Technology creating a more human experience in the workplace seems paradoxical. Turning to artificial intelligence to improve and humanize both employee and customer experiences may seem odd—but it's a powerful truth.
Modern contact centers handle an unprecedented volume of interactions across multiple channels. With customers demanding both speed and quality service, agents face overwhelming workloads that create service gaps and lead to burnout. As employees feel burn out, contact centers are left with rising attrition rates and impacted service. But what if AI can improve the human experiences for everyone involved?
In our latest webinar, AI vs. Humans: The Future of Work—Will AI Augment or Replace Your Role?, we partnered with Futurum Research Group to discuss how AI capabilities can shape contact centers. Let’s explore some ways that AI and automation in workforce tech can make experiences better for the people that use it.
The human element in customer service
Empathy and understanding are among the biggest factors for success in customer service roles. This essential human connection makes customers feel seen and understood, showing them that employees are genuinely there to help solve their problems. This is especially important in customer service interactions that are stressful and emotionally charged. Genuine care, personalization, and empathy guide positive outcomes.
The average contact center agent handles 20-50 calls daily, not including interactions through other channels. After countless, repetitive interactions with little time to recover from emotionally intense ones, contact center agents often experience burnout. The human element comes at a cost.
"You have agents who are doing a lot of the same repetitive tasks day after day, week after week, and month after month. That can be quite taxing and can introduce burnout that ultimately impacts the business." - Keith Kirkpatrick, Research Director, Futurum Group
How AI enhances agent capabilities
AI and automation can humanize the contact center experience by supporting better interactions for agents and customers.
A key takeaway from the webinar emphasized the importance of augmentation over replacement in contact centers. AI should not replace the human experience—rather, it should enhance it by making interactions easier for everyone involved.
This can include supporting agents with:
- Real-time sentiment analysis. During challenging service interactions, customers typically prefer speaking with a human agent. Sentiment analysis provides agents with context and insights to enhance their emotional intelligence when handling difficult situations.
- Contextual customer information delivery. AI can serve agents the most relevant information to help them do their jobs more effectively.
- Automated routine tasks. Contact center work can be repetitive and exhausting for admins and agents. AI can automate routine tasks to give employees more time to focus on complex interactions.
- Personalized strategies. AI can personalize experiences at scale, offering customized coaching strategies for agents based on their performance while creating tailored customer journeys through predictive analytics.
“The most important skill anyone needs in any form of employment is understanding their contribution, be it to customer happiness or to operational goals. The tools we're going to have can augment the experience, removing the noise of repetitive processes to deliver the the gold, jewels, and diamonds needed to make experiences with an organization the best it can be.” - Colin Whelan, Senior Director of Customer Success, Aspect
Balancing automation and the human touch
While AI and automation tools can enhance the human experience and inform decision-makers, the final choice should ultimately rest with humans. The extent of AI usage and level of augmentation in a contact center depends on business leaders.
When implementing AI solutions into contact centers its important to consider:
- Appropriate interaction routing. Some customers prefer quick, transactional experiences that AI can handle perfectly, while others need emotional support best provided by human agents.
- Seamless handoffs between AI and human agents. If an AI agent isn't solving a customer's concern, there should be a seamless handoff to a well-informed human agent who has all the appropriate data to effectively help the customer.
- Maintain data quality. AI systems are only as good as their underlying data and proper classification, labeling, and review by humans are essential to marinating quality service and operations.
- Keep the human element in automated interactions. Just because an interaction is automated doesn't mean it has to be impersonal or robotic. Find ways to infuse human qualities into automated service experiences through elements like personalized scripts.
"There's lots of great ways we can use this stuff but at the end of the day, I'm still going to make the decision. And if I'm making the decision as a leader of a business, I want to know I'm making a decision based on the correct or most pertinent information."— Colin Whelan, Senior Director of Customer Success, Aspect
Future implications of AI in contact centers
As contact centers increasingly implement AI solutions, the focus has shifted from developing capabilities to ensuring the accuracy and reliability of information. As Colin noted, AI tools can only be as effective as their underlying data.
Contact center leaders must prioritize not just AI capabilities, but also the quality of data supporting these systems. This also highlights the importance of proper AI implementation through understanding specific use cases and thoroughly validating automation requirements.
Interested in learning more about the future of AI in contact centers? Watch the on-demand webinar recording here as Colin and Keith explore the implications of AI across workforces.
