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AI is everywhere, but is it living up to contact center expectations? Find out why AI orchestration delivers the full benefits of AI even on traditional channels.
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Despite the arrival of digital channels, customers are loyal to the telephone, and it remains the primary contact channel. According to a 2024 ContactBabel report 64.1% of inbound interactions are to a live agent.
While the voice channel may be seen as ‘traditional’, it’s increasingly being enhanced with modern technologies to make it more efficient and effective. Of course, the newest of these is AI. Viewed skeptically just a few years ago, AI is building a new reputation for itself. ContactBabel data shows that on average 24% of UK contact centers already use AI/ML, though this is as high as 50% in some verticals. A further 56% are looking to implement it and, when it comes to customer perception of AI, respondents unanimously agreed customers just want their queries resolved quickly.
It’s clear AI offers massive potential, but simply automating some or part of call processing, for example with a callbot, is not enough. To get the most out of AI technologies, and properly optimize customer journeys, these solutions can’t work in isolation they need to be orchestrated.
Callbots, which are specifically designed for voice-based interactions, have improved massively since their invention in the 1960s. Thanks to advances, such as natural language processing, large language models and conversational AI, bots can interact much more naturally.
Unfortunately, with any bot some pain points still exist. For example, 8% of ContactBabel respondents reported that over 50% of callers had already tried web-based self-service. When self-service and bot-led interactions fail, customers lose confidence in the services, affecting the brand image. For the contact center, this also means that customers return to the phones seeking live agent interactions.
Some of these shortcomings are most certainly explained by a lack of integration with information systems and databases. When customer details or organizational knowledge exists in silos it severely impacts the quality and ability to personalize responses. It can also lead to inconsistencies in customer journeys.
In IT, orchestration refers to the process of managing and coordinating various AI components, resources, and workflows. Like a maestro would do during a concert, an orchestration module ensures that all the tools work in harmony to offer the best possible service.
Odigo AI Orchestrator specializes in harmonizing AI touchpoints to create a unified customer journey, from omnichannel bots to AI-assisted agent interactions. It also facilitates knowledge sharing, from IVR qualification to routing and on to agents, each link in the journey is enhanced with contextual information. The Odigo orchestrator module allows customers to move from a bot to an agent and back, fluidly without interrupting progress.
In short, Odigo AI Orchestrator offers unified AI management throughout the customer journey.
To effectively manage the customer journey by harnessing all the available resources and to offer users autonomy and flexibility, Odigo designed its orchestrator around four central principles:
The success of any customer-facing AI touchpoint depends on the use of rich conversational scenarios. The greater the variety inputted into the solution, the more accurately the bot will be able to qualify the request. The design of these conversational scenarios is therefore crucial.
Thanks to advanced corpus and resource management, users can independently create, modify, and optimize conversational scenarios, adapting them to changing needs and contact drivers. The performance of the natural language understanding engine (NLU) combined with features such as ambiguity removal and management of multiple query intentions, ensures fluid and efficient dialogues. Achieving all this is easy as the tool is low code and designed with an intuitive interface to make ongoing optimization simple.
Imagine a fully connected smart home where the lights turn on when you arrive, the shutters close after dark, and the automatic vacuum cleaner begins its routine the moment the front door locks.
Why not offer this level of ease and efficiency in the contact center? A virtuous cycle is created by connecting solutions and tools together. Bots can leverage data from connected third-party systems, such as well-integrated CRM software or knowledge bases. These personalized interactions then feed data back into a central knowledge pool.
Odigo AI Orchestrator operates as a high-performance routing module that centralizes and shares the data collected throughout the customer journey.
The power of Odigo’s AI orchestration module also lies in its ability to evolve alongside an organization’s relationship models and offerings. To do this, Odigo AI Orchestrator offers 3 ways to analyze performance:
This detailed analysis makes it possible to identify emerging needs based on unrecognized intentions, which can be the basis for developing new strategies.
Just like augmented reality which overlays digital information, such as images or videos onto the real-world environment, Odigo offers agents information and suggestions in real time. The term augmented agent is already established in the industry.
Agents using the Odigo™ solution also benefit from the help of a pre-processing bot. This feature collects valuable resources as part of the qualification process, so agents have everything they need to achieve resolution quickly.
Dan is in the process of buying a house. Alongside his mortgage offer, his bank has provided a home insurance quote. Dan calls his current insurance provider to see what they can offer. He’s greeted by a bot which automatically collects details, like the address of the property, the purchase price and the bank’s quote. The bot then advises Dan to have the details of the property on hand before putting him in touch with an advisor.
The bot qualifies Dan as a priority, as he will soon be exchanging contracts and has already received a competitive quote from his bank. Dan is routed to an agent who is already prepared to walk him through the final steps needed to provide the best value quote, quickly and accurately.
AI and bot orchestration presents numerous strategic and operational benefits, the major advantage however is enhanced control of the customer journey. In addition to improving first contact resolution rate (FCR) and customer satisfaction, it helps reduce repeat calls. For Odigo clients is has reduced the overall number of customer service contacts by up to 33%.
It also facilitates the task of administrators. The module is simple to integrate with the rest of the ecosystem and does not require in-depth programming knowledge. The supervisor interface makes it easy to design conversational designs with ergonomic and intuitive features. When it comes to the big picture, the solution is also scalable and multilingual to facilitate international deployment.
In the pipeline are new features which will go even further, guiding advisors throughout the process. They won’t have to search for and manage information alone: AI will guide them throughout the process and can even suggest the next best action.
The Odigo AI Orchestrator differs from similar solutions in many ways. It was developed to offer a single and unified solution across a whole range of possible touchpoints in a customer’s journey (IVR/bots/visual IVR/ACD/advisor).
NLU ensures speed of deployment with only around ten sentences per intention needed to offer a high-quality starting model. Odigo AI Orchestrator is also capable of monitoring and identifying the impact of bots on the operational model.
Finally, Odigo, has 24 years of experience with applied artificial intelligence projects. Offering you a whole team of experts who can help you configure the tool and make the most of your solution.
Odigo AI Orchestrator optimizes customer journeys with a comprehensive approach integrating AI. Focused on personalized conversational scenarios, tool connection, continuous monitoring, and advisor augmentation, it offers a global solution for contact centers.
To find out more get in touch with our team.
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