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Working in a contact center can feel like a juggling act as agents assist customers via email, live chat, and on the phone. On top of that, they have to complete tedious after-call work like summarizing calls and updating the CRM, which can feel like adding a unicycle and a couple of chainsaws to an already challenging routine.
This mounting workload has increased agent burnout and turnover rates. But that’s not all — in addition to bringing down agent morale, after-call work can harm the customer experience, increasing wait times and taking agents’ focus away from resolving issues. Despite these drawbacks, many contact center managers still view the process as a necessary evil.
The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way — with conversation intelligence, you can free your contact center agents from the tedium of after-call work. The tool uses AI to automate repetitive after-call tasks that are eating up your agents’ time, giving them more bandwidth to focus on providing exceptional customer service.
In this post, we’ll dive into what conversation intelligence is, how it reduces after-call work, and how it can help your contact center drive better results.
Today’s contact centers face unprecedented challenges with attrition. For our recent State of the Contact Center Report, we surveyed 500 contact center agents and found that 60% said they’re “very likely” to leave their jobs in the next six months. It’s not hard to see why contact center agents have one foot out the door — they’re overworked, frequently have to deal with angry callers, and face issues with burnout.
High turnover rates can leave contact centers chronically understaffed. If left unchecked, this can create a domino effect, causing others to jump ship as well. The issue can become very costly, as a recent study found that it can cost $12,000 to replace and retrain a single entry-level employee who makes $36,000 per year. If your contact center is dealing with high attrition rates, it can greatly impact your operations and revenue. Therefore, rather than continuously replacing employees, it’s far more cost-efficient to invest in your existing employees to retain them.
In order to improve retention, you need to alleviate your agents’ stress and give them the right tools to do their jobs more efficiently. That’s where conversation intelligence comes in.
To improve contact center efficiency and agent retention, leading brands use conversation intelligence AI. Conversation intelligence is software that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to derive insights from phone conversations between your representatives and customers at scale. The conversation data can be streamed between other technology platforms like CRMs, contact center software, and digital experience platforms in order to take action on the insights in real time.
Conversation intelligence is cloud-based and does not require any changes to your existing contact center infrastructure — it can be easily deployed by placing a simple piece of JavaScript code on your site. Or, as another option, you can ingest stereo (dual-channel) MP3/WAV call recordings into the Invoca platform for analysis.
Conversation intelligence uses the power of AI to automate repetitive tasks in your contact center, so your agents can spend more time assisting customers. Below are two key ways that the solution reduces after-call work:
Call summaries are time-consuming and they can be a burden for contact center agents to type up, as they’re already stretched in many different directions. On top of that, they can take focus away from the core mission of your contact center: providing exceptional customer experiences.
Invoca alleviates this issue by using AI to generate call recaps, which highlight the intent, interest, outcome, and flow of every conversation. These call summaries are generated in real time, allowing your agents to quickly move on to the next call. In addition to reducing after-call work, call recaps can also speed up the quality assurance process.
Keeping up-to-date records in Salesforce is essential to contact center operations, as it gives your team a single source of truth about customer interactions. This, in turn, allows you to personalize future communications with customers to better meet their needs. However, entering caller data into Salesforce is a time-consuming process that reduces the amount of time agents spend on the phone serving customers.
Invoca reduces the repetitive after-call work of logging customer data into your CRM with its Salesforce integration. Invoca captures and sends call data such as lead source, demographic information, and call outcomes to Salesforce and associates this data with the contact or lead. Invoca’s website tag also captures the online customer journey data associated with each call and places it in the relevant record. If there isn’t an existing contact or lead, a new one is automatically created. In addition, Invoca automatically attaches the call recording to the record and lists important keywords that were spoken. This automates a significant portion of after-call activities and allows your agents to spend more time on the phones making your customers happy.
When you use artificial intelligence to reduce after-call work in your contact center, you take a lot of strain off your agents. Here are three of the key benefits you can reap as a result:
As we covered earlier, contact center agents are stretched thin. In addition to assisting customers, they’re burdened with tedious after-call work that can eat away at their time. But when contact centers use Invoca to reduce after-call work, agents can quickly transition from one customer interaction to the next, engaging with more customers and maximizing their efficiency.
Minimizing after-call work not only benefits agents but also has a ripple effect on your contact center's bottom line. By eliminating redundant and time-consuming administrative tasks, you can save on operational costs. In addition, you can increase job satisfaction among agents, leading to higher retention rates and lower recruiting and training costs.
When agents have more time to focus on addressing customer needs rather than being tied up with after-call work, the quality of interactions improves significantly. Reduced after-call work allows agents to dedicate their energy to truly understanding and resolving customer issues, leading to higher satisfaction rates. In addition, it reduces hold times, allowing customers to connect with an agent in a more timely manner. With prompt and efficient service, customers feel valued and heard, creating a deeper sense of trust and loyalty to your brand.
Many companies view the contact center as a revenue drain where low-value inquiries, customer complaints, and service requests pour in and no revenue comes out. However, the truth is, the contact center is one of the most valuable revenue drivers at your disposal — it’s your brand’s chance to connect directly with your customers and form lasting relationships.
When you use Invoca to automate after-call work, you give your contact center agents more time to build relationships with customers, dig into their pain points, and highlight how your products or services can help them. This personalized approach builds trust and confidence in your brand’s offerings. In addition, by minimizing after-call work, contact center agents have more time to train their colleagues and share the tactics that are helping them drive revenue.
Want to learn more about how conversation intelligence AI can improve contact center efficiency? Check out these resources:
