Google Contact Center AI Platform is Transforming CX

As organizations re-evaluate their contact center platform – perhaps moving away from a legacy premises-based solution to a modern Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) or even changing CCaaS platforms because it doesn’t meet their needs – customer experience (CX) should be at the forefront of the product evaluation.   

Have you ever used an app on your phone and needed help or to ask a question? Many times I struggle to find a link for support, and if I do, more often than not it’s a button that lets me call them. That’s great, but then I’m presented with Interactive Voice Response (IVR) options. If I’m lucky, the contact center is open. If I’m really lucky, I don’t have to wait in the queue too long to speak to an agent. When I do reach an agent, I generally have to tell the agent who I am and why I called. It’s not a great customer experience. 

I recently started working with Google’s new CCaaS platform, Contact Center AI Platform (CCAIP), and it has some innovative features that can help solve some of those struggles and transform CX.

CCAIP provides mobile software development kits (SDKs) that make it easy to integrate your contact center with your mobile application. If you want to chat or talk with an agent, it’s possible to do so without leaving the app. Since you are leveraging the app, it can pass metadata back to the contact center, which can help the agent quickly identify who you are and possibly why you are calling. One of my favorite features is the ability for customers to share photos, screenshots or videos to the agent. This could be a game changer for quick resolution time when you can see the problem versus having to rely on a description. Another feature is the ability for the agent to leverage the smartphone biometrics, such as FaceID, to authenticate the customer.

CCAIP has the ability to integrate virtual agents throughout the customer experience in voice or chat. Virtual agents can effectively fulfill those repetitive transactional requests from customers, such as checking balances, order status information, completing billing payments and troubleshooting. Customers prefer and expect these interactions to be handled 24/7, and virtual agents can make them conversational and personable. 

Virtual agents may not be able to fulfill all of the customer requests. When a virtual agent needs to escalate to a human agent, that agent can quickly review the virtual agent’s transcript. This helps reduce the necessity for a customer to re-explain who they are and what they need.

CCAIP’s AI agent assist feature can supercharge your human agents by providing real-time call transcriptions that they can reference during or after a call, as well as provide the agent recommended responses and answers in real time. With this technology agents can spend less time searching for an answer and focus on providing a better customer experience.

CCAIP was built for direct customer relationship management (CRM) integration and supports most of the leading CRMs. You may wonder how building CRM integrations impacts CX. Agents will have access to a contact’s entire customer profile when they are routed to them. CCAIP can attach journey data, recordings, transcripts, shared photos and videos to the CRM. Agents can quickly see why you're calling and your history. Having this type of integration can reduce agent average handle time and after call work that previously required manual entry. 

Unlike other contact center solutions that selectively integrate customer data, CCAIP makes your CRM a single source of truth across the enterprise. All customer data and personally identifiable information is stored natively in the CRM, removing data silos and minimizing the work and complexity associated with data compliance management.

CCAIP also has the full suite of traditional features you would expect in a modern CCaaS platform. I would recommend checking out their platform and seeing a live demo, and see if it’s a right fit for your contact center needs.

Story by Eric Seeman, an Intelligent CX Consultant for CDW’s Digital Velocity. Eric has over 15 years of contact center experience, and helps customers identify opportunities for improving business process thorugh automation and conversational AI technologies.