Either your company has a call center or you are on the verge of building it, you definitely know about Asterisk. Asterisk is a powerful tool for building a call center used by 22 million people worldwide. It has revolutionised the telecommunication industry. Asterisk let the companies leave the tons of costly hardware ahead and replace them with the computer with the internet access.
Today voice-bots are the next revolution in the industry. They can improve call tenet efficiency, cut OpEx and decrease security risks. The results of the latest McKinsey Global Survey on AI indicate that AI adoption continues to grow and that the benefits remain significant.
The cost of a call center representative
According to the last update from April 2022 on indeed.com[1], the average base salary of a call center representative in the USA is 15.58$ per hour. Hiring costs run around $20,645, while office space can cost about $48,000, and software and hardware can run up to $3,600[2]. These costs can vary by region.
Voice-bots help to scale a call center without increasing costs for salaries, office space and hiring costs. Usually, integration of the virtual voice-assistant takes one day and can be done by one programmer.
The process of onboarding and training, which could be extremely time-consuming with new employees, can be done in one day. That is how much time is needed for launching a new script.
Improving efficiency
Voice AI can improve business metrics. For example, according to TechTarget research[3] customer sentiment ratings increased 57.3% among companies using AI in their customer experience initiatives. It can replace the first and second lines of the call center and operate both inbound and outbound calls as a live agent. Our study shows that an average call center representative makes 45-50 efficient calls a day and 90-100 dial-ups. For outbound call campaigns, AI can replace auto-dialer, predictive dialer and can provide further distribution of the customers to the live-agents.
Inbound call campaigns could be also more efficient. Voice AI can reduce customer wait time. It can address simple customer tasks eliminating the need to wait for human interaction. Robots free up call center agents for more complex tasks, helping them to provide more personalized, contextual and efficient service.
Security issues
Research[4] conducted by leading flexible workspace provider, IWG, shows that 80 percent of workers in the U.S. would choose a job which offered flexible working over a job that didn't, and almost a third (30 percent) of people value being able to choose their work location. But one of the cons of call center outsourcing is increased security risk. The more people you give access to your customer data, the higher the chances of a leak or security breach. The human element in the call center environment amplifies security risks because call center agents can be bribed, threatened, or act carelessly and cause a data breach. According to the research of QATC [5] (Quality Assurance & Training Connection), a turnover of call center agents reached 45% which inevitably means less loyalty so agents are more inclined to steal customer data and profit off it.
While in the latest McKinsey research[6] 57% of respondents cited cybersecurity as a relevant AI risk, most of voice-bots enforce GDPR compliance and correspond to security standards in line with an internal security protocol much more than human workers.
Check your customers’ loyalty
The monitoring of sales figures is important, but it’s not a model for long-term sustainable business success. If you want to create a commerce business that is future-proof, you need to be looking at customer satisfaction metrics such as NPS and CSI. Customer surveys are either extremely time-consuming if done by the call-centre or cost a fortune if outsourced to special agencies. Voice AI revolutionises this process. Conducting client surveys it builds NPS and CSI scores for the heads of the departments at the same time.
What is EVE.calls?
EVE.calls is a human-like voice assistant for call centers. A key point of project innovation is the state-of-the-art neural networks, speech recognition and responses analysis algorithms in conjunction with a user-friendly interface. The company holds patents in the field of AI and NLP.
EVE.calls has been profitable from the very first year. Since 2016 its voice AI has been successfully implemented and used by more than 80 companies. Among them are companies from the banking sector (BNP Paribas, KredoBank), insurance (TAS commerce), online platforms (OLX, Uber), credit companies (Aventus Group) and retail (Oriflame, British American Tobacco).
[1] https://www.indeed.com/career/call-center-representative/salaries
[2] https://www.business.com/articles/calculating-costs-of-call-center-systems/
[3] https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/tip/AI-improves-customer-experience-call-center-efficiency
[4] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-research-shows-that-flexible-working-is-now-a-top-consideration-in-the-war-for-talent-300818790.html
[5] https://qatc.org/winter-2015-connection/exploring-call-center-turnover-numbers/
[6] https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/quantumblack/our-insights/global-survey-the-state-of-ai-in-2021
EVE.calls can be integrated with Asterisk or even used separately. If you want to know more about our voice AI, please leave your request and we’ll reach out.