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Uplevel Customer Experience with Conversational AI and Cloud Contact Center Machine Agents

Published: February 13th 2023

Everyone knows that artificial intelligence (AI) is frequently used to prevent fraud, do personalized online shopping, and power online virtual voice assistants. A relatively new use is in customer service. And an even newer application, and growing trend, is customer experience with conversational AI using cloud contact center machine agents.

Sometimes referred to as intelligent chatbots, here we explain:

What conversational machine agents are and how they differ from chatbots
How customer experience with conversational AI benefits your customers
Why it is crucial to use a cloud contact center with embedded conversational AI machine agents

Conversational AI-Powered Machine Agents and Chatbots Both Communicate Like a Human

At its most basic, a chatbot simulates human conversation. However, unlike conversational machine agents which are powered by AI, chatbot interactions operate using a rules-based computer program.

Thus, chatbots follow a pre-determined interaction flow created by a more technical professional, like a computer programmer. Much like an auto-attendant that directs customers to press a number to learn opening hours, a chatbot is great for a high volume of the same straightforward requests. Specifically, these are the inquiries that organizations get over and over.

However, many customer requests stretch beyond the simple. And this is where conversational machine agents in your cloud contact center shine.

Cloud Contact Center Conversational AI-based Machine Agents Resolve a Range of Customer Experience Issues

The AI powering a conversational machine agent allows it to:

Discern even the most subtle language nuance and sentiment
Understand intent from human speech or written text
Respond just like a person would reply in actual conversation

Conversational machine agents also bring a host of other capabilities. First, they are also omnichannel and allow humans to interact with any digital device like they do other people.

To eliminate the need to follow pre-defined chatbot conversations, conversational AI takes advantage of various kinds of artificial intelligence including Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning. Because of proprietary algorithms, the system gets trained.

As a conversational machine agent hears more questions, and more ways to convey the same intent, it becomes better, smarter, and more accurate over time. This is known as training.

Now free from simple chatbots’ constraints, thanks to AI, a conversational machine agent delivers a more dynamic, free-flowing conversational customer experience.

Further, the more conversational machine agents get used, at a certain point, it improves to where a customer can’t tell the difference between service from a machine and service from another human.

Conversational machine agents improve productivity, save money, and make customers happier

While boosting operational efficiency and driving down costs, conversational machine agents bring convenience. Since they enable organizations to easily resolve many types of queries and issues, they reduce the need for interactions with employees. Instead of digging for answers, a cloud contact center conversational machine agent delivers fast answers.

Consider this: Say the average contact center agent earns $40,000 annually, monthly $3,300. Let’s also say you have 8 contact center employees and need to expand.

A single conversational machine agent saves each organization’s customer experience team 20 hours of human time each month. Instead of another agent at $3,300 per month, you could add a conversational machine agent for $150 per month, enabling your 8 employees to work more efficiently.

Such customer experiences with conversational AI and cloud contact center machine agents, enable your organization’s agents to become high value. With automation removing the mundane work, your agents spend their time on the atypical customer inquiries requiring more skill to resolve.

A more interesting job for an agent, thus improves agent experience, agent retention, and then the overall customer experience.

Benefits go beyond saving labor time and money

With conversational machine agents, your organization can grow the bottom line. In a personal way, you can engage with nearly an unlimited number of customers, as well as scale up with demand spikes. In addition, your organization can personalize interactions and create proactive ones—to create differentiated and modern customer experiences.

But this all depends on choosing the right conversational machine agent.

Not All Conversational Machine Agents are the Same

Organizations have options for deploying conversational machine agents in the cloud contact center. They are to:

Integrate a standalone SaaS app or tool with your cloud contact center.
Build and train a conversational machine agent using an artificial intelligence provider and then integrate it into your CX infrastructure.
Use a cloud contact center that embeds AI for in-built conversational machine agent functionality.

The first approach means data silos and another vendor to manage. With the disadvantages of a standalone app, the second one requires specialized skill and a big budget.

This leaves the last approach, which is the best way to go.

customer experience conversational ai machine agents integrated ai provider

customer experience conversational ai machine agents embedded ai provider

Choose a Cloud Contact Center that Embeds AI for In-Built Conversational Machine Agent Functionality

By deploying a transformative cloud contact center with in-built conversational machine agents, enterprises get some crucial benefits.

There’s flexibility to integrate with legacy assets and other SaaS tools your organization uses

Another benefit of a cloud contact center that embeds AI for in-built conversational machine agents is the near limitless ability to work with integrations external to it. This includes custom integrations.

Got a decade’s old database that is too expensive to migrate from? Use a highly customized SaaS application that is mission-critical? Integrating with legacy assets or other SaaS tools is no problem.

Get operational efficiencies from better reporting

A cloud contact center with in-built conversational machine agents leads to more accurate reporting that is actionable in real-time. Unlike the data silos in separate SaaS apps, a cloud contact center with in-built conversational machine agents keeps all interaction data in a centralized place.

This way, there is a true 360-degree view of a customer’s activity. There’s also up-to-date reporting and metrics across ALL channels at the same time, which are key to nimble operations.

Cloud contact center supervisors can make easy workflow changes on-the-fly during demand spikes

A cloud contact center with in-built conversational machine agents is better able to handle sudden changes in demand.

When AI-powered agents get smarter, human agents get overwhelmed and customer wait times lengthen, cloud contact center supervisors can deploy more conversational machine agents with a few clicks. Simply open and change the supervisor’s workflow builder and your organization instantly improves customer experience.

Save on integration and AI vendor fees with an embedded AI provider

Savings drop to the bottom line because there is no upfront integration work. Nor are there integrations to maintain.

Why? The cloud contact center handles it.

Also, with just one conversational AI model, you can enable self-service across multiple channels, in multiple languages automatically. No need to build or manually update the same machine agent model for each channel, and in each language, reducing the amount of time spent creating customer journeys.

Finally, there is another important reason – access to preferred, high-volume AI provider rates.

Since the cloud contact center vendor embeds selected AI providers to run conversational machine agents, the cloud contact center gets special negotiated pricing. This low pricing is then passed along to the customer for enormous savings.

Sum it all up and a cloud contact center with embedded AI for in-built conversational machine agent functionality is the obvious choice for organizations seeking cost savings, as well as better operation efficiency and customer experience.

Learn how your business can grow happy customers with conversational machine agents here.

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