AI and Automation in the Contact Center – Part 2

May, 2023

Inside the AI automation revolution - how to make AI work for you in the contact center

This blog was written by a human …

In part 1, we surveyed the AI terrain. In Part 2, we consider an approach to making AI work for you in the contact center.

AI and Automation in the Contact Center

Making AI Work for You

So, what is the way forward?

Focus on the potential benefits. Move from ‘outside-in’ thinking (‘Hey, that’s cool’) to ‘inside-out’ (‘How can we use it to reduce spend, or improve CSAT? What problems/ pain points could be helped with a little automation?’).

Broadly, for AI to be of benefit to your contact center, it must either:

  • help reduce headcount (and therefore salary bills) by providing customers with better self-service options
  • make it easier/ quicker for
    agents to provide the help customers need
    new agents to become proficient
    supervisors to identify what can be improved
  • complete tasks more quickly, accurately, or efficiently than agents/supervisors.

Practically, there may be a trade-off between these priorities. Gains in one area may outweigh losses in another. The trick is to provide an appropriate balance of satisfaction for your business.

Adopt AI with Care

Many contact centers would like to augment their existing system without rip and replace. So, choose tools and approaches that allow incremental transformation, and assess whether the gains brought by the tool are worth the time and effort spent in adding it.

Some other recommendations:

  1. Use AI as co-pilot/ collaborator to supercharge human agents to do the best job they are capable of. Take what humans are good at (empathy, ideas) and marry it with what machines are good at (repetitive tasks, sifting through and summarising an enormous volume of data).
  2. Be transparent about using AI, whether customer- or agent-facing
  3. Engage a partner/ vendor who understands the space
  4. Expect to be surprised. The gains might turn out to be in unexpected places.

AI the Sytel Way

Sytel has been in the AI business since we engineered our predictive dialer algorithm in the mid-1990s, which takes all inputs from all current states and runs simulations in milliseconds to calculate/ re-calculate the optimum dialing rate.

And there is much AI already embedded in other Sytel processes, e.g. our multisession, multichannel blending (intraday automation).

We are specialists in core contact center functionalities, which are designed to be able to integrate with any 3rd party tools in a composable cloud environment. So rather than competing in the new AI arms race, we offer our customers choice, via two future-proof opportunities:

  1. to augment and enhance with any tool they wish, including any new generation AI tool, via our comprehensive APIs.
  2. to interface with AI processes via our no-code agent scripting product and present feedback, prompts, etc within the agent desktop.

Are you ready for the future? The AI revolution is here.

Read more about our APIs for integrating 3rd party applications here. To talk to an expert about Sytel’s contact center software or arrange a demo, just talk to us.

What We Offer

Sytel Limited develops and supplies Softdial Contact Center® (SCC) - multimedia, multichannel, fully blended cloud contact center solutions.

Available by subscription as CCaaS, fully managed and supported by Sytel, or for quick and easy deployment by partners and enterprise users.

All Sytel cloud components are secure, resilient and scale seamlessly from 10 agents to 10,000+, whether local, mobile or remote.

Flexible Contact Center Software

Softdial Contact Center™ - rich functionality, all-in-one, designed to deliver at scale
  • Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS)

    CCaaS for subscribers - global service​, with no upfront costs

  • Contact Center Platform – CCaaS Partners

    Build your own CCaaS business using the power and flexibility of Sytel software

  • Contact Center Platform – Enterprise

    High performance platform to drive contact center productivity – cloud, on-premise or hybrid

Blended Media Desktop

Fully customisable, multi-channel, multi-session workspace

Work Anywhere

Browser-based tools, no software installation required

Customise, Localise, White Label

Design all user interfaces to individual requirements

Integration via APIs

‘Swap out’ components and integrate with 3rd party apps

World Class Development

Continuous evolution pushing technical boundaries

Capabilities

Softdial Contact Center™ (SCC) is designed to be flexible, extensible and scalable, integrating with any legacy equipment, and meeting the most complex of requirements.

All Media Channels

Voice, chat, email, social, etc - fully integrated and blended

Agent Multi-Tasking

Work with multiple live contact sessions of any media channel

Dynamic Workforce Management

Automated, ‘best available’ decisions to manage agents and balance work load, across all media channels

Predictive Dialing

Best-of-breed performance under compliance

Optimised Inbound Routing

Smart rules and 'best-available' decisions to drive great customer service

Agent Scripts

Help agents achieve and maintain excellence

Voice and Screen Recording

See and hear exactly how agents are interacting

Analytics and Data Feeds

Measure and evaluate performance at every level

IVR, Bots & Conversational AI

Design effective automated flows or integrate with 3rd party providers

Customer Journey Tracking

Stored customer contact history, to aid routing and add context to conversations

Modules

Drive operational efficiency, increase customer satisfaction & improve agent performance

Softdial One™

Highly flexible unified web UI for agents, supervisors and administrators

Softdial Scripter™

Create complex process flow scripts for agents, IVR, chatbots and other applications

Sytel AI Dialer™

Maximum predictive dialing performance, under any compliance rules

Softdial Pathfinder™

Precise routing rules for ‘best available’ connection

Softdial Media Server™

Core telephony functions to manage all inbound/outbound SIP calls

Softdial Reporter™ 5

Fully customisable performance stats, charts and reports, across all channels

Softdial Publisher™

Comprehensive data output to build your own reports

Softdial Recording Monitor™

Audio and screen recording of agent activity to ensure the highest standards

Softdial Campaign Manager™

Automation to optimise any outreach strategy

Softdial Repository™

Central storage and configuration of common resources

Sytel Global Compliance™

Flexible ‘no contact’ rules to protect contact center and consumer

Solutions

Performance and efficiency for a wide range of business applications

By Business Type

Enterprise

A full featured contact center software solution, designed for optimum performance at scale

Small/ Medium Business

Options for SMBs to subscribe to our full-featured cloud service managed and hosted by either one of our partners or by Sytel themselves

By Industry

Customer Service

Connect quickly to well equipped agents

Market Research

Best-of-breed predictive dialing with CATI integration

Debt Collection

Automated inbound/ outbound blending integrated with any debt management app

Sales & Telemarketing

Maximise agent productivity with best-of-breed predictive dialing

Healthcare

Secure, highly-configurable multichannel communications for excellence in patient care