Brands can make the most out of the festive season using AI-powered contact centers

Once again, it is that time of the year when we have a spree of festivals pertaining to different states and cultures in the country. These festivals are an excellent opportunity to connect with loved ones, share good moments and build lifelong memories. Moreover, the festive season is when consumers bring out their most cherished shopping list and seek the best offers from their favorite brands. So, naturally, the season also marks a critical ‘business time’ for several industries, including e-commerce, automobile, lifestyle, etc.

Given the expected spike in shopping volumes, companies' contact centers in the e-commerce, automobile, lifestyle, and other spaces are expected to experience a multi-fold growth in consumer queries, complaints, and feedback. Given the current capacity of human resources, most of these contact centers may not keep pace with the incoming communication and ensure a seamless consumer experience. Therefore, brands are increasingly partnering with technology providers to enable artificial intelligence and machine learning-based automated response solutions for enterprise contact centers. These solutions leverage the existing data pool about consumers to understand and predict their behavior and respond to their conversations via interactive voice responses, messenger chatbots, emails, or SMSs. Here’s how AI-powered contact centers will help brands create a distinct contact center experience and make the most of the festive season:-

Dr. Rashi Gupta, Chef Data Scientist, and Co-founder, Rezo.ai.

Speed of response: Human contact center workforce brings business experience and cognitive skills when attending customer communications. However, they have their limitations regarding the number of calls or emails they may answer. They may also make errors, need periodic rest and off-hours. This is where AI-based solutions can bridge the gap. These digital solutions can work faster, round the clock, and reduce the workload of contact center teams. As a result, consumers experience faster and effective turnaround time on their queries, which helps in strengthening their relationship with the brand.

Quality of response: By letting the AI-powered automated response systems take care of iterative queries such as price and feature inquiries, acknowledgement of communication, or sharing the standard response time, the human workforce at contact centers can be freed up to take care of more complex queries and complaints. The team also receives support from more contextualized insights about the consumers that they are engaging. By doing so, the quality of response can be enhanced substantially.

Cost savings: Automating a large part of contact center operations also bring down the operational costs. Brands can choose to divert these savings into providing festive deals, rewards, and distinct experiences. Eventually, they not only push their positive sales upwards but build long-term relationships with consumers.

Cross-selling opportunities - Equipping the team at contact centers with AI-based insights helps them recommend the more relevant product and solutions to happy consumers. These cross-selling opportunities play an essential role in catapulting sales during a festive time when consumers are already in their best shopping mood.

While the festive season is an ample opportunity for consumer brands, they also anticipate fierce competition. Ramping up the contact center operations through AI-powered solutions is a sure way to provide a differentiated consumer experience and attain shoppers’ share of mind. Once consumers come across this experience, they are almost certain to engage with the brand frequently.

Author: Dr. Rashi Gupta, Chef Data Scientist, and Co-founder, Rezo.ai.