Better Metrics Begin with Better Connections

An industry-leading healthcare providers was laser-focused on personalizing the experience of its members, but this emphasis wasn’t fully realized in its contact center, which handled millions of interactions each year. The organization adapted its call routing strategy and implemented an intelligent routing solution, Enlighten AI Routing with Sentiment, to change how it connected customers with agents. In doing so, it realized an immediate 8% improvement to average handle time (AHT) and a 5% improvement in CSAT.

As the healthcare organization and companies in other industries have learned, hyper-personalizing customer connections in the contact center delivers benefits not only to the customer but also to the company. Intelligent call routing prescribes the best match between customers and agents using all available data sources, from customer preferences and sentiment to agents’ strengths and more. It goes beyond queue-based, first-available routing to connect people on a personal level, driving results on the metrics that matter most.

Better metrics begin with better connections, enabling organizations to:

• Improve call efficiency (AHT): Most contact centers today randomly assign interactions to agents, resulting in an overall average result, but smarter connections lead to better-than-average results. AI-powered routing uses data to understand each customer's communication preferences and each agent's performance in different situations, then it allocates work based on this information.

The result? Contact centers can realize an immediate 5% to 10% increase in efficiency (or more), enabling the organization to meet its cost, handle time and experience goals without needing to implement process changes or training programs. 

• Increase sales: Today's competitive landscape requires businesses to strive continuously for higher sales and increased conversions. AI-enabled routing brings together data science with the art of communication to perfectly pair customers with agents. It does so by looking at how agents sell and comparing their skills with what drives customers to buy.

The result? Contact centers that are able to understand agents' variability to make the most of each agent's unique strengths and make connections accordingly realize an immediate 4% to 6% increase in their sales conversion rate. They’re able to exceed their revenue goals, without any training, surveys or change management required. 

• Improve first call resolution: No customers appreciate being transferred or having to call back to get their issue resolved or questions answered. First Call Resolution (FCR) can be a challenging metric to improve because it requires understanding the agent's behavioral pattern across many calls. AI-enabled routing derives insights from expansive data sets across multiple dimensions and all of an agent’s calls to make it easy for contact centers to understand customers’ preferences and pair them with an agent most likely to be able to successfully resolve their issue.

The result? Contact centers that are able to understand why customers call back are able to realize an immediate reduction in call-backs by 3% to 5%. In improving FCR, their customers benefit from more efficient interactions and report higher rates of customer satisfaction while eliminating the need for the contact center to manually pinpoint callbacks. 

• Improve CSAT: One of the most widely recognized and frequently used KPIs in the contact center, customer satisfaction (CSAT) measures how well a business is satisfying its customers with the products, services or interactions it provides. AI-enabled routing leverages customer sentiment, captured through NICE's advanced speech analytics, to enable contact center leaders to understand, across every interaction, whether customers had a positive or negative experience. Instead of a call router connecting callers with the longest available agent, AI routing uses sentiment and experience-based insights to determine the best customer-employee connection.

The result? Contact centers that are able to leverage sentiment data to personalize each customer's interaction are able to realize an immediate improvement of up to 15% in CSAT measurements.

Across industries, from insurance to retail, businesses are quickly exceeding their goals and improving key metrics by making connections that differentiate the customer experience. Enlighten AI Routing learns from the outcome of each interaction and leverages machine learning to gain new insights about how an agent communicates with each individual customer. The solution continuously delivers more precise connections—and ever-improving business results—while transforming the customer experience. Learn more about Enlighten AI Routing, the only analytics-driven routing solution, or listen to our experts explain how the solution is changing customer service, one connection at a time, in our video library.