Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
AI Can Be a Life Saver
Some folks these days are concerned about AI (Artificial Intelligence) displacing human workers. But, a recent blog from Nexmo explains how AI can not only assist employees in their jobs, but could also potentially even save lives in the process.
Thomas Soulez, Vice President of Product Management at Nexmo, described a scenario in which a motorist named Lily is on the road during a very cold night and calls in for roadside assistance. She tells the call center agent that her vehicle has skidded on ice, hit a curb, and needs to be towed.
Here’s where AI goes to work. As the motorist is speaking, AI populates the agent’s screen with a map of where she is and shows the nearest tow truck in the area. “All this happens without explicit instruction from the agent,” Soulez writes. “Instead, a virtual assistant is listening to the call and uses natural language process to pull out key terms.”
AI can also be used to identify the caller via caller ID, realize she’s been a customer for a decade but has never called the number, understand that customers with similar profiles only call for assistance when they really need help, and see the weather in Lily’s home city is dangerously cold. The system could leverage this information to assess the situation, put Lily atop the calling queue, and express the urgent nature of her call to the responding call center agent, Soulez said.
And, if the caller is uncertain of her location, AI could even prompt the agent to ask whether to send the customer a photo of a local landmark in her area as a way of helping to locate it. That way, the tow truck can more easily locate her.
“In this case, the AI used the context of Lily’s call to judge its purpose and urgency and then routed her call appropriately,” Soulez said. “Machine-learning tools will then anticipate how best to respond when it sees those patterns unfolding. Everything from staffing levels, through the best promotions to run, to the type of interaction a customer prefers will be set by software programmed through machine learning.”
The human call center agent is still involved, making sure everything goes as planned and providing reassurance to the caller. But with AI, the agent is able to address the needs of the caller – and ensure the proper resources are available – a whole lot quicker and more efficiently, Soulez indicated.
This may all sound futuristic, Soulez added, but it’s all possible today using IBM Watson and technology from Nexmo, Vonage’s (News - Alert) communications API platform.
“In the contact center of the next few years, it will be commonplace,” he said.
Edited by Mandi Nowitz