Key AI trends to drive cloud telephony in 2022

During 2020 and 2021, companies leaned on cloud technology to manage the sudden requirement of work-from-home and virtual business. While the cloud has been around for a few years now, augmenting the abilities of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in cloud technology is witnessing accelerated adoption. As we begin 2022, companies are digging deeper to get the inherent advantages of AI and ML in the cloud- the ability to integrate, scale, and evolve to transform customer experience and power business growth.

For instance, the pandemic has catalyzed the switch to cloud telephony for many enterprises. Even traditionally on-premise call centres such as Banking have switched to the cloud. It has also accelerated the adoption of conversational AI as the first line of service in the call centres to manage greater volumes of calls with more ease and personalized customer experience. As a result, we'll see the following trends in the year ahead:

Automate routine call centre tasks: 2022 will be a year where CIOs and CXOs will be looking at AI-based solutions to automate routine call centre tasks, speed up self-service, monitor and assist hybrid and at-home agents, and maximize the value of the data that the call centre generates.

AI-based conversational bots: Thanks to advances in ML and natural language processing (NLP), AI-based bots are now highly mature. They can answer simple queries with ease and understand far more variations and slang than before. As a customer-facing option, these bots will be available as the first point of contact, as customers browse websites, wait for deliveries, onboard a new service, or ask for customer service via WhatsApp, messages, chats, or phone calls.

At the backend, these AI solutions will use call/chat transcripts, customer relationship management (CRM) integrations, and knowledge databases to help agents pull out information faster. The ability of AI-based speech analytics too has improved and can offer businesses important tools to monitor their call centre conversations, improve first call resolutions, as well as extract customer data for marketing and product development.

AI to build seamless customer experience: In 2022, CIOs and CXOs will use cloud, integrations, and AI to build seamless customer experiences. They will adopt open API, AI-based cloud solutions that seamlessly share data—to power the entire customer journey. This will mean omnichannel, AI-first customer service, and sales. While the bots will continue to answer simple queries, they will seamlessly escalate more complex queries to a representative, who, working either from their office or home, will be able to answer them with assistance from their AI-based assistants. Thanks to the seamless integration of CRM and cloud call centre solutions, the relevant customer data will be used to personalize the conversations at every step.

AI will help tap the value of call centre data: Every call centre conversation is a goldmine of data. But it is humanly impossible to listen and extract information from the thousands of calls that call centres receives daily. AI-based speech analytics can now make this easy. Businesses are using AI-based speech analytics to segregate calls based on gender

or customer sentiment in minutes. They can run keyword searches across thousands of recordings in no time, to extract valuable information for their marketing and product development teams.

AI will improve human conversations: All conversational AI will not be customer-facing. AI-based assistants will help human agents within the call centre to find relevant data faster. They will help the call centre agents with “smart suggestions” for every conversation. This would include real-time coaching, with AI-based suggestions that help to improve their soft skills such as empathy, active listening skills. It could even include suggestions for upselling, cross-selling or offers.

Almost all domains and not only call centres are being encapsulated by AI. That's the next step growth factor for enterprises looking to transform their business to provide sustainable and scalable solutions. The future of call centres is a harmonious blend of AI and humans working together. The AI will fill in for monotonous and repetitive tasks while humans will concentrate on tougher, more challenging tasks.

Chaitanya Chokkareddy

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Chaitanya Chokkareddy is Chief Innovation Officer at Ozonetel.