GenAI - Transforming the customer and employee experience

For anyone working in the field of BPO and customer experience, the development of AI-powered services has to be one of the most exciting developments in recent decades. AI solutions are already being used by BPO providers such as Konecta to positively impact customer relations in a multiplicity of ways, from predicting and reducing churn, to extracting insights through speech and text analytics, to providing product recommendations, to improving the employee experience. 

The advent of GenAI takes these possibilities to a new level, opening up new opportunities and horizons for brands in every sector, as we will explain below.

GenAI and the future of customer experience (CX)

Far more than traditional AI-powered solutions, Gen AI comes with the ability to learn autonomously, understand complex contexts, and adapt to different situations. Thus, whereas traditional AI is transformative in scenarios requiring relatively simple automated responses, GenAI offers greater opportunities for rapid insight extraction, hypersonalized content generation, and ‘out of the box’ human-like conversation, allowing brands to create value at scale. Examples can include: 

• Improving, streamlining and accelerating customer operations at scale, allowing brands to  boost efficiency without compromising on quality of service or customer experience
• Developing hyper-personalized and hyper-contextualized journeys for customers through a conversational human-like approach.
• Transforming agents’ journeys to develop their skills and empower them.

You’ll notice from the above that advantages accrue to three different sets of ‘actors’ in the points above: the brand, the customer and the agent/employee. This potential multi-actor participation in the benefits of Gen AI is one reason why it is so important to the future of CX. Far from being a threat to either brands or their customers or their staff, as some of the myths and misconceptions about AI might imply, it’s an opportunity for all of them. 

Transforming the customer experience

In terms of customer experience, the transformative potential of GenAI is vast and varied, and to illustrate this, we’ll just select three examples of what GenAI could deliver for brands:

• Anticipation of customers’ needs, through data, sentiment and speech analysis, allowing brands to predict problems they may face, problem-solve more quickly, and offer proactive solutions.
• Hyper-personalization, with customers being offered more relevant content or recommendations, for example through the use of engaging text, images, and video content.
• Conversation in natural language, as with a human.

The realization of these benefits is not automatic, however. It requires a deep understanding of both CX and operations in order to deploy and tailor AI/GenAI tools across diverse platforms and technologies, integrating them into brands’ processes rather than merely bolting them on top. This is why at Konecta, our GenAI Use Case Factory is a critical part of our GenAI strategy – collaborating with our clients to identify challenges and opportunities within their industries, developing bespoke and tangible AI solutions that address these needs, and ensuring that these solutions are integrated seamlessly into existing systems and processes. 

Two different use cases already being developed and trialled by our GenAI Use Case Factory should give an idea of how AI applications are being used to improve operational excellence and customer relations. 

The first example is in the insurance sector where Konecta is using cutting-edge GenAI capabilities in a solution called SmartClaims, accelerating the processing of customers’ car and motorcycle insurance claims through the use of a GenAI-powered ‘virtual agent’ to process any task involving email or documents. Trial results include a 30% reduction in claims processing times.

Secondly, Konecta is developing a GenAI-powered multilingual spellchecker, which is outperforming traditional spellcheck methods and resulting in conversations with fewer errors and ambiguities. Trial results with a telco client have shown a reduction in spelling slips and more serious errors in language or meaning, and higher customer satisfaction and loyalty as a result of higher-quality communications.

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Transforming the employee experience

The integration of GenAI into clients’ customer management processes can also deliver benefits for employees. Some portrayals of GenAI characterize it as being a replacement for humans, but in the CX sphere, it can be used to deliver a suite of benefits for staff, including:

• Productivity gains, through the automation of repetitive and non-value-added tasks. For example, with the right customer information able to be retrieved and synthesized using GenAI, team efficiency can be greatly improved, and agents can be empowered and energized. 
• Enhancement of the human element, with the automation of tasks and enhanced information management opening up space for human capabilities, such as reactivity and empathy. Agents can gain from more rewarding work experiences and focus on expanding higher-level skills.
• Improved training opportunities, through the creative use of AI/GenAI in training to accelerate agents’ ramp-up times and  to more realistically simulate diverse scenarios – for example with customers of different ages, levels of technology expertise, emotional states, or issues.  

Another high-potential area is coaching. For example, the CoachAI technology, developed by Konecta’s GenAI Use Case Factory, is an innovative automated system that can cost-effectively identify the best practices within its teams for a specific campaign, and then generate personalized improvement plans and training to help individual agents adopt them. Trial results in a sales campaign include a 25% reduction in new agents’ ramp-up times and a 22% increase in sales. 

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Bringing this to reality for brands

As the above examples illustrate, the deployment of AI-powered services in customer relations is fast-developing, and in a way that can be very people-focused. It’s an opportunity for brands to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty through the delivery of more personalized, anticipatory and engaging experiences, while also empowering and engaging the employees who help to deliver these experiences and act as ambassadors for the brand.

Nevertheless, it’s not easy for brands to achieve this scenario. The adoption and integration of GenAI solutions into their existing systems may be hindered by many barriers including technical complexity, lack of resource, and legacy constraints. To deliver the above-mentioned benefits to both employees and customers, is going to be challenging – unless brands have the right help from partners experienced and expert in both CX operations and the integration of AI. This is where Konecta fits into the landscape, acting as an AI architect for our clients and making it our mission to dismantle their AI barriers and set out a route forward for how they can reap the transformational benefits of AI/GenAI. 

Much more will be spoken about Gen AI in 2024 – in every sector and activity, and not just in customer relations BPO – and there’ll doubtless be discussion of the challenges and concerns ahead as well as positives. At Konecta, however, we’re approaching this future with great positivity – confident in the beneficial impacts of AI-powered CX for both customers and employees. Driven by fundamental principles such as our commitment to the highest standards of ethical AI, we’re taking our clients on a journey towards a future where the synergy of advanced AI and human understanding will elevate customer interactions to new heights – in any sector and any geography. It’s a truly exciting time for customer relations.

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