5 Ways to Reduce Average Handle Time in Contact Centers with AI

For contact centers, customer satisfaction is paramount. No other metrics come close to honoring the CSAT metric. Valuing time bodes well for the business bottom-line, and it also contributes to higher customer satisfaction when done right. A lower average handle time (AHT) benefits include lower call waiting times for customers, quicker resolution of customer interactions, and reduction in overhead and HR costs, making AHT one of the vital key performance indicators in a contact center.

AHT is the average time it takes to handle a call. The time is calculated from start to finish – from initiation of the interaction, including the hold and talk times, and the time taken to perform the after-call work (ACW) summary, categorization, etc. Given the impact of a lower AHT has on CSAT, here are five simple steps to lower AHT in your contact center:

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Reduce AHT in your contact center with

#1. AI-powered knowledge base

In today’s knowledge-intensive economy, you cannot overemphasize the importance of timely information to drive forward a customer relationship or resolve a customer problem. On average, a contact center agent browses through at least three different screens to resolve a customer problem. AI-based knowledge management helps in driving efficiencies and ensuring agents have the right information at the right time. An AI-based knowledge management solution utilizes Natural Language Processing (NLP) and semantic search to learn and identify keywords that customers speak and, in real-time, empowers the agent with the right knowledge at their fingertips. It not only reduces the average call handle time but also eliminates the human-related error in finding the correct information.

#2. In-call agent assistance

Real-time conversational AI-based agent assistance solutions help agents improve their efficiency and reduce the time taken to resolve customer service interactions. Conversational AI provides the agents with real-time alerts and notifications, so the agents focus on customer’s needs and deliver a conversational experience. Agents are also alerted on customer intent, sentiment, and emotion in real-time, to resolve customer problems.

#3. Chatbots and self-service

Intelligent chatbots and voice bots drive self-service and deflect calls from higher-cost channels for routine customer interactions. With the advances in conversational AI, machines can precisely understand how humans communicate and their intent. Chatbots mimic a human agent and resolve more straightforward customer queries in the quickest time possible. Other self-service options such as how-to-guides, videos, blogs, and social media posts also help resolve customer queries without needing a live agent.  For complex interactions, the bot will intelligently route the conversation to a live human agent with the full context, thus reducing AHT and increasing FCR.

#4. Intelligent automation

Automation is a crucial driver of business growth, cost-cutting, and time reduction. Many tasks within a contact center can be conveniently automated to save the agent’s time and effort. One such interest area is the automation of after-call work (ACW). Automating ACW summary and call categorization lower average call handle time and improve accuracy while also increasing customer satisfaction.

#5. AI-based agent coaching

Coaching the agents with the right skills helps reduce the average handle time significantly. Using AI with post-call speech analytics, contact centers get actionable insights on agent performance, customer experience, and other factors to determine coaching suggestions. Supervisors use AI-driven dashboards to remotely analyze agent productivity and customize training programs to agents based on the business requirements. Quality analysts can also dig deep into specific calls with additional tags such as reasons for customer churn, competitor mentions, etc., and give the most relevant feedback to agents. All this can help to reduce the AHT and improve customer satisfaction.

These are some steps contact centers can adopt to reduce average call handle time, leveraging the growth in AI and automation, thus improving customer satisfaction and increasing agent efficiency.

2022 Buyers Guide

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Telecoms

 

1.)

Cloud IT Services GmbH Dialfire Dialfire offers you a complete call center solution that is simple and intuitive to use and adapts to your needs. It's completely cloud-based, saving you the hassle of setting up a phone system and installing software. In addition to predictive dialing and call blending of inbound calls, you can create personalized campaigns through an intuitive and easy-to-use interface. Features include automated workflows and full control over the agent screen. You can see the full list of features here:

2.)

Cloudonix Cloudonix’s smart voice calls enable frictionless experiences that drive better customer care and faster sales by merging voice and data into a complete service context. Cloudonix add Cloud capabilities to your existing on premise Call Center enabling your agents to work from anywhere in the world. Security, Privacy and more – rapidly deployed and cost effective without replacing your existing systems or retraining your team.

3.)	Connectica Solutions, LLC PBX On The Cloud We provide complete Cloud-based PBX/Phone Systems, including predictive and progressive dialers, phone lines in more than 75 countries and low cost international rates. We specialize in the US and Latin American market.

4.)	DiRAD Technologies AI Powered Contact Center Provider, AI Chat & Voicebot, Enterprise Telephony Take advantage of the latest customer service innovations with Contact Center, Virtual Assistant, and Interactive Voice solutions for accessible, 24×7 services across multiple channels.

5.)	Layer One Technologies Layer One Technologies provides information and communication technology (ICT) services to businesses in the greater Charlotte area. Whatever your cabling needs, we have you covered.

6.)

Megacall VOIP services Stay in contact quickly and easily with your international offices through Megacall. Megacall will fulfill all your telecommunication requirements and on top of that go the extra mile and surprise you with new possibilities for your business, speed to action your requests and keeping within your budget. 📞 Virtual Switchboard 🔌 SIP trunk 🔢 Virtual number 📠 Call Center Solutions

7.)

NetSapiens SNAPsolution Our SNAPsolution – UC and Collaboration tools – can be quickly deployed so you can realize your ROI just as quick. netsapiens offers a comprehensive suite of unified communications (UC) & Contact Center (CC) feature-sets to service providers. Custom-built to provide our partners with unprecedented levels of flexibility, customization, and ease of use. netsapiens allows you to control your margins in order to improve your ROI. As a provider of a facilities-based solution, you are able to personally choose your origination, termination, hardware costs, etc. to fit your budget. We also allow you to strategically price your product for a maximum return on your investment by charging on a conc... (read more)Our SNAPsolution – UC and Collaboration tools – can be quickly deployed so you can realize your ROI just as quick. netsapiens offers a comprehensive suite of unified communications (UC) & Contact Center (CC) feature-sets to service providers. Custom-built to provide our partners with unprecedented levels of flexibility, customization, and ease of use. netsapiens allows you to control your margins in order to improve your ROI. As a provider of a facilities-based solution, you are able to personally choose your origination, termination, hardware costs, etc. to fit your budget. We also allow you to strategically price your product for a maximum return on your investment by charging on a concurrent call basis instead of charging per-seat or per-feature. SNAPsolution, SNAPvantage, and SNAPanalytics give you all the tools to start off strong in the VoIP industry while giving you room to grow efficiently within your means. Why Sessions, Not Seats? The era of the mobile workforce is upon us. In fact, Google recently put out an estimate that 80% of the global workforce is now performing deskless work every day! Unfortunately, when it comes to providing Unified Communications (UC) features to these deskless employees, many systems operators, carriers and service providers are stuck investing in their platforms on a per-seat basis. That limits them to chasing only about 20% of the workforce - those with actual seats and desks. Why not expand your addressable market and open your business model to chase up to 5 times as many clients as you are today? If a majority of the workforce today doesn’t have a desk, does it make sense to purchase the UC solutions you want to sell by the seat? We don’t think so. That’s why we’ve created this report titled Sessions, Not Seats. In it, we’ll show you why finding a UC platform, like our SNAPsolution, that charges for sessions instead of seats is the way to go.

8.)

Nuxiba Technologies CenterWare Build a strong business presence and improve customer relationships! Offer custom-tailored solutions throughout your sales cycles and customer interactions and assess service levels and control corporate goal achievement through reports and statistics. Obtain detailed reports based on relevant activity in your contact center, access our quality module to assess calls and performance, apply surveys, develop scripts, record conversations, and more! Schedule a live demo or request a quote today!

9.)

PRILINK Demarc Network Traffic Monitor A lightweight Network Traffic Monitor that privides real-time traffic alerts and tracks all IP and SIP endpoints at Demarc. It analyzes mirrored SIP Trunk and Internet traffic in real-time and compiles Network Traffic Analytics (NTA) for all endpoints giving daily network traffic telemetry, most active endpoint summary, endpoint search table and more.

10.)

Televergence Long Distance and Toll Free Specialists for Contact Centers Televergence is a facilities based US Nationwide High volume/High Capacity Inbound and Outbound VoIP Carrier for Contact Centers. We specialize in termination (outbound) and origination (toll free and local DID) for the contact center. We have a technical staff that is up to date on the majority of platforms in use today, including asterisk and Vicci dial, as well as many of the currently in use software platforms. Contact Centers generally see cost reduction and containment when using Televergence as their contact center telecom carrier. Televergence is the only active US VoIP carrier certified by the Women's Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC), which enables our services to qualify for meeting corporations Supplier Diversity Needs.

11.)

The Phone Number Testing Company Phone Number Testing and Validation Bulk testing and validation of UK Landline and mobile numbers, with a growing list of other coutries where we can test. If you own a large customer or business prospect sales database, our service helps you to quickly and accurately cleanse all the dead records, by identifying all the dead phone numbers. We offer a free no obligation test trial

 

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5 Ways to Reduce Average Handle Time in Contact Centers with AI

October 21, 2020 9:27 AM