The Benefits of an Omnichannel Call Centre: Handling Failures in Automation.

Almost everything on the Tech-news today is about the implementation of an AI-powered solution to keep up with an ever-growing fast-paced business environment. Most people, if not all, who come across the word AI-powered or Generative AI will imagine limitless “automation” whereby there’s no requirement for human-based interactions. Businesses, especially SMEs should not have this mindset. Instead, a holistic integration of humans and automation is the best way to move forward. Personalized customer service plays an even more critical role in ensuring customer satisfaction and loyalty. Ultimately customers do on some level appreciate a physical human interaction. How best to address these disconnections?

“By 2028, the EU Will Mandate “the Right to Talk to a Human” In Customer Service, Predicts Gartner”

With the rise of omnichannel call centers, companies have been able to streamline their customer service operations across various communication channels, providing a seamless experience for customers. While automation has brought significant advantages to call centers, it’s essential to acknowledge that it’s not infallible. Therefore a marriage of both automation and human skills is still very much relevant today.

First, let’s explore the benefits of an omnichannel call center, and follow the different strategies for handling failures in automation effectively.

1. Enhanced Customer Experience:
Omnichannel call centers allow customers to interact with businesses through their preferred communication channels, whether it’s phone calls, emails, live chats, or social media platforms. This flexibility enhances the overall customer experience by providing convenience and accessibility. Customers can seamlessly switch between channels without having to repeat their concerns, leading to higher satisfaction levels.

2. Improved Efficiency:
Automation streamlines repetitive tasks such as call routing, data entry, and appointment scheduling, allowing call center agents to focus on more complex customer inquiries. This efficiency leads to shorter wait times, faster issue resolution, and increased agent productivity. Additionally, automation reduces the likelihood of human errors, ensuring accuracy in customer interactions.

3. Cost Savings:
By automating routine processes and optimizing resource allocation, companies can significantly reduce operational costs associated with call center management. With fewer manual interventions required, businesses can scale their operations more efficiently and allocate their budget to areas that drive growth and innovation.

4. Data-Driven Insights:
Omnichannel call centers generate vast amounts of data from customer interactions across multiple channels. Analyzing this data provides valuable insights into customer behavior, preferences, and pain points. Businesses can leverage these insights to personalize their services, anticipate customer needs, and make data-driven decisions to improve overall performance.

When Automation Fails: Strategies for Effective Handling.

Despite its benefits, automation is not immune to failures. Technical glitches, system downtimes, or misinterpretation of customer inquiries can result in automation breakdowns.

Hence all the more important to implement an Omnichannel Contact Centre strategy. Not only relying on one vertical such as WhatsApp Chatbot or Social Media marketing. Ensuring the different streams of the CX platform are integrated and helmed by a human agent is still very important.

Here are some strategies for effectively handling failures in automation within an omnichannel call center:

1. Implement Redundancy Measures:

Have backup systems in place to mitigate the impact of automation failures. This could include manual overrides, alternative communication channels, or rerouting customer inquiries to human agents when necessary.

💡 With systems in place such as Accordia’s IVR should there be a downtime taking place, tools such as an IVR could help. What’s an IVR? Accordia’s IVR is an integrated interactive voice response solution that provides the option for your call centers to automate services and transactions that typically require assistance from live customer service representatives, via voice commands or touch tone key selection. It is simple effective, and will significantly reduce costs and increase efficiency within any company.

2. Proactive Monitoring and Maintenance:

Regularly monitor the performance of automated systems and conduct routine maintenance to address any potential issues before they escalate. Investing in predictive analytics tools can help identify patterns and predict when automation systems are likely to fail.

💡 Should businesses adopt a holistic CX solution, existing “human agents”, can be upskilled to manage the systems, and be trained into an analysts suiting the business goals. Effectively creating job satisfaction in the process, whereby your human talent can stay within your organization longer with growth opportunities.

3. Seamless Transition to Human Agents:

Design processes that enable a smooth transition from automated interactions to human agents when automation fails. Provide agents with access to contextual information from previous interactions to ensure continuity and avoid customer frustration.

💡With Accordia’s Omnichannel solution, rest assured the above transition is seamlessly painless. Instead, a great possibility of customer satisfaction increases. How? With 24/7 availability, and prompt replies with accurate answers or pull-out of customers’ history which are what many customers are looking for. The after-sales side is being taken care of.

4. Continuous Improvement:

A great company does not only deliver exceptional service, they also do listen to feedback. With an Omnichannel CX in place, reaching out for CSAT scoring is a breeze, for example running quarterly checks. This data obtained is a great reference on the areas CX agents can improve on.

With these automation in place, as for human capital wise, adopting a culture of continuous improvement by soliciting feedback from customers and frontline agents will be a breeze. Use this feedback to refine automation algorithms, update knowledge bases, and enhance training programs to better equip agents to handle complex scenarios.

💡Benefits of engaging Accordia Solutions: Choose between Cloud based Contact Centre or On-Premise. Choosing to go Cloud, gives your business the flexibility to scale-up or scale-down which are perfect for SMEs. Whereas, if your business strength is ready for an On-Premise solution and have your own team to manage, we are also the right partner to advise you. Both verticals are out forte.

An omnichannel call center powered by automation offers numerous benefits, including enhanced customer experience, improved efficiency, cost savings, and data-driven insights. However, it’s essential to acknowledge that automation is not foolproof and can sometimes fail. By implementing redundancy measures, proactive monitoring, seamless transition strategies, and a culture of continuous improvement, businesses can effectively handle failures in automation and ensure uninterrupted customer service delivery. Ultimately, striking the right balance between automation and human intervention is key to delivering exceptional customer experiences in today’s competitive landscape.

Explore Accordia’s Omnichannel Contact Center, empowering human agents with the speed of automation while fool-proofing your CX channels.

Omnichannel CONTACT CENTRE: Your GATEWAY to Omnichannel Marketing. An omnichannel contact center isn’t just a technological upgrade; it’s a strategic shift toward customer-centricity.

Navigating the Growth Dilemma: Is Your SME Ready for CX Tech Enhancement?

In the dynamic landscape of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the journey from startup to a burgeoning business is marked by several challenges. One such challenge that often surfaces on this growth trajectory is the age-old dilemma of hiring the right talent. As an SME teetering on the cusp of expansion, the need for strategic decisions becomes paramount. Let’s deep dive into the question: Is your SME ready for CX (Customer Experience) Tech Enhancement?

The One-Leg-Kick Motto:
In the nascent stages of an SME, the “one-leg-kick” approach, synonymous with doing whatever it takes to survive and outshine competitors, is often the driving force. This mantra has likely been the backbone of your business, propelling it forward with limited resources. However, as revenue grows and the business evolves, the simplicity of this approach begins to wane.

The Growing Pains:
As SMEs witness a surge in revenue, new challenges emerge, and the one-size-fits-all strategies lose their effectiveness. One is in a constant battle for the right CX based talent! Hiring, which was once a straightforward task, now becomes a strategic puzzle. The maximum budget allocated for hiring restricts the number of new recruits, intensifying the pressure to get each hire right. The stark reality is that unlike multinational corporations (MNCs), SMEs might not have the luxury of endless attempts to hire the right CX agent.

The Need for Right Hires:
The success of any organization, regardless of its size, hinges on its workforce. For SMEs, the impact of each employee is magnified, making the recruitment process a critical determinant of success. Hiring the right individuals is not just about skills; it’s about finding individuals who align with the company culture, ethos, and can contribute to its growth. What more the training, and retention strategies thereafter?

CX Tech Enhancement: A Strategic Imperative via AUTOMATION!

By now, one might have heard about Omnichannel, Generative AI, Chatbots, and etc. It’s high time your business entered the Customer Experience (CX) Tech Enhancement, a game-changer for SMEs seeking to overcome their growth challenges. Investing in CX technology is not just about adopting the latest trends but about strategically positioning the business for sustainable growth. Here are 4 reasons why it’s a must!

1. Efficiency through Automation: Omnichannel Adoption

CX technology streamlines processes, automates repetitive tasks, and enhances overall efficiency. This is particularly beneficial for SMEs grappling with limited resources, allowing them to focus on strategic initiatives rather than getting bogged down by routine operations.

360 view! An Omnichannel Cloud Contact Center tackles the hurdles of collecting Customer Experience (CX) feedback by offering a consolidated platform for interactions across diverse channels. For example, linking various communication channels: voice, video, email, web portal, social media. It facilitates real-time feedback collection and accommodates various communication modes, fostering personalized interactions and enabling instant reporting.

This setup streamlines feedback collection and report analysis, ultimately improving the customer experience. In essence, it prevents potential sales decline resulting from subpar customer service, ensuring that a great product or service maintains its momentum.

SMEs should choose an omnichannel platform which have all these offerings ready, such as
Accordia’s Omnichannel which provide linkage to Accordia’s Voice, Accordia Desk, Accordia Chat, and Accordia Social.

2. Personalized Customer Interactions: ACE Powered Chatbots.

In the era of personalized experiences, CX technology enables SMEs to understand their customers better. From data analytics to AI-driven insights, businesses can tailor their offerings, improving customer satisfaction and loyalty. Hence, chatbots are truly the perfect solutions.

However, moving from traditional chatbots to a Accordia’s ACE AI-powered chatbots will help propel the overall CX experience for your customers even further. At the same time, freeing you from the hassle of scouting for human talent on these repetitive task. Whereby these chatbots are able to perform it for you with the level of precision, adhering to company standard-answers, 24/7 and 365 days.

3. Scalability without Overhead: Start with Cloud Solutions.

One of the major hurdle for SMEs are managing technology implementations, where the concern is always the higher cost. But as we progress, there’s always the good news for SMEs on this front.

Cloud based solution is one type of CX technology that provides SMEs with scalable solutions, allowing your business to grow without incurring substantial overhead costs. This is crucial, for businesses with budget constraints, ensuring that growth is sustainable and profitable both in human capital and technology expansion at the same time!

The beauty of Accordia’s Cloud Contact Centre based solutions are you can scale UP or scale DOWN! Providing you with the best flexibility.

4. Empowering the Workforce: Flexibility, Accountability, Trackability.

Adopting CX technology empowers employees by providing them with the tools and resources needed to excel in their roles. This, in turn, contributes to a positive workplace culture and enhances overall productivity.

Employees or agents don’t perform well when there’s headwind and less guidance in obtaining the correct information to advise the customers. Easily demotivated, should there be no clear directions if left without a supervisory guide, and feeling of distance and not being heard, if there’s no interaction or feedback from core management.

With a CX and EX integrated platform, the above can be supported by the right tool via automation. With a few clicks and prompts, lower level employees or agents can feel supported. Managers or supervisors in turn are able to monitor service levels via statistics that can be produced easily. The managing team can benefit from consolidated data and make better informed decisions.

As your SME business stands at the crossroads of growth, the decision to embrace CX Tech Enhancement is not just a technological upgrade; it’s a strategic imperative. While the one-leg-kick might have served well in the early days, evolving times demand a more sophisticated approach. Investing in CX technology positions your SME for not just survival but for thriving in an increasingly competitive landscape. The key lies in finding the delicate balance between maintaining the entrepreneurial spirit that got you here and embracing the tools that will propel you forward.

Is your SME ready for CX Tech Enhancement? The answer might just be the catalyst for your next phase of success. Accordia Global is passionate about CX Tech Enhancement, call for demo!

Revolutionize Customer Engagement: Experience the Accordia Advantage – Your Gateway to Success!

Immerse Yourself in the Evolution of Generative AI in 2024! Wondering about Generative AI? Explore its transformative power!

Are you ready to take-on 2024 CX challenges? We at Accordia Global live, breathe, code, and create Customer Centric values platform! It’s after all our core passion, to continuously enhance ensuring better CX CRM Supports for all stakeholders, consumers/clients, and employees/agents alike.

How Generative AI Enhances Customer Experience:
For it or against it?

Customer experience (CX) is the sum of all the interactions that a customer has with a brand, from the first contact to the final purchase and beyond. CX has always been a key factor that influences customer loyalty, retention, and satisfaction. An evolution of behaviours from way back in time, when human population began to barter and fast forward later evolving into the way commerce is being practiced today. In today’s competitive and digitized market, CX is more important than ever, as customers expect personalized, fast, and convenient service across multiple channels.

One of the emerging technologies that can help businesses improve their CX is generative AI. With all these talks and multiple articles on Generative Ai, sometimes do we ever stop to think what is generative ai? and how it can help with my daily life and not only in the spectrum of business sense. As laymen, do we understand?

Generative AI is a branch of artificial intelligence that can create new content, such as text, images, audio, or video, based on existing data or inputs. Learning from data and generating realistic and relevant outputs that can enhance various aspects of CX, such as marketing, support, and engagement. Which means, ever since the introduction of “smartphone” artificial intelligence has very much been a part of our lives. We forget how it has propelled us this far in elevating our daily lives. Businesses have been using these technologies to better serve us – the consumers.

Shall we explore some of the use cases and benefits of generative AI for CX, as well as some of the challenges and best practices for implementing it?

🔺Use Cases of Generative AI for CX

Generative AI is being applied and its usage is being continuously improved in these various domains and industries, such as e-commerce, healthcare, education, entertainment, and more.
How? One should think with businesses who are at the forefront in ensuring CX takes priority in their business expansion goals, the word OMNICHANNEL is certainly not something new at this stage. It’s onwards to the next stage of how to power these Omnichannel platforms to be even more efficient and “human-like” when dealing with their customers.

“McKinsey’s State of AI report shows more than half of companies are investing more than 5% of their digital budgets in AI. One such fiction-come-true generative AI platform making headlines in the market is ChatGPT. Source: Forbes”

Here are some of the examples of how generative AI can be used to improve your company’s CX overall journey:

🦾 Personalized Marketing:
“Get yourself ready, the world won’t wait for you,” he said. “Life will always have ups and downs, just like how our fingers are made. Therefore, don’t worry; rather have the mindset not only to change but to also revolutionise.” Quote by Dato’ Lewre, Royal Couturier, pioneer of Bespoke footwear. Source: DCInterNet.

Revolutionise your business strategy with the help of Generative AI. But first one needs to “identify” Which customers are the right target market for Bespoke services. Which can command high-value. This is one of the important aspects – the correct target market.

Generative AI then proceeds in helping marketers to create personalized and engaging content for their target audience, such as emails, ads, landing pages, social media posts, and more. Analysing customer data, such as demographics, preferences, behavior, and feedback, and generating tailored content that matches their needs and interests. For example, generative AI can create catchy headlines, compelling copy, and relevant images for email campaigns that can increase open rates, click-through rates, and conversions.

🦾 Proactive Support:

Proactively Supporting CX Agents, in order to support your customers with accuracy in troubleshooting and providing solutions correctly. Generative AI can auto-generate customer replies, assist agents as they type, automate note-taking, and summarize call transcripts.

Generative AI is able to help CX agents in leveling up the momentum to support their customers, such as answering queries, resolving issues, and providing recommendations. How? By understanding customer intent, context, and sentiment, and then generating appropriate and accurate responses, based on various knowledge sources, such as FAQs, knowledge base, CRM, and more.

🦾Enhanced Engagement:

Constantly evolving by reading and immediately turning the collected data into what the customer needs’ or potential wants’, Generative AI can help businesses create enhanced and immersive experiences for their customers, such as interactive games, virtual reality, augmented reality, and more.

Bouncing ideas off-Generative AI! Helping to generate realistic and dynamic content, such as characters, scenes, sounds, and dialogues, that can engage and entertain customers. For example, generative AI can create personalized avatars, stories, and scenarios for gamified learning.

🔺Generative AI: The Next Frontier of Customer Experience Innovation

How can I make my business better for my users’ experience? This is one of the forefront questions successful businesses have built on. Making experience better for users, before the next question – how can my business generate more revenue? Because, a product or service is stemmed from a firm belief, a passion and an intent to share with the world that this is a “really great product”! The rest will follow.

“While businesses work on the above, the importance of great CX Support is vital, having the option of Cloud Contact centres for those who prefer flexibility of starting small or for larger businesses who have an allocated tech-team for On-site Contact centres , which can enhance the growth of many businesses across industries. Malaysia is moving into the direction and achieving the goal of being the “Asian Digital Tiger”. Providing incentive to international companies in investing Data-centres here.”

Have you heard this phrase from a disgruntled customer – “I’ll be supporting your competitor, even if their prices are slightly more comparatively, I received the service and my money’s worth.” These sentiments ring true today.

Generative AI changes the landscape of Omnichannel CX Support. Enhancing what was a great platform, into something more better, offering various benefits for businesses and customers.

Chatbots such as 𝐀𝐂𝐄 = 𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 • 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 • 𝐄𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠, it brings a fresh and much welcomed experience to your customer in several ways. After all “Services” are tangible, hence that’s why we value CX Agents who have these soft skills. Now with Generative Ai, we “enhance” these soft skills to the next level. Here are are three great points:

1. Omnichannel Mastery: ACE excels in delivering self-service and personalization through AI, guaranteeing immediate and precise responses across a wide range of channels, including web chat, messenger apps, WhatsApp, and Twitter.

2. Seamless Multi-Channel Connectivity: ACE effortlessly establishes connections with customers around the clock across multiple platforms, enriching satisfaction levels and fostering customer loyalty.

3. Intelligent AI Capabilities: Loaded with cutting-edge predictive dialer technology, extensive knowledge resources, effortless integration, and targeted messaging capabilities, ACE enhances the quality of your customer interactions.

With ACE, you capitalize on customers’ growing comfort with chatbots. It’s time to implement this LiveChatbot to handle FAQs and guide customers to payment pages, reducing wait times and enhancing CX. Take your system to the next level with AI-powered chatbot capabilities, making interactions truly memorable. ACE is your path to transforming CX and making a lasting impression.

🔺Challenges and Best Practices of Generative AI for CX

Generative AI is a powerful and promising technology, but it also comes with some challenges and limitations, such as:

Generative AI can create content for businesses, but it faces challenges such as data quality and quantity, ethical and legal issues, and human oversight and collaboration. Businesses need to ensure that they have reliable and diverse data sources, and apply data processing techniques, to improve the performance and accuracy of generative AI. They also need to use generative AI responsibly and transparently, and comply with the laws and regulations, to avoid ethical and legal risks. Moreover, they need to have human monitoring and evaluation, and quality control and feedback mechanisms, to correct and improve the outputs of generative AI.

Hence it’s utmost important to have a trusted technology partner who is able to support and walk you and your team through all the way in this journey of discovering the benefits of integrating Generative AI.

Is Generative AI a game-changing technology that can revolutionize CX? Certainly! One would not think the world will be turning its back on this technology. Instead, it will only propel many businesses to invest heavily in the next coming years.

However, generative AI also comes with some challenges and limitations that require careful and responsible implementation. Businesses need to ensure that they have high-quality and relevant data, adhere to the ethical and legal standards, and collaborate with human experts, to leverage the full potential and benefits of generative AI for CX.

The pros outweigh the cons at this point of time from many thoughts leader’s point-of-view. Generative AI can help businesses create personalized, proactive, and enhanced CX, that can increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention. Generative AI can also help businesses improve their operational efficiency, productivity, and innovation, and gain a competitive edge in the market.

Does your existing Chatbot system require an overhaul? Or perhaps you are looking to implement a fresh solution to your CX support framework? Partner with someone whom you can trust, for your businesses can ride the wave of changes smoothly. Chat with Accordia Solutions for more insights.

𝑆𝑡𝑎𝑦𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑅𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑣𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑇ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠: 𝑰𝒅𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒇𝒚𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑪𝒖𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒓’𝒔 𝑪𝒐𝒎𝒎𝒖𝒏𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑷𝒓𝒆𝒇𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒆𝒔. What defines generations and within which boundary do you find yourself in? Different people experience it one way or another, just in different contexts.

ACCORDIA GLOBAL @WCIT x IDECS 2023 (4th – 6th October 2023)

Chatbots are the perfect Launch Pad to greater customer engagement & High-value sales leads.

Just as how time is of essence for many FMCG products or services, your response to customers should equally be as important in terms of speed.