Local contact centres are increasingly turning to generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) to address industry challenges, such as low customer satisfaction, limited operating hours and long wait times.
This is according to Tom Byrd, director of marketing insights at software provider Amdocs, speaking this week at the Southern Africa Telecommunication Networks and Applications Conference (SATNAC), hosted by Telkom.
Now in its 26th year, SATNAC is a platform where more than 300 delegates come together every year to share knowledge, collaborate and explore trends.
Delivering a presentation titled: “Contact centre to GenAI centre”, Byrd noted GenAI is setting the stage for enabling contact centres of the future, through delivering AI-powered customer service.
While human agents remain an important communication channel for the majority of South African customers, Byrd noted GenAI is the answer to many barriers that cannot be overcome by human agents, including responding to customer inquiries timeously, automating routine tasks and providing off-hours customer support.
“Humans are the dominant channel when it comes to interaction and the reason behind this is because they do a fantastic job. But there are challenges and frustrations associated with human agents. And the obvious ones are wait times, which often get customers frustrated.
“The other issue is availability time – the lines are closed after working hours and we know customers would prefer a 24-hour service. We think GenAI is going to have a huge part to play in resolving some of the challenges often experienced by customers, when they try to reach out to a contact centre to get an issue resolved, by allowing them to get things done quicker, digitally.”
Referencing a 2023 study commissioned by Amdocs, Byrd commented that the good news is that customers are becoming more open to using self-service digital channels, as they increasingly recognise the benefits of these technologies. However, they are being held back by a “broken” digital customer journey that often requires them to switch to a human agent, he added.
The low proportion of end-to-end digital interactions is in stark contrast to the high rates of digitalisation and automation reported by decision-makers at communications service providers, who stated that 65% of journeys are digitalised, he continued.
This gap between providers’ digitalisation of journeys and the actual proportion of customer interactions being completed end-to-end digitally is consistent across most types of customer engagements, including technical/setup support and purchasing or changing subscriptions and plans, said Byrd.
“When we talk to customers about how often they would want to use digital tools given the opportunity, the answer often is they would like to use them twice as much as they currently do. The issue is that some of the solutions are not quite there yet, in advancement, for some of the customers.”
Types of clients who want to use self-service digital tools are often the younger audiences, like Gen Z, who think a lot more digitally, he pointed out.
Analysts previously told ITWeb that GenAI will disrupt the traditional business process outsourcing (BPO) industry by automating more tasks for agents, prompting employees to fear their duties may eventually be entirely replaced.
Employers across the globe anticipate millions of jobs across industries will be displaced by the growing adoption of emerging technologies in the workplace.
However, BPO industry experts believe GenAI is more likely to enhance customer service roles, rather than replace them.
“Communication service providers seeking to gain a competitive advantage should refine and refocus their digital customer engagement strategy, while continuing to invest in up-skilling their human agents,” concluded Byrd.
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