Elevate AI: Unlocking the Future of Customer Experience 2024 (Event Highlights)

On the 20th of November this year, the team at Puzzel hosted Elevate AI, a seminar that brought top experts and forward-thinkers in customer service and AI technology together for an event brimming with valuable insights on how AI is revolutionising customer service.

To kick off the event, Gabi Warren (CMO at Puzzel) quipped, “Think of Elevate AI not just as an event, but as a movement redefining customer service.”

She then introduced their CEO Frederic Laziou who wasted no time diving straight into the value.

Below are his insights, as well as the other key insights and quotes from the event.

“AI-Powered Customer Experience: Unlocking Potential” with Frederic Laziou, CEO

AI Helps to Fix Broken Customer Journeys

Contact centres are facing several industry challenges, including high agent attrition, with turnover rates in some regions reaching 40%, which leads to increased costs for hiring and training.

Customers also often experience broken consumer journeys, particularly when transitioning from chatbots to human agents, creating a fragmented experience. Additionally, businesses are under operational pressure to deliver more with fewer resources.

Puzzel offers solutions to these issues, with AI-powered tools designed to improve first-contact resolution and average handling times.

Their AI capabilities were enhanced by their recent acquisition of Capturi. Their refined unified CX ecosystem aims to create seamless transitions between bots and agents.

As one customer puts it, “The worst experience is when I start with a chatbot, escalate to a human, and have to start from scratch.”

AI plays a crucial role in creating personalised customer journeys by identifying pain points and enabling real-time interventions, which leads to higher satisfaction and retention.

It allows you to boost engagement across platforms dynamically, by routing interactions based on customer behaviour and preferences.

Laziou noted, “AI is helping you fix broken customer journeys by identifying pain points and enabling real-time interventions.”

Happy Agents Drive Happy Customers

The future of customer service is moving towards a hybrid approach, where 55% of interactions will be managed by AI-driven tools like chatbots and voice bots, while 25% will still require human interaction, augmented by AI (BCG).

Despite the rise of AI, empathy remains a vital component, with AI serving as a tool to empower human agents rather than replace them.

Laziou states, “It’s about automating when it matters and bringing empathy when it really matters.” He further emphasises, “Happy agents drive happy customers. We focus on improving the user experience for both.”

The AI and Human Experience is a Balancing Act

AI has been around for many, many years, but really accelerated with the launch of chat GPT in November 2022, and since then, we think that we have all gone through different phases—at least our team have—and first we were considering that the human agent might disappear.

Now we better understand that it will be a balancing act between AI and human empathy. It’s clear that Puzzel believe in the human empathy in customer experience, but that balancing this with AI can help you deliver better, easier and more efficient customer experiences.

Generative AI: What’s To Come

Generative AI is revolutionising customer service by offering five key value drivers:

• Automating processes with virtual agents and chatbots for full self-service,
• Augmenting agents with tools like digital co-pilots,
• Summarisation, and knowledge bases to boost performance, and
• Providing data-driven insights to enhance decision-making and customer satisfaction.

Frederic notes: “Rather than really focusing solely on automating the interaction, the key is really to proactively anticipate and shape the future, the futures that includes, for example, applying predictive analytics and machine learning to purposes or workloads such as demand forecasting for optimal staffing or predicting the next best experience.

So all in all, the key takeaway is to make sure that you have a clear roadmap to automate, augment and bring insight to your organisation.”

In regards to the future of Puzzel, Laziou also stated: “We will focus on concrete use cases to see how can you unlock the potential of AI and Gen AI and at the end, really create value for you and your customers because of AI, it’s and Gen AI is just technology that we have at hand. In the end, it’s all about the outcome.

Our product vision is really to focus on delivering innovation and all that with the modular ecosystem.

So we know it’s not only solving one, one workload, but this modularity is very, very important, and how this modular ecosystem seamlessly blends on one side, what we did, what we spoke about, the human, the empathy, together with the AI powered interaction.

And that’s only by doing that we can help you provide a simple and effective customer experience.”

Our Key Takeaways

• Develop a holistic AI strategy to automate, augment, and bring insights to the organisation.
• Invest in agent EQ and AIQ to ensure they have the competencies to thrive with Gen AI.
• Stay laser-focused on desired outcomes when navigating the complex and overlapping ecosystem of AI solutions.

“Maximising Agent Efficiency and Retention; The ROI of Happy Agents” with Sundeep Boughan, Director of Sales Engineering

Next, we heard Sundeep Boughan speak, and happiness as a key factor of agent success was such an interesting topic.

Happy agents are key to exceptional service and driving success in contact centres, according to Boughan—and the main factors that contribute to this include culture, support, and a manageable workload.

He stated, “The happier the agent, the more engaged they are with customers, the better value that you’re going to get, and the better service that’s going to be provided.”

Happy Agents Drive Success – And Empowerment Is Key

The happiness of agents has been proven to be directly linked to higher customer engagement, better overall service delivery, agent productivity and operational excellence.

It increases efficiency, and ultimately achieves better outcomes in customer service. And to achieve this, empowerment is an important factor.

Providing tools like AI recommendations and performance visibility can guide agents in resolving customer issues more efficiently.

Visibility into performance data encourages accountability and drives motivation through healthy competition.

Additionally, offering agents more control over their schedules (e.g., through shift bidding) reinforces their sense of empowerment and work-life balance.

The Benefits of Happy Agents

The Forrester-led Total Economic Impact report commissioned by Puzzel demonstrates the tangible benefits of implementing the platform.

Integrating the right tools, such as the Puzzel ecosystem, can yield measurable improvements in key metrics, which can translate directly into financial benefits.

For instance, customers using Puzzel’s platform have seen:

• 33% improvement in average handle time: Tools like automation and knowledge management reduce time spent on each call, resulting in higher efficiency.
• 20% increase in tasks handled per day: The use of Puzzel’s tools has boosted agent productivity, allowing them to handle more tasks in less time.
• 163% improvement in employee satisfaction and retention: The investment in career progression, agent support, and a culture of recognition leads to happier agents and, crucially, a significant reduction in agent attrition.

The Main Factors that Contribute to Agent Happiness

Several factors influence agent happiness, with a strong emphasis on the culture within the contact centre and the level of support agents receive.

Key drivers include:

• Clear expectations and performance reviews: Regularly measuring and reviewing performance can celebrate successes and highlight areas for growth.
• Manageable workload: Reducing stress by ensuring agents don’t feel overwhelmed is essential.
• Automation of mundane tasks: agents can focus on more complex and rewarding tasks by automating simple, routine queries (e.g., shipment tracking or account balances).
• System integration: Frustration arises when agents have to juggle multiple disconnected systems. Streamlining tools and integrating systems allow agents to access customer data instantly, enhancing efficiency and reducing customer frustration.
• Knowledge empowerment: Equipping agents with up-to-date, AI-powered knowledge bases ensures they can quickly and efficiently resolve customer queries, even those outside their immediate expertise.

Our Key Takeaways

“Happy agents can be your competitive advantage,” Boughan concludes.

“It’s really important that we have tools like Puzzel that develop the culture, and use the support of the platform to drive the happiness of your agents.”

• Visibility into agent performance data enhances accountability and productivity, promoting healthy competition and driving gamification.
• The main impact of happy agents is improved average handle times, according to Puzzel’s economic impact report.
• Agents saw 33% reduction in handle time and 20% increase in tasks handled after using the Puzzel platform.
• Employee retention also improved by 163%, with a direct impact on agent happiness and satisfaction.

“Create Value Through Customer Interactions With AI” With Tobias Troelsen, CAO At Capturi & Tanja Ammentorp, Customer Service Director At JYSK

Industry experts Tobias Troelsen and Tanja Ammentorp discussed how conversational intelligence and AI can help organisations unlock value from customer interactions.

“Customer interactions hold a tremendous amount of insight into what is working and what is not working for you as a company,” Troelsen explained.

In this segment, Ammentorp also shared how her company leveraged conversational analytics to drive real business impact.

You Can Maximise Value With Conversational Intelligence

Troelsen and Ammentorp explored how conversational intelligence and AI can help organisations extract valuable insights from customer interactions.

Troelsen emphasised the wealth of insights hidden in customer conversations, stating, “Customer interactions hold a tremendous amount of insight into what is working and what is not working for you as a company.”

Ammentorp shared how JYSK has used these insights to drive tangible business improvements, noting:

“We have improved our packaging materials, added more information to some packaging, adjusted our customer communication related to orders, and even changed the information on our website—all thanks to a structured approach to analysing customer calls.”

There May Be Implementation Challenges

While the benefits of conversational intelligence are clear, Ammentorp acknowledged the challenges of implementation. “The biggest challenge has definitely been the time that you need and to prepare to get the most out of the system,” she said.

Ammentorp emphasised the importance of establishing a clear governance structure, providing training for employees, and taking a focused approach to avoid getting overwhelmed.

Troelsen advised CX leaders to focus on automating routine tasks and pushing insights beyond the customer service centre, saying, “It’s really about being present and being there with the relevant information.”

He also mentioned that his team has been eager to participate in more meetings to offer these insights, remarking, “We’ve even been sort of eager to join more meetings than we have been allowed to join.”

The Human Touch Must Be Preserved While Integrating AI

As the role of AI in customer interactions grows, Ammentorp underscored the importance of preserving human contact, asserting, “At all times, it’s important that the customer can get in contact with a human being, if that is a preference.”

Our Key Takeaways

• Understand your customers better. Analyse long and repetitive calls to figure out what’s causing problems and how we can improve.
• Help your agents help customers. Give agents tools to quickly find the right information and guide customers to solutions.
• Use data to make things better. Set up a system to learn from customer conversations and make changes that benefit everyone.
• Find the right mix of humans and AI. Decide how much automation to use based on what customers want and what works best for our business.
• Put the customer first. When designing customer journeys, focus on solving their problem quickly, no matter how they contact us.

Conclusion

Gabi Warren closed the session by emphasising the importance of staying at the forefront of innovation in customer service.

She expressed her excitement for the future, stating, “I can’t wait to see how you transform client happiness,” driving home the potential future impact of the strategies discussed, and the role of each participant to create exciting, new change in the industry.

What did you think of Puzzel’s Elevate AI summit? Let us know by reaching out to our team on LinkedIn!

Find out more about Elevate AI and catch up on what you missed

Reviewed by: Jo Robinson