Long have contact centers been the butt of jokes to many, however, those times are changing. It is a new day for customer service; as a result of innovation in burgeoning technologies like chatbots, Natural Language Understanding (NLU), Artificial Intelligence (AI), workforce optimization and more, the contact center is a bastion of exceptional customer service – at least with the proper pieces in place.
A leader in the cloud contact center space, Aspect Software announced the arrival of CXP 17 this week, which empowers developers with a number of enhancements to enable an exceptional self service experience in the contact center, and ease the process of creating and maintaining a modern IVR, chatbots and more.
Fun fact: Research indicates more than 60 percent of consumers feel good about themselves and the company they choose to do business with when they are able to solve a problem without having to speak with a person – the self-service trend is no passing fad, period. From the customer service agent side of self-service, more than 60 percent feel that when implemented, self-service solutions enable them to focus on fixing complex customer service conundrums.
Some key additions in the new release include: maintaining context in the self-service environment when customers move from channel to channel, integrated support for spelling corrections in NLU, advanced support for linguistic pattern matching as well as full support for extracting and detecting common data types like locations, currency values, time, numbers, date and more.
“Whether it’s through self-service chatbots, modern IVR interactions or agent-assisted experiences, Aspect’s mission is to design technology that makes it very simple and effective for enterprises to engage with their customers,” noted Jim Freeze, Chief Marketing Officer, Aspect Software. “The latest updates to CXP makes it possible for developers and designers to quickly and easily create customer-friendly self-service applications for the channels that consumers want to use such as text, Facebook Messenger or other messaging apps, as well as IVR.”
For years, Burger King carried the slogan “have it your way,” and while it was able to help the franchise sell millions of its flame broiled burgers, contact centers are finally catching on as to how to deliver customers the service they want – in the way they want. An Omnichannel approach offers options, plain and simple. And based on the research, self-service is what the people want. I’d say it’s time we give it to them.
If you’d like to learn more about chatbots, be sure to check out TMC and Crossfire Media’s newest conference and expo, Communications 20/20, happening July 18-20 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The event will focus on the next wave of technology and innovations that will transcend the importance of person to person contact, disrupting the future of the entire communications industry. Find out more HERE.