Evaluating AI Options for Workforce Engagement Management

Raj Shankar at Calabrio explores how AI-driven solutions in workforce engagement management can enhance efficiency, boost productivity, and create more fulfilling roles for contact centre staff, while also examining potential limitations and the need for ethical deployment.

Evaluating the role AI could play within workforce engagement management is becoming a priority for forward-thinking contact centre managers.

Not slow to recognise the huge potential of AI, some are also concerned about its limitations, data privacy and the pitfalls of poorly thought-out deployments.

Reassuringly, research shows most regard AI tools as a way of enhancing the capabilities of staff, and impact to the way staffing is done today.

Helping to improve job satisfaction, automating routine tasks, and enhancing customer experience, coaching and performance are seen as major drivers, along with gains in efficiency and productivity.

However, there is some scepticism about using AI to support certain aspects of workforce engagement, with fewer believing it can address mental health issues (29%) and identify training needs (27%).

Therefore, before planning an AI-powered contact centre initiative, with today’s technological advances, it’s worth identifying areas where AI is most likely to add value and those instances where application might need more caution.

Focusing on its strengths, AI can bring widespread efficiencies resulting in higher productivity and a more agile organisation.

Additionally, it can help create fulfilling job roles for employees, ultimately providing better outcomes for customers and driving increased revenues.

Broadly speaking, areas that are ripe for AI can be broken down as follows:

Forecasting & Scheduling

AI tools excel at processing enormous quantities of data quickly and accurately. Manually intensive tasks, often prone to errors, can be handled in a matter of minutes by AI tools. This includes complex analysis like correlating historical and recent data to optimise workloads.

Consequently, it is ideal for preparing and optimising staffing and schedules. In the past, this might have involved laborious cutting and pasting of data from multiple sources and spreadsheets, limited to statistical analysis of historical trends, whereas AI can automatically extract, collate, and process relevant data quickly, eliminating manual errors. For example, it can combine multiple internal and external factors about activity levels, including daily enquiry rates, seasonality, staff holidays, and the impact of marketing promotions.

In the process, the system learns from the outcome and continuously improve accuracy and relevance of the product forecast.

Intraday Optimisation

Accommodating unexpected or last-minute changes is not a problem either, such as dealing with a sudden influx of queries, perhaps about billing issues or travel disruptions.

Adjusting workloads on the fly has, typically, been a difficult and highly manual process for supervisors, but AI will dynamically adjust call routing and schedules in real-time based on changing demand pattern to maximise operational efficiency.

For example, automatically re-schedule activities such as training sessions and meetings to optimise service levels, auto-distribute notifications to employees, offering extra hours where there is a bigger demand than what is met by currently scheduled staff.

AI can also choose which agents are best equipped to take certain calls, ensuring that enquiries are matched with the individuals most capable of handling them.

Managing capacity effectively avoids putting an unnecessary burden on employees which could raise stress levels, detrimentally affecting performance and staff well-being.

By analysing data over time, AI can predict future workforce needs, helping organisations proactively manage issues such as understaffing, as well as costing out associated equipment needs for scaling up.

Automating Repetitive Tasks

AI-powered chatbots can automate routine workforce engagement tasks to help reduce administration overheads and allow agents to focus on higher-value activities, fostering engagement and productivity.

For example, keeping track of time off and holiday requests and updating schedules accordingly. Also, employees can advise of their availability for overtime so the system can allocate available resources appropriately and fairly, giving everyone equal opportunities for extra hours.

Interaction Analytics & Scoring

AI can empower call agents with real-time speech and text analysis, summarising customer interactions by distilling the main points and key insights concisely. This allows for reflection on what was done well and where there could be improvements.

Using these insights, managers can successfully identify and develop personalised coaching plans and development initiatives for agents that are not hitting key customer satisfaction metrics, such as Net Promoter Scores (NPS).

Aggregated information can be used to benchmark performance, highlighting where improvements should be made, and ensuring overall quality standards are consistently maintained. Crucially, this can help across all different channels within a contact centre – from phone calls and emails to chatbots.

Agent and Supervisor Assist

AI can evaluate emotional aspects within communications, helping agents better understand how to respond effectively and empathetically.

Its ability to recognise if an agent is struggling with a caller and suggest phrases and approaches to promote more engaging dialogue is highly valuable. It can also send alerts to the supervisor to provide immediate assistance if required.

This timely intervention can help improve agent performance, reduce burnout risks, promote long-term employee well-being, and better call outcomes, leading to a more rewarding work and customer experience.

Agent Next Best Action

AI can use the knowledge base to give an agent the ‘Next Best Action’ in real time. For example, this could be the documentation/steps to resolve the issue the customer is inquiring about.

Quality Assurance & Continuous Improvement

Analysis shows that organisations are not leveraging the huge potential within their call data.

A mere 0.3% of recorded calls are replayed by supervisors and managers to evaluate performance and satisfaction. AI is set revolutionise this area. It will be able to process 100% of recorded calls automatically to extract invaluable insights to inform agent training and improve customer experience.

Apart from 100% coverage of all calls, automated QA through AI also enables unbiased evaluation, fostering a culture of continuous improvement.

Organisations that recognise this potential quickly will be able to gain competitive edge as well as retain personnel through better engagement, improved job satisfaction and customer satisfaction.

Importantly, AI is not just about meeting call targets. It can identify early and subtly changing trends in workforce behaviour and attitudes that may initially go unnoticed or ignored. This enables organisations to continuously adapt their strategies to encourage employee feedback, enhance training, and to focus on well-being and mental health.

Proceed With Caution

While AI offers many process efficiencies through automation, organisations should be careful not to overlook the need for human oversight and interaction.

AI contact centre systems must be refined constantly, incorporating user feedback, and taking criticism on board. Above all, sensitive issues and well-being matters should be escalated to managers to ensure a balance between efficiency and genuine human connection.

The success of AI depends on ethical deployment and people-centric design to prevent ill-conceived implementations.

It has the potential to accelerate progress in the contact centre industry by augmenting the capabilities of agents, automating mundane tasks, and freeing up staff to focus on more rewarding, personalised customer engagement.

In the right hands, this can help build a workforce of motivated and high-performing agents who deliver outstanding customer experiences to drive business success.

For more information about Calabrio - visit the Calabrio Website

About Calabrio

The digital foundation of a customer-centric contact centre, the Calabrio ONE workforce performance suite helps enrich and understand human interactions, empowering contact centres as a brand guardian. Calabrio ONE unites workforce optimisation (WFO), agent engagement, and business intelligence solutions into a cloud-native, fully integrated suite.

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Call Centre Helper is not responsible for the content of these guest blog posts. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Call Centre Helper.

Author: Calabrio
Reviewed by: Rachael Trickey