Andrea hat mich zu SunPod interviewt und strahlt unser Gespräch am 4.11.2024 aus. Alle Interviews des Kongresses sind auch nach der Freischaltung noch für ein halbes Jahr anzuhören.
Hier geht’s zum Kongress: https://kongresswenigeristmehr.de/

Why AI is Starting to Scare Workers in the Philippines’ BPO Industry

The problem for most contact center leaders is that it’s unclear where to start, as there are many possibilities for use cases. Below are what I consider the top five use cases for contact centers today, all of which are good starting points. The CloudTalk interface has a clean and straightforward layout with a color palette that exudes professionalism and eliminates visual clutter. Prioritizing functionality, it incorporates interactive elements that let you hover over the graph to reveal specific data points. Above the chart, quick statistics are prominently displayed in vibrant colors for easy identification. Additionally, you have the flexibility to filter information based on your preferences, so you can control your user experience without feeling overwhelmed by excessive options.

Freshcaller made it to our selection for its short learning curve, AI-driven capabilities, and seamless integration with other Freshworks products like Freshdesk and Freshchat. This tight integration with related products allows you to build a connected ecosystem for your business. Also, Freshcaller is the only AI call center solution we evaluated that has a free tier, making it a suitable choice if you have a startup or small business and looking to enhance your operations. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. HubSpot Sales Hub’s interface has a clean and well-organized layout that clearly labels different sections for easy access.

Bottom Line: AI Call Center Software Shapes Customer Experiences

The right AI solutions can enable companies to monitor compliance and adherence to scripts, reducing the risk of legal issues when employees fail to mention they’re recording or call, or ask for consent to share information. AI solutions can even assess networks and conversations in real-time, looking for evidence of security issues. HubSpot found customers who were given proactive support by brands were four times more inclined to promote those brands to their network. The biggest hurdle to perfecting this technology is the varying sentence structure and cultural-emotional complexity behind the more than 7,000 languages currently in existence.

However, for companies making the transition into the new age of AI-powered contact centers, it’s important to look beyond the hype. AI tools are excellent for managing basic inquiries, while automated systems can deal with processing orders, tracking information and more. However, beyond this, AI tools can also empower contact center agents to deliver engaging support to customers from a wider range of locations.

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The most effective customer service systems will likely be hybrid models, where AI handles routine tasks, and humans step in for more complex or sensitive issues. This allows human agents to focus on higher-value interactions while letting AI handle the low-hanging fruit. Far from eliminating jobs, this hybrid model actually creates new opportunities for human workers. Robotic process automation figures to play a significant role automating repetitive and manual tasks in contact centers, greatly reducing the time agents spend handling such responsibilities.

McIntosh said, “Many customers fear that GenAI will simply become another obstacle between them and an agent. According to the survey, 53 percent of customers would consider switching to a competitor if they found out AI was being used for customer service. Many moving parts comprise the contact center, but the underlying key components are technology, agents and — what can make or break a customer’s contact center experience — personalization.

Best Practices for Implementing Generative AI in Contact Centers

RAG frameworks connect foundation or general-purpose LLMs to proprietary knowledge bases and data sources, including inventory management and customer relationship management systems and customer service protocols. Integrating RAG into conversational chatbots, AI assistants and copilots tailors responses to the context of customer queries. With tools like Microsoft Power Apps, companies can create their own chatbots and automated selfservice experiences for customers on a multitude of channels.

This dual impact presents both a risk and an opportunity for the Philippine BPO sector as a whole. Developers can flexibly adapt and enhance these pretrained machine learning models, and enterprises can use them to launch AI projects without the high costs of building models from scratch. Notably, make ai call center companies sure that the voice AI solution you choose gives you the freedom to consistently customize your bots, with developer APIs, integration options, and flexible frameworks. As McDonald states, data privacy regulations exist, but there are no advanced tools yet to police the misuse of AI technology.

In nearly every industry, AI systems can help improve service delivery and customer satisfaction. Despite the rise of digital channels, many consumers still prefer picking up the phone for support, placing strain on call centers. As companies strive to enhance the quality of customer interactions, operational efficiency and costs remain a significant concern.

Already, NLP solutions are revolutionizing self-service, turning Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems into convenient tools customers can navigate with just their voice. 8×8 isn’t the only industry leader highlighting the increasing potential for AI in contact center settings. Metrigy predicts that up to 65.7% of inquiries will be resolved by AI in 2025 and contact centers without AI will need to invest in 2.3 times more agents. Customers are evolving, their needs are changing, and self-service is critical to the next generation of consumers. These days, instead of poring over hundreds and thousands of transcribed customer interactions to extract the vital pieces, you can feed this information into a machine that will do it for you.

While AI and automation can strengthen customer experiences, improve workforce management with predictive analytics and forecasting, and improve operational efficiency, it’s not yet a replacement for agents. Human beings are still necessary to deliver the emotional intelligence and empathy required in many complex contact center interactions. Conversational AI, the branch of artificial intelligence that enables computer programs to mimic human conversations with customers, draws on NLP, machine learning, ChatGPT App and data to enhance customer interactions. Today’s conversational AI technologies are powering numerous contact center tools, from call routing technologies to interactive voice assistants. According to 8×8, the contact center industry won’t be one of the sectors moving away from AI. In fact, there’s a good chance that investment in AI solutions will continue to grow, particularly as new innovations emerge to help contact centers reduce costs, improve productivity and enhance customer experiences.

• Still, these aspects are crucial to building solid customer relationships and identifying opportunities for future growth.
• The future of the call center will focus more on sales and revenue generation rather than its historic role of providing customer service.
• But a lot of contact center functions are siloed or controlled by other departments with different priorities, according to Eric Buesing, partner at McKinsey & Company.
• To develop and deploy effective customer service AI, businesses can fine-tune AI models and deploy RAG solutions to meet diverse and specific needs.
• Modern shoppers expect smooth, personalized and efficient shopping experiences, whether in store or on an e-commerce site.

“Some users I talk to find chatbots infuriating and will hang up on a call when they sense their questions can’t be answered,” Gold noted. In conversations with contact center managers over the past couple of years, Metrigy president and principal analyst Irwin Lazar said the biggest high-level trend has been to improve agent efficiency. But managers said their agents were feeling frustrated because they couldn’t get the information customers needed, resulting in poor customer service. In a December 2023 survey of 5,728 customers by industry watcher Gartner, 64 percent of respondents said they would prefer it if companies didn’t use artificial intelligence in customer service. Sixty percent worried that it would make it even harder to reach a human being, while 42 percent were concerned that AI would provide the wrong answers.

‘A pivotal moment for telcos’ as AI and network infrastructure converge

The group believes this intelligent approach will help not only enhance the experiences of existing clients and business leaders, but also accelerate the evolution of Dubai’s economy. Implementing AI into its IVR system, and customer experience strategy, empowers the organization to deliver consistent, personalized, and efficient service. In fact, the Customer Care Center was named one of the top three Dubai government call centers by the Dubai Model Center. In fact, 71% of experts believe AI will significantly enhance customer experiences, by enabling everything from enhanced personalization, to predictive customer care.

Without these technologies, contact centers wouldn’t have evolved into the multifunctional juggernauts they are today. Automation facilitates fast and efficient responses to customer contacts and agent workflows, while AI provides valuable customer intelligence and insights. The goal of contact center modernization is to provide consistent, high-quality and personal customer interactions over different channels of communication while managing costs and maintaining operational efficiency.

You should be able to create multiple versions of your voice solution, to suit various needs. Florius believes this AI innovation will deliver additional value to customers, while enhancing the performance and efficiency of its teams, regardless of their location. Crescendo’s novel approach of using AI with humans still in the loop also addresses two elephants in the industry’s room. The first is deflection, which is a polite way of describing how hard companies make it for customers to even find out how to contact a company before getting shunted into the FAQ and phone tree wilderness. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the industry’s jobs are pretty boring, leading to stratospheric employee churn rates of up to 50% a year.

Technologies such as voice AI, ACD and robotic process automation typically lower contact center costs and help improve customer experience by providing prompt, seamless service. By integrating AI into customer service interactions, businesses can offer more personalized, efficient and prompt service, setting new standards for omnichannel support experiences across platforms. With AI virtual assistants that process vast amounts of data in seconds, enterprises can equip their support agents to deliver tailored responses to the complex needs of a diverse customer base. With cost-efficient, customized AI solutions, businesses are automating management of help-desk support tickets, creating more effective self-service tools and supporting their customer service agents with AI assistants. Going forward, the firm plans to leverage additional AI tools to further build on the benefits its seeing from AI-enhanced quality management, speech analytics, and agent training solutions. CRM systems store a wealth of customer-related data, including contact information, purchase preferences, purchase decisions and any previous interaction touchpoints the business has had with the customer.

“Many contact centers have a full-time channel in place, but not so many have an omnichannel in place and working right now,” Cleveland acknowledged. “It’s important for users who can’t get the information they need and be able to seamlessly move among multiple channels like websites or a mobile app in real time. I see omnichannel as the next necessary trend in AI.” “But [contact centers] must scrub existing data to make sure the data is accurate and up to date. Otherwise, agents could be handing out bad information.”

With AI’s ability to process vast amounts of data quickly, there’s an increased risk of sensitive customer information being mishandled. Rather than offload everything to machines, Chandrasekaran saw the need to provide workers with more and better training that could be coupled with ever-improving AI to drive better accuracy and personalization. At the same time, he reasoned, the AI should be smart enough to know when it’s dumb so that it can more quickly hand off the hardest cases to a human domain expert. Generative AI (genAI) holds tantalizing potential for contact centers, but turning that potential into reality will require overcoming some hurdles. Customers who have frustrating experiences in the contact center are less likely to engage with upsell or cross-sell opportunities, which directly impacts sales growth. AWS made post-contact generative AI summaries available for supervisors, quality assurance and quality monitoring teams in March as part of a reporting and analytics system upgrade.

At the same time, you need to ensure agents are properly equipped to handle any questions or challenges that come their way and feel empowered to do their jobs well. Level AI can also attempt to gauge a customer’s sentiment and respond appropriately, for example highlighting for an agent that a customer is upset about a late delivery. ChatGPT And it hosts coaching tools designed to help managers walk agents through steps to improve their performance in areas like response time. “Level AI’s software enables brands to get insights on the pulse of the customer, quality of the service being delivered and action plans to improve service performance,” Nagar said.

It offers businesses an opportunity to use bots to rapidly notify customers about technical issues, changes to their accounts, and new products. It also allows organizations to analyze customer history and preferences on a massive scale. Virtual reality has come a long way in the last decade, giving more engaging and lifelike experiences for gaming and video.

Episode 288 hören (ca. 42 Minuten)

Nils Sielaff ist schon seit Kindertagen davon fasziniert, Gemüse anzubauen und Saatgut zu vermehren, und seit 2019 teilt er seine Erfahrungen und Einsichten auf seinem YouTube-Kanal “Saatenvielfalt” mit. Da ich seine Videos ganz hervorragend finde, hatte ich Nils eingeladen, auf unserem jüngsten Saatgutfestival im März in Düsseldorf darüber in einem Vortrag zu berichten.
In unserem Interview hat Nils mir erzählt, welche Entscheidungen er jedesmal wieder neu bei der Themenwahl und Titelgestaltung seiner Videos zu treffen hat, wie sich sein Kanal inzwischen zum Türöffner für neue Kontakte entwickelt, warum er samenfestes Saatgut gegenüber Hybriden bevorzugt, und vieles mehr. Und wer beim Zuhören neugierig geworden ist, hat inzwischen die Möglichkeit, unter 125 Saatenvielfalt-Videos auszuwählen.

Links:
Nils’ YouTube-Kanal “Saatenvielfalt”
Nils Vortrag auf dem Saatgutfestival Düsseldorf 2024
Saatgutfestival Düsseldorf

Foto: Costa Belibasakis

Episode 287 hören

Vergangene Woche traf ich Anastasia Bondar, die im Rahmen ihrer Masterarbeit im Studiengang “integrated design” an der TH Köln als Beispiel für eine nachhaltige Sanitärversorgung eine Trockentoilette entwickelt und einen Prototypen im öffentlichen Raum, nämlich im Kölner Volksgarten, aufgestellt hat.
Das Einsammeln von Fäkalien in einer Trenntoilette ist der erste Schritt hin zu einem komplett anderen Sanitärsystem als bisher, das darauf abzielt, die Nährstoffe aus verdauten Lebensmitteln zu recyclen und zurück auf den Acker zu bringen. Dazu ist es auch nötig, dass die Düngemittelverordnung geändert wird, woran man sieht, dass Anastasia sich auf einen langen Marsch begeben hat, und wenn man ihr so zuhört, wird schnell klar, dass sie am Ende für uns alle die Welt ein wenig besser gemacht haben wird.

Links:
Nährstoffwende
zirkulierBAR
Instagramaccount zur öffentliche Trockentoiletten für Köln
NetSan e.V. – Netzwerk für nachhaltige Sanitärsysteme
Kartenspiel “HolyShit”

Episode 286 hören (ca. 34 Minuten)

Letzte Woche traf in anlässlich der Wir-haben-es-satt-Demo in Berlin Simone Britsch, die schon seit 20 Jahren im Ökodorf Sieben Linden in Sachsen-Anhalt wohnt. Das war eine gute Gelegenheit, etwas mehr über diesen Versuch von aktuell 150 Menschen zu erfahren, eine zukunftsfähige Lebensform auf dem Lande zu praktizieren und mit einem ökologischen Fußabdruck von nur einem Drittel des Bundesdurchschnitts ein glückliches Leben zu führen. Dazu gehören Strohballenlehmhäuser genauso wie eine Agroforst-Testfläche oder Kurse, Seminare und Festivals. Und da es in Sieben Linden genauso menschelt wie überall, ist das Soziale die eigentliche Herausforderung. Lasst Euch also für rund eine halbe Stunde von Simone in’s Paralleluniversum des Ökodorfs mitnehmen!

Links:
Alles über das Ökodorf Sieben Linden
Tagungshaus Sieben Linden
Simones Ökodorf-Podcast
Global Ecovillage Deutschland

Episode 285 hören (ca. 36 Minuten)

Auf der CONSOLFOOD2023 in A Coruña habe ich letzten Juli Werner Wiartalla kennengelernt, der mir die Ufafabrik in Berlin-Tempelhof vorgestellt hat.
Das jahrelang brachliegende Gelände des ehemaligen Ufa-Kopierwerks wurde 1979 friedlich wieder in Betrieb genommen, und im Laufe der Jahrzehnte haben die dort Aktiven unter dem Dach eines gemeinnützigen Vereins ein Kultur- sowie ein Nachbarschafts- und Selbsthilfezentrum geschaffen, das jedes Jahr mit seinen über 400 Veranstaltungen mehr als 200.000 Besucher anzieht. Die Kerngruppe von rund 35 Menschen wohnt auch auf dem Gelände, und sie hat zusätzlich etwa 220 Arbeitsplätze geschaffen. Das Motto ist “Leben und arbeiten an einer Stelle”. Die Ufafabrik ist so etwas wie ein Ökodorf innerhalb der Großstadt, ein Ort der kurzen Wege, der für alle, die in Sachen Nachhaltigkeit, Gemeinschaft und Transformation unterwegs sind, eine reichlich sprudelnde Inspirationsquelle sein kann.

Link:
ufaFabrik

listen to episode 284 (approx. 27 minutes)

I recorded my first interview with Luther Krueger at the CONSOLFOOD conference in 2020 in Faro in Portugal. He told us his story about his experiences with solar cooking and about his huge collection of all types of solar cookers.

This year in July we held our CONSOLFOOD conference in A Coruña in Spain, and I met Luther again. In between he had travelled thousands of miles across the US and recorded lots of wonderful videos with different members of the American solar cooking community, which he has published on YouTube.
So it was clear for me to ask him for another interview and now you can listen to the next chapter of Luther’s story.

Links:
Luther Krueger’s channel on YouTube: Big Blue Sun Museum of Solar Cooking
Solar Brunch Guide for the Big Blue Sun Museum of Solar Cooking
Luther Krueger at the Solar Cooking Wiki
CONSOLFOOD – Advances in Solar Thermal Food Processing

My first interview with Luther: 265 SunPod-Interview Luther Krueger – The Solar Cooking Maniac

Episode 283 hören (ca. 26 Minuten)

Der in Ostasien beheimatete Koji ist so etwas wie das Schweizermesser unter den Edelschimmelpilzen. Koji kann als einziger mit seinen Enzymen sowohl Stärke als auch Proteine und Fettsäuren aufspalten und schafft damit die Grundlage für die Herstellung von Miso, Sojasoße und vielen anderen Köstlichkeiten.

Ich habe kürzlich in der Berliner Manufaktur Mimiferments, die all das herstellt, an einem Misoworkshop bei Markus Shimizu teilgenommen, und bei der Gelegenheit hat er mir seine Geschichte und Vieles rund um diesen außerordentlichen Schimmelpilz erzählt.

Link: Mimiferments

Episode 281 hören (ca. 27 Minuten)

Großküchen sind ein Schlüsselelement bei der Umstellung auf eine nachhaltige und zukunftsfähige Landwirtschaft und bei der Erreichung der 17 Nachhaltigkeitsziele der UNO.
Der gelernte Koch Mathias Gorfer aus Tirol hat als Leiter der Großküche eines Altersheims diese innerhalb weniger Jahre zu 90% auf den Einsatz biologischer und regionaler Lebensmittel umgestellt und dadurch beispielsweise die vorher sehr häufig auftretende Gicht komplett aus dieser Einrichtung verbannt. Als Bio-Botschafter gibt er mittlerweile seine Erfahrungen an andere Großküchenbetreiber weiter, hilft ihnen bei der Umstellung, vernetzt sie mit Lieferanten und hält Vorträge.

Link: www.BioBotschaft.at

Episode 281 hören (ca. 31 Minuten)

Während des diesjährigen Rundgangs in der Kunstakademie Düsseldorf hat Athena Rombach ihre Abschlussarbeit im Fachbereich Baukunst vorgestellt. Sie kritisiert, dass ökologische Gesichtspunkte im Hausbau drastisch unterrepräsentiert sind und dass im ästhetischen Sinne hauptsächlich Trash gebaut wird, und sie unterbreitet zahlreiche Vorschläge, wie man ganz anders an den Hausbau herangehen kann.