Today’s contact centers have to move at lightning-fast speeds. When you think about the number of connections modern call center agents make on an average hourly basis, it’s astounding - especially in comparison to those made by the typical person in an office setting or another professional environment! It only makes sense that so many of these facilities rely so heavily on call center automation to make it all happen.

Call center automation has evolved tremendously since its early days. What was once a slightly sped-up version of manual dialing and directing of calls is now a fully-featured interaction between humans and artificial intelligence. This kind of interaction is made possible through a technology known as NLP - natural language processing - and makes a major difference in the way machines and programs understand human communication.

Here’s what you need to know about the role of NLP in your contact center - and what you could be doing to get more out of this technology.

Where Can Call Center Automation Be Seen?

Automation is everywhere in the modern contact center. Nearly every task that agents or management team members are handling can be handed over to machines or programs of some sort to streamline the process. What once might have taken hours of the average workday for these agents may now only take minutes or even seconds.

What is automated in the average call center today? A better question might be, “What isn’t?” The following are just some of the many things that computers are making quicker every day for your agents:

• Making lists of leads to be followed up with
• Dialing phone numbers
• Assessing leads to determine quality
• Directing calls to the most qualified agents to handle them
• Connecting live agents with consumers
• Providing information to agents relevant to the exchange they are having with a consumer
• Responding to emails, texts, instant messages, chats, and more
• Offering the option to receive a call back if wait times are long
• Recording conversations for later assessment
• Providing tools and information to agents for follow-up tasks
• Cataloging information so that it is never out of reach if agents need to access it for any reason

Perhaps the biggest benefit of all of this manufactured hustle in the modern call center is the sky-high productivity it creates. When agents can go from serving dozens of consumers a day to hundreds or even more, the company they work for sees a major boost in business. Thanks to automation - which is handling all of the menial tasks behind the scenes for these agents so they can focus on the meaningful interactions between themselves and consumers - the rush never impacts the company’s consumer satisfaction rating. It’s one way your contact center can truly have it all!

Looking for Artificial Intelligence? Check Behind the Curtain

When it comes to artificial intelligence, many people who aren’t experienced in the industry may believe that this technology is woven throughout the fabric of daily operations in the modern call center. However, there is a lot more AI behind the scenes of your average contact center than in the area where consumers will make contact.

In most contact centers, AI is handling a lot of the “grunt” work for agents so that there are better able to focus on more meaningful customer service tasks. What does this mean? Check out this list of things artificial intelligence may be handling in your competitors’ centers - and that you could be putting it to work handling in yours:

• Upgrading or replacing interactive voice response - or IVR - processes. (More about this later!)
• Improving and offering more self-service options
• Enhancing website navigation
• Collecting information from consumer actions and interactions
• Cataloging and analyzing this information
• Taking the work out of routing
• Monitoring agents and management team behavior
• Assisting all staff members in hitting their goals
• Creating automated responses to keep response time low and satisfaction rates high

One of the most important uses of call center automation - and artificial intelligence therein - is in handling big data. Because most contact centers today handle far more information than they could ever pay human beings to process, it can be a boon to turn the task over the machines. Machines never tire, they can work at breakneck speeds around the clock - and you never have to pay them for their time!

NLP: Helping with the Small Fraction of Customer-Facing AI

Because customer-facing applications make up such a small percentage of the use of artificial intelligence in most call centers, you may be wondering how important these applications really are. The truth is that they are very important - crucial, in fact. That’s because these uses are not only vital to customer service today, but the building blocks of better customer experiences tomorrow.

We promised to explore the enhancement and replacement of IVR processes with AI programming further and the best time to do it is when discussing NLP. One of the biggest ways that NLP assists with call center automation is by helping software programs to understand consumer speech patterns and lines of thought. This helps these programs to do more accurate work in serving these customers - and create more natural-sounding interactions in automated chats, instant messages, and more.

Whether you want to increase and improve the use of natural language processing in your contact center or implement it for the first time, you can trust the industry experts at ChaseData to help you meet your goals. With the technology you need to equip your entire team to streamline their daily tasks - and the training tools you need to make everyday operations easier for new hires - ChaseData has what you’re looking for. Give us a call today to learn more and see what NLP technology can do to make life easier and business better for your center!