Abracadabra! Creating CSAT magic in your contact center

You may not own a top hat or cape, but as a CX professional, plenty of people are counting on you to perform like a magician. Especially your customers.

Every day, customers with high expectations reach out ready to be wowed by the experiences your agents and your organization deliver.

In this article, we'll explain how, with just the wave of a wand, AI and analytics can work like magic in your contact center to make your agents' lives easier, your supervisors more effective, and your customers happier than ever.

Nothing up your sleeve? Creating the perception of magic

I recently co-hosted an interactive webinar that featured a professional magician performing live illusions. After he delighted the audience with an amazing trick, I noted that it must have taken him a long time to practice.

Interestingly, he said that it's not about how long he practiced, it's about making the audience believe that he hadn’t practiced at all. By hiding the hard work, he created the perception of magic.

It’s the same when it comes to your customers. You and your team may be juggling 100 different priorities and issues, but to them, you’re not a juggler-you’re a magician.

To make customers believe that your agents are the most magical people they’ve ever interacted with, it needs to feel effortless. And that requires having some powerful CX AI technology up your sleeve.

Today’s customers expect to be truly wowed

Today, delivering razzle-dazzle CX is a real challenge, as consumers expect to seamlessly interact with companies anytime, anywhere, on their terms, using their preferred channels.

Think about this: when a customer can use their mobile device to order a cab to their door within minutes, stream an entire library of content on-demand, and control every device in their home with a simple voice command, their expectations grow.

Today’s consumers have become so accustomed to that immediate access and control that they now expect it in every interaction. According to Intercom’s Customer Service Trends Report 2024, 87% of customer support teams said that customer service expectations increased in the past year.

And the pressure is falling on your agents, who serve as the face of your brand, often being the first and only point of human contact. Your agents need to assess the issue and offer a resolution in real time—all while personalizing the interaction and offering a human touch. It takes more than sleight of hand.

Innovators already performing magic with analytics and AI

While many companies are still working to meet these high expectations, the innovators are already a step ahead.

They’re successfully turning all those data points from customer interactions into actionable insights—insights that let them go beyond reactive service to proactively crafting interactions that are both personalized and meaningful, with a holistic approach.

They’ve mastered the art of using data analytics and AI to better understand and exceed customer expectations—to bridge the digital divide.

Here’s what that means:

You want to cut costs and streamline operations, meanwhile, customers use digital tools to increase convenience. This creates a digital divide that can be solved with AI, aligning cost efficiency with seamless customer experiences.

According to research from Aberdeen, leading businesses that have implemented AI-driven solutions have seen remarkable gains in CX metrics.

For example, those leveraging AI report a 3x higher improvement in customer satisfaction, as AI helps deliver faster, more personalized interactions. They also achieved a 4x greater improvement in customer effort scores, which positively impacts satisfaction. AI also helped reduce costs, with companies experiencing a 5.3x greater reduction in service costs.ⁱ

All told, AI allows top-performing companies to magically deliver better service at scale, while keeping costs down.

Behind the curtain, data challenges persist

While effective use of AI and analytics has been proven to deliver impressive results, many companies still face challenges when it comes to using their data to improve CX.

In fact, Aberdeen research found that while 59% of businesses know that better use of data could significantly improve their customer interactions, 51% of large firms still face problems with siloed data. This prevents them from creating a holistic view of their customers and limits their ability to provide seamless, personalized experiences.

To fully benefit from the power of AI in the contact center, your organization needs to take a holistic approach. That means integrating data from multiple sources: customer preferences, agent performance, and interaction data across all channels.

By removing data silos and having a complete view, you can deliver personalized and seamless customer experiences with every interaction.

Presto! Transform CX with AI + the cloud

The combination of AI and the cloud has the power to transform customer experiences—and with NICE, getting started with CX AI is as easy as waving a wand!

NICE’s CXone Mpower platform powered by Enlighten AI, goes beyond applying AI to a single application or channel. It provides connected intelligence across every touchpoint, making the entire customer journey smarter and more efficient.

This results in…

• Better customer satisfaction
• Maximized efficiency
• Reduced operational costs

…all on an unprecedented scale.

Enlighten AI provides the magic thread running through all CXone Mpower solutions, driving value and results at every turn.

Behold the power of AI before, during, and after interactions!

To magically improve CSAT, while improving efficiency and reducing costs, you need to know exactly which secret levers to press, and when.

That requires a CX AI solution that allows you to wave a magic wand over unstructured interactions data and customer sentiment to reveal actionable, real-time insight into what’s impacting CSAT—and what agents can do to improve it.

As we detail in the webinar, NICE’s suite of AI-powered solutions gives you that awesome power.

Before an interaction even begins, AI-powered insights into agent behaviors can help you magically match customers with the right agents. Beyond efficiency, it’s about creating meaningful connections that improve sentiment, enhance customer satisfaction, and drive better outcomes.

Traditional methods often rely on random or sequential routing, leading to mismatched pairings, longer handle times, and frustrated customers. An AI-enabled solution can analyze customer history and preferences alongside agent performance data, to predict the best customer-agent match in real time.

During an interaction, AI-powered solutions help supervisors support their agents when they need it most, automatically monitoring every interaction and empowering agents in real time, while providing supervisors insight and oversight.

AI can magically guide agents, equipping them with actionable insights and live prompts on key soft skills, depending on how an interaction is going. Meanwhile, AI can help supervisors monitor real-time sentiment trends, identify at-risk calls, and intervene as needed to maintain performance standards.

After an interaction, the magic of AI doesn’t stop. AI continues working to improve service quality by magically transforming unstructured interaction data into actionable insights.

To help you identify trends and root causes, use AI to automatically categorize interactions by key drivers—like customer frustration, call topics, and self-service opportunities. AI can also eliminate the guesswork and bias of random sampling by automatically scoring 100% of interactions to ensure that each agent receives highly targeted coaching that helps them continually improve.

AI-powered CX is not smoke and mirrors

When people, data, analytics, and AI all come together in the right way, it creates something truly magical in the contact center.

Something that doesn’t just satisfy customers but astonishes them and inspires loyalty. Something that empowers employes, improves their performance, and makes them feel proud. Something that makes your executives and shareholders sit up and take notice.

With CXone Mpower for CSAT, you can transform every interaction into something truly remarkable and watch that CX AI magic unfold in your own contact center—faster than you can pull a rabbit out of a hat.

Watch the webinar on-demand to see the magic for yourself