CV_JulAug_22

The tool helps organizations gain a deeper understanding of customer interactions, such as insights into customer intent, sentiment and other valuable data. It has the potential to help contact center employees overcome the challenges they face relative to analyzing customer interactions, and by analyzing the data collected, results can drive agent performance, coaching and quality assurance workflows. In today’s business world, conversation intelligence is perhaps the contact center must-have, based on the Observe.AI report. The study shows that 78 percent of companies now use some form of conversation intelligence in their contact centers, and those companies are two times likely to be considered a “top performer” (46 percent) when compared to the “poor performers” – companies that are not using conversation intelligence (23 percent). Adoption of conversation intelligence is consistent across industries, company sizes, with some industries – consumer technology, financial services and health care – adopting the technology at a higher rate. Surprisingly, despite adoption and availability of AI and automation technologies, two-thirds of contact centers report they still rely on some manual processes – including spreadsheets and word processing documents – for critical workflows. The report indicates that more than one fifth (21 percent) of organizations rely exclusively on manual processes to analyze quality assurance data. This gap would suggest contact center leaders are missing opportunities to recognize insights that fuel agent performance. These inefficiencies are compounded by tool juggling, as 70 percent of respondents reported their operators switched between two or more tools for interaction analysis. This persistent reliance on manual processes is reflected in an overall lack of interaction visibility – with only 16 percent of contact centers saying they analyze 100 percent of customer conversations, which suggests many miss opportunities to improve agent performance and strategic decision-making. However, in the next 12 months, 72 percent of the companies surveyed indicate they believe conversation intelligence will help their contact centers become more strategic in their approach to answering customers questions, coaching and improving agent performance. Only 4 percent of the respondents indicated they are not using or are not planning to implement a conversation intelligence solution. Despite hefty investments in call centers, nearly half of contact centers still feel only “somewhat prepared” or worse about the future, Observe. IA’s report stated. It is through using this data, that companies can develop those strategic approaches to answers and training. Delivering Experiences More than giving customers more ways to engage, today’s contact center solutions should be able to help organizations deliver an omnichannel experience, the Observe.AI report states. “It’s about creating personalized experiences and offering seamless support across all channels – phone, email, chat, SMS message, social media, etc. “A business can increase brand loyalty and customer engagement. Customer support representatives benefit from having context about each customer at their fingertips, while managers can use analytics about customer interactions and response to make tweaks, improve processes and provide adequate coaching,” Observe.AI’s State of Contact Center Conversation Intelligence 2022 report suggested. Also, according to the report, digital transformation and better coaching are among the top reasons companies adopt conversation intelligence. Many companies rely on the technology to shape training tactics through data and to deliver actionable insights that improve agent performance. Less than half, 42 percent, report adopting conversation intelligence to drive revenue growth, but since they did, the majority has seen improvements in other areas, such as training, customer satisfaction and decision making. o The Human Element When marketing and selling contact center technologies, including conversation intelligence, it helps to have some idea of the people having the conversations. Job placement company Zippia used a database of 30 million profiles to estimate demographics and statistics for call center representatives in the United States. The estimates are verified against Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Census Bureau and job openings data for accuracy. Zippia’s data science team found that there are more than 417,000 call center representatives employed in the United States. (According to “right sourcing” experts CustomerSer v, this figure seems low.) More than seven in 10 contact center representatives are women, and the average age of an employed call center representative is 40. The most common ethnicity of call center representatives is White (60.6 percent), followed by Hispanic or Latino (18.9 percent) and Black or African American (11.3 percent). About four in 10 call center representatives have a high school education; 21 percent an associate degree; 26 percent a bachelor’s degree. Most call center representatives are in New York City and Houston, but Arizona is the best state to find employment in the industry. And finally, the Zippia data show the average pay for call center agents is around $30,000 per year, which is supported by Glassdoor, which indicates call center jobs range between $25,000 to $39,000 per year. CORE COMMUNICATIONS 58 CHANNELV ISION | JULY - AUGUST 2022

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