Today’s powerful AI tools can be deployed to improve the experiences of customers, contact center agents and supervisors, IT teams and business leaders, according to Jeff Karas, senior director product management, Avaya. “But to be successful, you need to focus on a specific experience and what you want to deliver,” he said at an IAUG WIRED session, “AI for Every Experience.”
In his talk, Karas went beyond the contact center to examine how AI tools could benefit your IT team as well as your business leaders. For instance, Avaya professionals can gain greater visibility to an entire hybrid environment, by consolidating data from Avaya CMS (on-prem) and Avaya AXP (cloud) solutions.
AI tools also help IT leaders take action on timely issues, including notifications of hacking attempts, rather than staring at a dashboard all day. “You can also use these tools to integrate various applications, and ensure they are following your governance, risk and compliance guidelines,” he said. “They can help you change the thinking about IT, moving from being considered a cost center to an innovation center.”
For business leaders, AI tools can help with cost reduction and knowledge creation initiatives, while boosting the organization’s overall agility, Karas said. “They can provide insight into the value of customer engagements, and identify trends and patterns to improve customer acquisition and retention.” Other benefits include recognizing when the customer experience needs to change so processes can be adjusted accordingly, and comparing a business with others in the same industry or against a best-in-class benchmark.
In the contact center
Both contact center agents and supervisors can gain greater visibility and support in their day-to-day activities through AI tools. For instance, AI can improve the agent experience by providing more control over individual schedules, get real-time help with customer interactions, provide access to experts who can answer customer questions, and support task automation and transcriptions or summarizations.
Contact center supervisors can get alerts when their agents need help, and deal with compliance issues in real time, Karas said. “They can bring greater visibility into remote agents’ activities to provide better coaching and support, and automatically adjust agent skill levels based on training, experience and feedback.”
Today’s AI use cases include:
• Improving self-service bots for an efficient transition to agent service
• Sentiment analysis
• Real-time translations for agents and customers who speak different languages
• Evaluations based on 100 percent of calls rather than a sampling
• Powering business intelligence
Karas recommended that contact center leaders look at the “big picture” in regard to AI, including self-service, automation, agent support and workforce management. “If you only look at one portion, you’re missing out on other steps that could improve your customer experience and operational workflows.”
Driving business innovation
In the past, some contact center agents and supervisors looked at AI as a threat. But the growing use of ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and other AI offerings has changed the landscape, Karas said. Now, everyone from school students to CIOs is using AI for personalized tasks that contribute to their experiences.
However, Karas said IT leaders should make sure their data is AI-ready, include guardrails around appropriate AI responses and adopt and AI governance and use policy. “AI started with text, and images and now includes video,” he said. “There is no question that the sky is the limit when it comes to AI-driven innovation.”
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