Will Virtual Assistance Eradicate Human Agents in the Contact Centre?

Virtual assistance (VA) and digital self-service technologies are predicted to have the greatest impact within customer service centres in the future. With more and more enquiries coming through a range of live channels, it is paramount for companies to be where their customers are and also to meet their ever-increasing expectations. The only way to do this seamlessly is by deploying virtual assistance in your contact centre.

Alongside replying to customers, regardless of communication time and channel, VA technology can alleviate the pressure on the contact centre by gathering information and processing transactions. Being available on websites and mobile applications, VA is becoming readily accessible to all types of customers across all industries. With the growth in digital self-service, it is becoming the go-to resource for customer care, tech support and even marketing, for business users and end customers alike.

From a business point of view, the implementation of VA can bring great opportunities for increased sales conversions with existing customers. Through natural language processing (NLP), VA technology can often be trusted to perform better cross- and up-selling than a human agent. This is due to the fact that it is able to anticipate what the customer wants, even before they know themselves. The technology can make contextual offers based on the nature of the questions and the amalgamation and quick analysis of all of the customer-relevant information.

Customers frequently remember additional questions after they have hung up the phone, resulting in a guaranteed level of frustration at the thought of having to reconnect. However, with VA technology pre-empting questions, upgrades and offers, customers are relieved of this stress. Thus the ability to understand and engage the customer results in a thorough service quality at a time and on a channel that is convenient to the customer.

The question to deliberate, then, is whether deploying VA is about replacing the human agent completely, or whether they provide a touchpoint that many customers still look for when reaching out to the contact centre.

Join mplsystems’ CEO, Paul White, and Software Developer, Neal Jones, at the Customer Contact Expo this month, where they will be delivering a keynote speech on Self-service and AI: Will it Take Over the Contact Centre? They will also be looking at real examples of contact centres who are implementing virtual assistants and automated chat as part of their digital strategy and explain how this is integrated into the contact centre to ensure a true omnichannel customer journey.

Customer Contact Expo will take place at London Olympia | 28 – 29 September 2016
You can catch mplsystems’ keynote session in the Customer Experience Theatre at 12.30pm on the 28th September 2016