Every enterprise worth its salt has always instinctively understood that customer satisfaction is the key to long-term success. Now, research by Nemertes published in November 2020 completely validates this approach as a vital ingredient for coming out on top in today’s dynamic global economy.
But while consumers quite rightly expect to receive a high level of service whenever they interact with a business, companies and organizations struggle with developing a strategy that affirms the importance of their customers while also enabling them to cut costs at the same time.
A Lot of Agents Costing a Lot of Money
As I read this research, what really struck me was that around 60% of companies are actually increasing the number of agents they employ, as well as their salary (up by 23-30%). Given the centrality of agents to the customer satisfaction process, and the skills they have to bring to the table to communicate in an omni-channel environment, it’s clear why enterprises must pay a premium to attract employees.
But is employing more and more agents – costing more and more money – the best way to go in such a highly competitive marketplace?
Say “Hi!” to AI
In the last few years, dramatic leaps forward in machine learning and AI have driven enterprises and organizations to automate their communication with customers. The need to cut costs and optimize the customer experience has pushed companies to launch text-based chatbots to offload simple and repetitive tasks from text-based interaction channels. Gartner predicts that, by 2022, 70% of customer interactions will involve emerging technologies such as machine learning (ML) applications, chatbots and mobile messaging, up from 15% in 2018.
It All Comes Down to Voice
The same Nemertes research also finds that although customers communicate with companies and organizations in many ways – such as email, WhatsApp, Facebook, social media and video – voice, the most intuitive form of human communication, is growing dramatically.
As it happens, automating voice interactions, mainly via telephony channels, is the best way to reduce hold time, enhance the user experience and reduce live agent costs. There are three main voice use cases for human-machine conversation:
- A virtual agent that answers simple calls
- An agent assist that monitors conversations and sends real-time insights to agents
- A conversational IVR that replaces hierarchical IVR menus with a free speech experience
However, even though voice is clearly gaining ground, the technology aspect of voice-bot implementation presents a challenge for businesses. Quite simply – how to integrate a bot framework with a telephony channel that is based on multiple complex VoIP protocols and multiple voice codecs?
Any enterprise that gets the answer to this question right will be able to create a new and exceptionally cost-effective interaction channel with their customers.
Meet VoiceAI Connect
We at AudioCodes put the right answers within easy reach with our VoiceAI Connect solution.
Building on our field-proven voice expertise, VoiceAI Connect is a communication hub that creates a bridge between any bot framework, telephony system and cognitive speech service to support all the voice-bot use cases mentioned above.
Even better, its best-of-breed approach allows enterprises to choose their own provider for bot frameworks and speech services.
So if this seems like a win-win proposition, why not give VoiceAI Connect a try and get your bots talking today? Trust us – your customers will thank you for it.
Want to give your callers the best voice-bot experience out there
AND slash your agent costs?
