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Augmenting Your Contact Center for Next-Gen CXAugmenting Your Contact Center for Next-Gen CX

Pair agents and robots to unleash the ability to deliver more personalized and contextually rich customer experiences.

Oded Karev, NICE

May 20, 2021

3 Min Read
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Today’s leading contact center operations are leveraging the robotic workforce not only to make agents more productive, but also to give them a better employee experience by empowering them with the ability to deliver exceptional customer experiences in real-time.

 

According to the “US Contact Center Decision-Makers’ Guide 2021,” from analyst firm ContactBabel, the number one contact center metric is customer satisfaction. Furthermore, the report finds repetitive agent work to be one of the top three reasons for agent attrition, 76% of new agents find it difficult to learn new systems, and 70% of agents say that robotic process automation (RPA) helps to reduce average handle time.

 

This indicates a strong business case for integrating intelligent automation solutions into contact center operations at scale. It’s no surprise that we are specifically seeing a large uptake of attended automation within organizations globally, as the logical progression is to put robots on the frontline of customer service as enablers for contact center agents. Located on the desktop, attended bots assist agents to perform efficiently and accurately by taking away the need to manually navigate multiple screens and apps. This keeps agents focused on the individual needs of each customer, while also resolving customer requests on the spot via real-time desktop guidance and automation of tasks.

 

For automation to be successful and sustainable in a contact center environment, it needs to truly enable agents in real-time. By integrating cognitive tools, such as intelligent document processing (IDP) and real-time speech, behavioral, and text analytics with attended automation, organizations can more intelligently leverage bots to deliver more personalized and contextually rich customer experiences. The more extraordinary the customer experience, the greater the business impact on the organization by way of customer and agent satisfaction, customer retention, and increased sales, to name a few.

 

Supporting the Remote Workforce

By necessity, many contact centers are currently allowing more of their people to work remotely. Attended bots, such as NICE Employee Virtual Attendant (NEVA) have a valuable role to play in supporting remote employees — keeping them engaged, informed, and connected by helping them when they can’t easily turn to their peers or supervisors for immediate assistance.

 

What’s more, attended automation can close the loop between front- and back-office operations, driving significant value. Yet realizing the benefits of attended automation requires partnering with a vendor with the right blend of contact center and RPA expertise. NEVA, our attended automation solution, is the product of our 18-year track record of experience in RPA as well as our specialization and success in contact center solutions. This means we not only have leading automation solutions for the back-office, but also an unrivalled understanding of what it takes to scale attended automation in the contact center.

 

Our ability to span the back-office and the contact center with a comprehensive, intelligent automation solution is unique in the market. We would welcome an opportunity to discuss how we can help your contact center reconcile the customer experience-employee engagement paradox.

 

Learn more about NEVA, NICE’s attended automation solution for the contact center and beyond.

About the Author

Oded Karev, NICE

Oded Karev is general manager of NICE’s Robotic Automation Solutions.

 

With extensive experience in corporate strategy and operations, Oded leads NICE’s global Advanced Process Automation line of business, covering the full spectrum of robotics solutions. Prior to his current role, he served as Director of Corporate Strategy at NICE, leading some of the company’s key growth initiatives. Before joining NICE, Oded specialized in delivering multi-channel strategies, operating model designs and digital transformation projects for Accenture.

 

Oded is a respected industry thought leader and key note speaker in the field of Robotic Process Automation and is frequently quoted in global media.