A key to retaining your existing business, growing your brand, and attracting new business is keeping your customers happy. Brian Tuite of Zenarate reveals new technologies that will help improve customer service.
HubSpot says 80 percent of customers reported that they have stopped doing business with a company due to a poor customer experience. Customer service agents are a company’s most important asset to keeping customers pleased.
Despite the rise of chatbots and tools to quickly solve customer issues, Harvard Business Review recently reported that 58 percent of customers prefer to call the contact center to solve urgent issues. The customer service role has evolved, but live agents will not go away. People want to talk to people – especially as automation and tools leave agents with the toughest problems to solve.
As agents continue to play a critical role in the customer experience, customer service departments need highly trained, confident and personable agents who understand industry best practices. The challenge for customer service leaders is to find the right method to train and upskill agents. Fortunately, new technologies help improve customer service agent performance before they even take their first call.
AI Conversation Simulation in Contact Centers
AI Conversation Simulation is a human-centered AI approach that provides realistic and impactful learning experiences through voice and chat scenarios. It creates hyper-realistic simulations of any voice or chat scenario, so customer service agents can learn through practicing, solving problems, making mistakes and building confidence. It’s like training in a live customer environment but without risks.
AI Conversation Simulation actively empowers agents to master high-impact customer scenarios quickly and conveniently to deliver consistent and superior customer experiences, leading to improved first contact resolution. Customer service departments build a culture of learning by enabling agents to practice, then share their best practice sessions with training managers and peers for open discussion and refinement of skills through human coaching. Customer service agents report more confidence in talking to customers and a more enjoyable training experience with AI Conversation simulation.
Increased confidence translates to improved business metrics, like first call resolution, higher CSAT scores, faster speed to proficiency, and improved compliance scores. AI Conversation Simulation also improves retention and reduces hiring and training costs; because competent and confident agents stay longer, create a more positive environment and, most importantly, engage with customers better.
How to Create High Performing Agents with AI Conversation Simulation
Improving customer service agent performance requires a focus on helping people perform their best. With AI Conversation Simulation, this is done through an effective training approach that requires more doing and less facilitation. It also requires active listening and adjusting to customer needs, allowing agents to better relate with customers through enhanced soft skills.
At Zenarate, we employ some of the top minds in NLP and use the most advanced AI/ML to create life-like conversation simulations. We use advanced Natural Language Processing to allow agents to use their own words without scripting, and Natural Language Understanding generates real-time customer responses simulating a customer on any topic or persona. Our clients report exceptionally high user experience scores with agents citing how realistic and challenging their conversation simulations feel and how it improves their confidence.
We’ve created the #1 AI Conversation Simulation platform that supports global banks, large BPOs, and leading companies in the healthcare, technology, and services industries. With AI Conversation Simulation, contact center leaders develop top-performing customer-facing teams – delivering 56% faster speed to proficiency, 33% higher CSAT scores, and 32% lower employee attrition.
About the Author
Brian Tuite is co-founder and CEO of Zenarate, the leading conversation simulation solution for developing top-performing customer-facing teams. He’s held executive positions at MBNA, Bank of America, and SquareTwo Financial. Brian can be reached at briant@zenarate.com.
