Using AI and Automation to Improve Call Center Management

Managing a call center can be a complicated, chaotic undertaking requiring the right blend of skills, experience and technology. Experienced, successful call center managers bring tremendous value to an organization, and that value is only enhanced by technology, including AI and automation.

The two main cornerstones of effective call center management are agent engagement and dialogue/communications. Successful managers need to ensure their agents are content and being appropriately challenged to achieve the maximum productivity and efficiency that will yield the best levels of customer satisfaction. Technology and solutions like those offered by Verint (News - Alert) can offer massive benefits to call center managers striving to stay on top of agents’ happiness and success.

Verint offers an Actionable Intelligence platform, designed to capture very large data sets and process data from multiple sources. The platform then cleanses, fuses and prepares data for analysis and automation. This is where technology and automation can be infinitely useful to a call center manager, as AI and analytical engines are applied to data to glean insights about customer and agent behavior, patterns and trends. This information can be delivered through charts and workflows with the goal of maximizing agent productivity and happiness, as well as customer satisfaction, to yield the best overall call center performance possible.

Happier, engaged call center agents who are appropriately challenged are more likely to stay in their jobs, lowering turnover rates. Churn and turnover are perhaps the biggest problems plaguing call center managers, so being able to count on experienced, tenured agents is a major asset. Automation and AI can also inform managers as they coach and train agents, helping them to improve performance and productivity.

Of course, taking advantage of technology to automate routine tasks like forecasting, scheduling and reporting is also vital to management success. By reliably automating routine tasks, call center managers have more time to focus on their agents and ensure agent success and happiness, which will yield happier customers and a more efficient and productive call center.

Managing a call center is no easy feat, particularly when it comes to understanding what agents need to turn out a consistent performance. Technology tools that incorporate automation and AI into management practices can offer major support to managers and boost overall call center performance and customer satisfaction.

Edited by Maurice Nagle