Yesterday, chief information officer (CIO) of IT World Canada Jim Love sat down with Amir Hameed, senior vice president of worldwide solution sales and engineering, and Kevin Krempulec, Canada country manager, from cloud communications platform RingCentral, to discuss how AI can transform the conversation across both customer and employee journeys.
The first step for organizations looking to leverage AI to deliver enhanced customer experience is to clearly define the use cases, starting with the simpler challenges first before tackling the more complex ones, explained Krempulec. The crawl, walk, run approach is the way to go, he added.
While collaborating with Purolator, for instance, RingCentral addressed the easier challenges first, like automating the process of arranging a pickup, and later using only a voice bot to handle customer interactions.
And throughout that journey, organizations need to be constantly seeking and applying feedback from clients, affirmed Krempulec.
Focusing on augmenting the employee experience throughout this process is as critical, the speakers acknowledged. AI should be geared towards providing employees a better experience, and that could involve them having more meaningful interactions or mundane tasks being handled by automation, or the ability to have some coaching on the side.
Staples, for instance, worked with RingCentral to streamline its Tech Easy remote tech support service. The first 90 days of customer service, when customers would typically call in with a question, needed to be stellar, and RingCentral complemented the service with an agent assist technology that quickly surfaces additional or historical information on the issue broached by the customer. It also provides instant coaching to the agent and summarizes the call.
“You’ve had that interaction, and then automatically, all of that meeting summary is updated and extended all the way out into your CRM, so that when the next agent gets that call, everything is updated and at their fingertips,” said Hameed.
However, the RingCentral execs emphasized the importance of prioritizing security when embarking on the AI journey.
“The explosion of AI is absolutely mind numbing, but at the same time, it’s got to be responsible AI. It’s got to be ethical AI. It’s got to be secure,” said Hameed.
Customer information, he said, is sensitive and confidential, adding, “We’re absolutely careful that none of that has ever been, nor ever will be, shared in the open internet. So we’ve got to be very prescriptive on how we leverage the AI moving forward.”
Another rule of thumb is ensuring that knowledge fed to an agent or chatbot is well-sourced, accurate, relevant, and aligns with the principles outlined by an organization. Conducting user acceptance tests is as important before you go live with it, said Krempulec.
Gauging success
In general, an increase in revenue and a decrease in costs would be a good success metric to look at, said Hameed.
But assessing whether the technology is enabling your employees to be more effective equally builds the business case for AI. For example, looking at the pace at which customers cases are closed successfully, if there is a level of personalization delivered to the customer, the number of minutes saved as you pulled out an instant summarization of a call, are all solid success metrics to consider, explained Krempulec.
“At RingCentral ,that’s what really drives our roadmap. It’s not technology or AI for AI’s sake. It’s truly what is going to move the needle for our customers and drive the business outcomes, delight their customers and keep them continuing to grow through technology,” asserted Hadeep.
RingCentral has a number of customer experience solutions, including the Contact Center, Ring CX as well as Salesforce and Zendesk. Discover more here.
