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How contact center and communications technology facilitate seamless customer experiences

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Jayesh Patel
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Spotlight on Innovations | TelecomDrive.com

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As time progresses and technology evolves, it often feels as if digital transformation creates a disconnect between intangible aspects of human existence and tech innovation. In the telecommunications industry, this level of innovation is only as valuable as its ability to understand and improve the customer experience. Companies should always be thinking about how to uplevel their products, services, or solutions, and technological advancement must always consider the impact of the human touch to deliver truly seamless customer experiences.

While generative AI and large-language models – the latest and greatest examples of tech innovation and digital transformation – may be able to save hours of work or research, there is a good chance its results can, at times, feel impersonal, not quite fitting, or completely biased and nonsensical. When it comes to contact center and telecommunications technology, there is little room for error in these areas of authenticity specifically, which is why it is vital for tech leaders within the industry to understand how to fuse modern innovation with the nuance and intangibility brought by human intervention.

Avaya has been a consistent player in the communications and customer experience space for over two decades, long enough to see the industry at large transform, and to see the exponential growth of contact center solutions thanks to technology innovation. The product team at Avaya closely monitors the AI space – watching not only other CX companies, but the front runners of AI innovation – and analyze their efforts with a lens of how new technology and capabilities can uplevel our solutions. Learning from the wins and losses of our peers and other companies who have infused AI into their platforms and products is extremely valuable, especially through the stages of early adoption.

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When it comes to implementing new innovations into our products, there is never a rush to keep up pace with the rapidly evolving landscape, as our priority is and always will be our customers. Taking the time to assess not only the potential impact of AI and other new technologies, but the needs of our customers, allows us to see where the overlap lies. Innovation for the sake of innovation is rarely beneficial, so we take the slow-burner approach and marry the needs of our customers with the benefits AI can bring them.

The dedication to our customers is seen in how we empower them to choose their journey and pace when adding new AI-powered capabilities and value; giving them freedom to innovate while leveraging their existing infrastructure investments, which encourages innovation without disruption. The digital transformation undoubtedly brought a head-spinning wave of companies racing to move their business models from on-premises to cloud-based infrastructures, but that doesn’t always prove to be beneficial and can often cause outages or other serious business roadblocks.

Especially for customers focused on the contact center, abandoning on-premises infrastructures for newly minted cloud models can disorient both call agents and users alike; too much change too quickly is rarely a good thing. So, Avaya encourages our customers to meet us where they are on their journey – providing them the tools to uplevel their ecosystems and move to the cloud if that’s what they need, but we emphasize the importance of doing so at a pace that will not disrupt their business, or the user experience.

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The research team at Avaya recently published a report on AI innovation within CX, which includes numerous insights on the relationship between the two. One of the visuals lists out several different tasks, and respondents were asked if humans, AI, or both would do the best job at completing it. Two of those tasks and their results are notable when thinking about customer experiences: suggesting relevant product recommendations (28% human, 36% AI, 36% both), and assessing customer issues and directing to the appropriate resource (44% humans, 21% AI, 34% both). The former shows more faith in AI, or a partnership between humans and AI, in delivering the best product recommendations. The latter, on the other hand, reflects the exact purpose of call center technology which has now been infused with AI capabilities: respondents show far more faith in humans than AI to assess customer issues, yet the opportunity remains for humans and AI to collaborate and bring the customer experience to the next level.

Contact centers and the communications technology powering them continue to transform thanks to AI, cloud technology, and other recent innovations. These innovations can’t replace the human touch, but they can and will continue to have a positive impact on the user experience, especially when combined with human intervention and unbiased intention. For example, Avaya has infused AI into the Avaya Experience Platform in several ways, most notably with built-in call monitoring which gives real-time insights to call center agents allowing for successful customer interactions. This empowers call center agents to speak more confidently in customer interactions without having to diligently take notes or recall information on specific customer cases, which can be overwhelming, distracting, and take away from the quality of their service. Instead, AI-powered, real-time insights deliver those notes and important details for every single call, setting call agents up for successful interactions every single time which leads to greater customer satisfaction. These capabilities are Avaya’s way of not replacing the intangible human element, but of supplementing it with tools to maximize success within the call center.

As we continue to navigate the evolving technology landscape, the need for human intervention and perspective will always be a crucial consideration in our product roadmap and future innovations. It is vital for industry leaders to understand the value of partnership between humans and AI – and to consider a future in which customer experience leaders create and abide by industry-wide standards or principles that prioritize the human element across technological advancements.

Technology and innovation will never stop, and as proven by the past two years it will only continue to pick up pace. This doesn’t mean adapting to the changing technology should become priority over the benefits that come with the human touch. Envision a future in which customer experiences are still founded on the importance of human nuances, even as businesses continue to uplevel and embrace technological innovation. The human and technical sides of business can and will coexist, but it’s up to each company and product team to strike the perfect balance between the two.

Contact Center Avaya customer experiences Communications Technology
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