions that AI can drive in the contact center – and for the business overall - that go beyond the kneejerk response of reducing headcount.
The key here is to focus on customer outcomes, and work backwards from how AI can improve CX. All businesses struggle to make this better, and the benefits are well-understood, so top management does not need to be sold on the virtues of CX.
However, cutting jobs to shrink the contact center isn’t the way to do that. Rather, AI can make the contact center more impactful in other ways, not just with customers but for the business.
In this regard, AI can be transformative by reshaping the contact center into a strategic hub of data collected across countless customer interactions.
With the right tools and platforms, contact centers can harness that data to drive new forms of business value.
- For customers, they will have more personalized experiences that better resolve problems and make them more loyal to the brand.
- For agents, AI will empower them with new capabilities for more insightful, authentic customer interactions where they feel like they’re making a real difference.
Internally, AI will automate workflows to make operations more efficient, but also to free up agents to do their best work by engaging directly with customers.
Conclusion
This view of AI will only be aspirational for some contact centers, as they can barely manage the everyday pressures of meeting ever-higher customer expectations.
Many contact centers are also constrained by legacy technology that cannot readily be replaced, making modernization efforts difficult. That aside, many contact centers are finding ways to adopt AI, especially once they recognize its potential as outlined herein.
AI still has a way to go before it can truly shrink the contact center, and the same for expanding its role with intelligent automation.
However, with a thoughtful deployment strategy, the risks can be mitigated, especially by limiting customer-facing use cases.
More importantly, being an iterative technology, AI learns and improves over time. With some patience, today’s aspirations will become reality: and can make the contact center more valuable to the business than ever before.