Contact Center Automation: All You Have to Know

Why is contact center automation needed and sought? First of all, call center automation is synonymous with call center operational cost reduction. Secondly, call center automation is about advanced call center customer service, higher customer satisfaction, and excellent customer experience. Finally, call center automation is all about customer expectations, and we’ll prove that with real stats and social proof. 

By the way, what is the call center itself? It is a customer service organization that provides customer service via calls, or in the case of a contact center, via different contact channels. The main persons who are responsible for providing quality customer service are call center agents, who receive customer calls, handle them, and provide needed assistance. Sounds like an easy task, doesn’t it? But it isn’t. 

The call center is a department where hundreds of processes are going on simultaneously, and dozens of people do numerous complex tasks - ones provide quality assurance interviews, others analyze stats, the third ones do outbound calls, and fourth ones process incoming calls, and so on, and so on. Each process is delegated to each exact worker, who gets a salary for it, and who can also show bad performance, provide mistakes, or just be too slow to meet customer expectations of your customer service. Is this a great disposition for further scaling up and growing as a brand? We think it isn’t. 

So, here we get to the point where we were a few minutes before - to the contact center automation. You can’t jump over your head in the case of processing some tasks that just can’t be processed and done faster, so the best idea is to let machines deal with such activities. Anyhow, the question is still the same - what is contact center automation, and aren’t there any pitfalls? What is robotic process automation? Is it really worth it to choose the path to an automated call center? What are the limits of call center automation and what processes you can’t automate at each stage of the customer journey? What are call center automation trends? What about call center jobs automation and call center training automation? And, what’s more important, what processes can you automate to achieve higher customer engagement? 

Time to discover all about call center automation. 

What is call center automation?

Call center automation is a totality of technologies, methods, and applications used to automate all kinds of call center operations, such as customer interactions, customer service, sales automation, workforce management, call queue management, and so on. There are many reasons for call center automation, and the first one is the growing customer demand to get automated and high-tech services instead of old-fashioned service methods - remember, we live in the era of digital transformation. 

Let’s take a look at the statistics to avoid being unfounded. So, what do customer service stats for 2022 say about customer service automation?

• 47% of US consumers will abandon their purchase basket if they won’t get a fast response to their answers;
• 39% of US clients will use self-service tools instead of talking to a human virtual agent;
• 88% of customers want you to provide them with a self-service portal;
• 93% of clients want to get a knowledge base option, and 83% would like to use a community forum as a self-service option;
• 39% of customers say that self-service channels allow them to solve their customer issues much more quickly than any other contact channels.

*take into consideration that over 80% of US buyers say that faster response times are their main priority. 

We can provide you with dozens of other scores that prove that call center automation isn’t an alternative to your current business model, it’s a must-have option for you and your customers. It is no need to remind you that customer service is a highly competitive industry where any delays in the implementation of new services become an advantage for your opponents. 

Nonetheless, let’s describe the main benefits of call center automation technology to let you know how much can it offer. 

Call center automation benefits

Decreased operational costs

Any action that is automated saves you money on labor costs and another spending.  Anyhow, let’s look at how it works in real life - for instance, let’s use chatbots and IVR systems as examples. When you don’t use these two systems, many clients come to your call center with common questions, like where are your offline stores located, what are your company’s business hours, or if online payment is available. Since you have implemented any of these self-service options, most callers get answers to their customer queries at the stage when they’re still interacting with the IVR system, so you can save money on labor costs because of reduced call volumes. 

Excellent customer experience

It is an obvious advantage of intelligent automation call centers, but you still need to pay attention to it. A positive experience is the main priority for all customer service managers as it is the key to customer retention and customer loyalty. The more exceptional customer experiences your customers get, the lower customer churn you will face, and the higher your revenue from current customers will be. 

As we all know, customer experience consists of four main call center metrics: customer satisfaction rate (DSAT), customer effort score (CES), net promoter score (NPS), and first-contact resolution rate (FCR). All of these rates can be boosted with the help of call center automation - customer satisfaction will grow because of faster average response times and average resolution times, as well as because of the personalized experience provided, customer effort score will be better because of omnichannel accessibility and user-friendliness, net promoter score will increase because of proactive service and a variety of options that aren’t available from your competitors, and first-contact resolution rate can be boosted with the use of intelligent call routing systems and high-efficient call queue management software. 

Higher agent satisfaction

When we are talking about call center automation, it is also about agent automation. What does virtual agent automation mean? Well, it is about those call center operations that call center agents have been performing, and now those operations are automated. What kind of call center operations performed by customer service agents can be automated? Let’s list them:

• Customer calls related to elementary queries;
• Automated smart call routing;
• Screen pops from the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system;
• Call automation for cold calling campaigns;
• Insights and reports;
• Call monitoring modes for difficult customers;
• Intelligent automation of info sharing while transferring calls between agents.

Increased employee satisfaction also helps to deal with one of the biggest problems for any call center - a high agent turnover rate. As practice proves, customer service reps are almost always frustrated and depressed by their job because of repetitive tasks and boring mundane tasks, and this in pair with their low social status and poor salary makes them leave their job a few times more often than in other industries. Moreover, with the automation of contact center processes, you will reach better agent productivity, positive agent experience, fewer manual tasks to be handled, more focus on complex issues, and better control over contact center operations. 

All-around-the-clock service and fewer mistakes

The automated call center offers a few features that are unavailable or too expensive for classic call centers. Let’s start with the 24/7 service - call center automation provides you with numerous self-service features that are available and accessible for customers all around the clock, and this means that renting an outsourced call center or hiring contact center agents for a high shift is no more relevant and needed. This is also about lower operational costs - just think about the price of an outsourced call center or about five or six contact center agents’ salaries for a night shift and compare these prices to an automated call center. 

Another great part of the deal is the fact that many human errors, made because of lack of patience, attention to detail, or other aspects of a “human factor” can be eliminated forever. For instance, what is the chance that the agent will not lose any contacts from a contact list during an outbound calling campaign? It’s low, especially if we take into account that all contacts have to be redialed eight or more times. 

And now let’s talk about outbound dialers. Is there a chance that auto dialer will lose contact during outbound calls or redialing campaigns? There isn’t any. 

How to build an automated call center

Now let’s move to the most important part of this article - what are the key aspects of call center automation and how to implement call center automation to get higher customer retention, and customer satisfaction scores, and provide a seamless customer experience?

Call center automation: customer support

The automated call center is impossible without call center automation of customer support communication channels. 

What is meant by customer support call center automation? 

Well, it is all about self-servicing tools that will provide customers with all the needed assistance and service without any human intervention. 

There are many different self-service channels, but some of them are must-haves and ought to be implemented in your organization in the nearest future. Why? Firstly, people love them. Secondly, they will save you money. Finally, they can greatly improve the overall performance of your automated call center. 

Let’s discover the main automated call center solutions for self-service.

IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system

Let’s start from the beginning - yes, the IVR solution is often hated by many people, but it doesn’t mean that this solution is too bad itself. There is no other solution for inbound call automation than the IVR solution, and it can be enjoyable for customers - if it is developed and designed right. 

Firstly, the IVR system provides call center automation as an independent self-service solution that can provide customers with relevant information and resolutions for their issues. Secondly, it is a fundamental part of call routing and call queue management systems, as it gathers customer data during human interaction and uses this data to provide call routing to the most relevant agent or to offer callback options, queue position information, and so on while staying in a queue. 

Furthermore, an AI-powered IVR system can stop wasting customers’ time (customers say it is the main problem of the IVR solution), if it will be either greatly designed or use a voice recognition system. 

Chatbots

Chatbots are the most loved self-service tool all over the world. Why? They provide the fastest response that is impossible for human agents - often less than a second. They are also pleasant to interact with, and they can contain much important information, as well as provide immediate routing to the real agent if the contained information is not enough to resolve the customer issue. 

Chatbots are cheap, fast, and they are also considered high-tech. All people love chatbots, and the best thing about them is that they can be implemented almost anywhere - in social media, on your website, on landing pages, and so on. Modern call center automation can’t work without chatbots, and that’s what you should think about. 

Webchat

We will not lose your time describing all possible self-service tools, let’s end the story with the last, but not the least important tool for call center automation. Webchat, or live chat, is a chat on the website where customers can ask questions or ask for service exactly during surfing your website. What are the benefits of this solution?

First of all, it is important to convince customers who are almost ready to complete a purchase. They can be ready to finish the payment, but the last or a few questions disturb them and keep them from purchasing the product. What does the live chat do? It offers immediate responses to such questions. Also, it is great for people who want to get both self-service and human support, but don’t want to use phone calls for this. 

Сall center automation: forecasting

What is meant by call center forecasting automation?

 It is about all data that is collected, classified, and analyzed after each call center operation. This covers all call center metrics that measure agent performance, key performance indicators of the whole department, workforce data in real-time mode, and so on. 

Why is data so important in call center automation? 

You can’t understand, analyze and improve the performance of your call center without using specific data that points to many important aspects of call center work. 

What information do we mean by forecasting?

Well, this includes payment information, specific metrics that measure the quality of customer service - Average Response Time, Average Resolution Time, Average Handling Time, First-Call Resolution rate, Average Wait Time (or Average Time in a Queue), and so on, customer data - name, status, net worth, preferences, and other data from the CRM software, key performance indicators (KPI) of call center performance - number of active (logged in) agents, customers in a queue, call volumes, Call Abandonment Rate, number of dropped calls during outbound campaigns, duration of calls, number of processed calls, and so on.

Why is call center automation of forecasting so vital?

Well, you can’t analyze those tonnes of data without call center automation technologies. Why? Well, first of all, you can’t measure it all manually - too difficult and too time-consuming. Secondly, why should you spend time, effort, and money on doing it manually if using call center automation tools will be much cheaper and easier?

When we are talking about call center automation of forecasting and statistics providing, it relates to automated call software reports and real-time dashboards. Reports are provided daily, weekly, and monthly to let you see the entire image of the performance of your contact center. Live dashboards are customizable, and this means you can include any metrics or info you need into them to be informed about all call center operations in real-time mode, without losing contact automation with your call center managers and agents to be able to make decisions or changes right when it is needed. 

Call center automation: automated calling for sales cycle automation

Is call automation possible? 

The short answer: yes, it is. Automated calling is the only way of call automation, and this type of call center automation is one of the most important for sales call center automation. 

How does it work?

Call automation is about outbound calling campaigns for lead generation, telemarketing, or cold sales calls. To implement contact automation, you have to use one type of automated call software called auto dialer, or outbound dialers for sales automation. This automated call center software totally automates the dialing process during outgoing calls, and this means that no manual operations are needed.

There are three main types of automated call center software - Predictive dialer, Power dialer, and Preview dialer. Each of this call center automation software has its own purpose and specifics.

Predictive dialer call center automation software is perfect for cold campaigns, as it has dialing speed of over 100 dials per hour(manually it is less than 35), and it can dial a few phone numbers simultaneously. 

Power dialer call center automation software is better for warm leads processing - it has dialing speed of over 75 dials per hour, but it needs only one agent to be all set, has a voicemail drop feature, and can’t cause dropped calls, unlike Predictive dialer. 

Preview dialer call center automation software works similarly to Power dialer but shows customer data from the CRM before each call to let the agent decide whether to call this lead or not. The dialing speed for this type of contact automation software is around 50 dials per hour. 

Additionally, all three auto dialers can run multiple campaigns and provide you with data in real-time dashboards. 

Contact center automation: workforce management automation

Despite all other aspects of automation, workforce management is still one of the most crucial parts of call center handling. So, if you can automate workforce management and workflow automation, why shouldn’t you do it? 

What is meant by workforce management contact center automation?

It covers such things, as agent scheduling, call monitoring, call recording, training, control of team leaders’ work, and so on. You have to gather all data about employees and their performance in one place to be able to keep track of all processes in real-time mode.

How to implement workforce management contact center automation?

Here you need call center automation software to keep everything in one place. It includes:

Scheduling contact center automation - let agents plan their perfect schedule, edit it, and get access to schedules of their colleagues in an all-in-one interface. This will eliminate potential problems with non-synchronized scheduling and let you know where you need to make changes.

Call monitoring contact center automation - you can monitor calls in three different modes: whispering - when only the agent hears you, hidden - when no one hears you, and barging in - when both agent and customer hear you.

Call recording contact center automation - all calls are automatically recorded to let you listen to those recordings later for training or quality assurance purposes, or for other business goals. 

Workforce management contact center automation - see all data about employees’ statuses, idling time, breaks, and so on in one tab to understand what issues need your attention.

What tools do I need for ultimate contact center automation?

You can be surprised, but to implement all-in-one contact center automation you need nothing but a cloud-based contact center solution. It provides you with every aspect of contact center automation described in this article and offers even more - contact automation, self-service tools, follow-up contact automation, such as follow-up emails or SMS, feedback collection, workflow automation, call blending, dynamic call scripting, third-party software integration, AI (Artificial Intelligence) integrations, and much more.