Ravi Saraogi, Co-founder and President of APAC for Uniphore, says that companies that had been postponing decisions on technology upgrades are now being forced to make the choice to invest today, and he sees a faster adoption of emerging technologies across the globe
Some edited excerpts:
Are firms going to invest more in cognitive capabilities such as RPA, IoT, AI and Cobots?
Yes, they most certainly will. We see faster adoption of emerging technologies across the globe and the demand for it is growing at a much faster pace than ever before. Companies that had been postponing decisions on technology upgrades are now being forced to make the choice to invest today.
We have also seen a spike in sales for our Conversational Service Automation platform (CSA) that leverages the power of AI to help enterprises deliver transformational customer service experiences through overlapping categories – conversational analytics, data analytics, voice bots, IVR systems, security, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and customer feedback history. This is a very clear and strong indication that companies are looking at putting emerging technologies at the forefront to ensure business continuity and growth.
How Automation is going to play a significant role in the post-pandemic era?
The global Coronavirus pandemic has highlighted some glaring shortcomings in how the customer contact centers function. In the pre-Covid era, contact centers functioned with technology that typically did not have emerging technologies like AI, RPA, ML embedded in them. Agents had to work from a physical call center to address customer calls while being supervised by a manager for quality, and to address more pointed customer asks.
The onset of Covid enabled call centres to realize the inefficiency of these old systems as they became redundant. Agents were forced to work remotely and ill equipped as call centers did not have the work from home capability pre-covid – not only from a technology infrastructure point of view but also from the data security point of view. The few agents who did staff calls, were now being inundated with them owing to improper technological support to aptly address customer issues. Customers on the other hand experienced frustration due to long hold times and/or the inability to reach agents entirely.
With automation provided via Conversational Service Automation (CSA), the post Covid call center reality is undergoing a sea change. Automation along with other technologies such as AI and ML promises huge cost and functional efficiencies to the sector. Not only does CSA have the capability to intelligently address simple customer asks independently, but also work in real time with human agents by aiding them at every touch point during a customer call. It allows to pull relevant information, provide insights into the real intent of the caller (with the help of artificial intelligence), create post call summaries, etc. Thus, not only enabling agents to service double the number of calls in the same amount of time but by also providing instant solutions basis history, customer tone, etc. This ensures agents are equipped to converse with customers empathetically and efficiently from remote locations as well.
Customer sensitive data can also be protected by tools that can redact information before a call reaches an agent and in doing so allows call centers to comply with mandated regulations.
Contact centers across the globe now have an efficient, easy to deploy and cost-effective technology platform that can radically improve customer experiences, while providing insights into customer behavior/ asks to enterprises.
What will be the role of AI and IoT technologies in the post Covid-19 era?
As the world moves towards an uncertain future, enterprises know they must move nimbly in order to stay relevant and in the game. Embracing of new technologies is no longer a choice but a must in most scenarios if companies are to survive and be future ready. It is a given that emerging technologies will play a larger role in almost every industry.
IoT and AI seem to be custom made to offer a huge helping hand, as both are inexplicably entwined with the concept of Big Data. Uniphore’s Conversational Service Automation platform has the capability to discover, retrieve, and render correct responses to customers in real time. This technology simplifies conversations by aiding agents in understanding the intent and sentiment of customers with the help of artificial intelligence. This allows agents to focus on providing personalized experience to customers while the technology manages the mundane tasks such as form filling, rendering and aggregation of information, post call summary, etc.
As technologies evolve, we will find more use cases for them. We foresee huge advancements soon.