Call centers are a great entry point to voice

At Voicify we are asked in nearly every discussion we have with prospects and customers, “where do we start?”

A critical question for enterprise level businesses considering new technology.  Though we are strong advocates of evaluating the customer journey to identify those moments of experience which would benefit from the voice channel (see How to Get Started in Voice), there is often an early candidate:

The call center experience

The call center has been around for decades.  It can be a well-oiled machine with all the gears needed to ensure that when a caller is connected with a human representative (or CCR) the human on the receiving end is well prepared to respond and support the inquiries of the caller.

With the advent of voice assistants, the ubiquity of devices (perhaps the mobile device you are reading this on right now) in our lives and the ability to create and manage skills/actions/capsules across the leading voice assistant’s, customer support has a new channel to work with.

Society is more comfortable than ever using virtual assistants to obtain answers to questions, product information and general support the moment they need it.  But still, with over 1 billion devices accessing virtual assistants and exponential adoption in the US and worldwide most brands don’t have an owned presence in these channels.

Each business will have their own series of considerations when extending call center support to voice devices.  Yet, there is an existing asset which is instrumental to the ability to do so.

Call center scripts.

When any of us connect with a call center we can be assured that the representative we are connecting with has a script of some kind at their disposal.  Whether they are reading verbatim or using it as a prompt to engage with the caller, it exists in some fashion.

Transferring this content and intent to the voice assistant space is a no-brainer.  I won’t claim it is a copy and paste exercise in its entirety, but for sure, the level of thought that has been exerted in creating call center scripts alleviates a heavy burden on content creators and brand managers when engaging with users through virtual assistants.

What does this mean for the business

There are efficiencies on several levels.  First, call centers are expensive. It makes sense to leverage these resources to make an impact on the most complicated or troubled callers. I am not suggesting that voice assistants replace call centers but rather augment them and create efficiency where users are willing to switch the channel.

Second, people are adopting virtual assistants at a fast pace. For those customers who are comfortable with voice assistants, you gain trust and reputation when you do it right. Key elements to customer satsifaction and retention.

Thridly is analytics.  Conversational data is easier to collect and make use of through custom skills.  The content is structured, thus measureable and usable later on for revision and betterment of the experience.

How Voicify Helps

Because Voicify was created with content and marketers in mind, versus developers and technologists, script content is often a one to one match with the way in which Voicify handles the utterance/response relationship. And since the Voicify platform is a ‘build it once, deploy to many’ the content you manage is the de facto app/skill/action etc. meaning it is immediately deployable to major voice assistants and even chatbots for web, social text and IM.

We even created an entirely open API layer. So you can integrate with existing call center software to ease the content burden even further, creating efficiency for the user and business alike.  All while meeting the customer where they are, on their terms, when it’s convenient for them.

Interested in learning more about how Voicify can help your organization? We’re here to help.