The Role of Bot Technology In The Call Center

In a recent article, Thomas Wieberneit discusses the numerous ways bot technology is being used to serve a variety of departments and industries. Although bots have started shaping the way companies operate and have many positive benefits, Wieberneit points out that they are not without their shortcomings. From a technical standpoint, bots are not always integrated properly with systems and they are not able to properly cover the scope required by on the company. From a human standpoint, the bots cannot always meet customer expectations and are often not fluid enough to properly relate to humans on a personal level. Companies are often biting off more than they can chew by trying to implement bots without having the proper infrastructure and technology to support them, which leads to bigger issues long-term.

In order to avoid the downfalls of bots, Wieberneit says that companies need to have solid strategies built before implementation. A strategy should include planning with a clear scope in mind, creating an escalation process, and keeping the customer informed when they’re communicating with bots instead of humans. Finally, employees need to be assured that bots will not be replacing them, but rather, there to help them make their job easier.

The Role of Bot Technology In The Call Center

A big point we took from Wieberneit’s article is that employees should be assured that bots would not be taking over their job roles. It’s been a popular topic that’s come up a lot recently: Should/Will bots completely take over call center jobs from humans? We believe they should not and that humans will remain a necessary and vital component in the call center. The big reason for this has been pointed out before, but still important to remember: empathy. Customers who call want to connect with a real person who can relate to them and their issues while providing human responses to their inquiries. However, this doesn’t mean that there is no place for bot technology within call centers.

Bots should be used to assist call center agents with their daily tasks. By integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology within the call center CRM system, bots can enable call center agents to have more personable conversation with customers and provide them with service that’s tailored to their experience. In addition, bots can be used to monitor exchanges via social media, chat, and other online channels and can route the most important or pressing inquiries to human call center agents. Finally, bots can assist human agents by taking care of mundane processes and freeing the agents to focus on challenging customer issues that require critical or abstract thinking.

This blog post is based on an article from CustomerThink. To read the original article, please click the link below:

To Avoid Bot Failure, Solve These Technology and Human Challenges – Thomas Wieberneit