Safricloud recently embarked on a journey to the USA for the Genesys Xperience 2024 Conference. As a preferred Genesys Cloud Partner, my goal was to deepen my knowledge about the roadmap of the product we implement and support in Southeast Africa, and to compare our progress with that of our international counterparts. Additionally, I aimed to gain insight to see if the international market is adopting to the feature rich platform and leveraging the software to deliver a better customer experience.
AI and automation dominated the discussions, with AI being the buzzword in most breakout sessions. The rapid pace of technology innovation is evident. Although I stay current with available technology, it was exciting to see it applied in real-world scenarios.
I was particularly impressed by the strides made in the UAE region, where they have fully embraced the new-age technology. Having access to ample funding facilitates the willingness to experiment with new technology. If a project fails, you simply move onto the next option. In contrast, Africa’s cost sensitivity makes us more cautious, often hindering our adopting of new technology.
Numerous articles claim that AI is going to lead to job redundancies in many sectors or increase the unemployment rate due to automation. While there may be some truth to this, it will also help improve the customer experience by providing consistent and rapid responses to frequently asked questions and assist with repetitive tasks, freeing employees to focus on more important tasks that require human skills.
Experience Orchestration is an emerging topic. It involves the creation, delivery and optimization of customer and employee experiences using communications and software technology. Experience Orchestration accelerates interactions by predicting the outcome of a conversation by providing real-time potential answers to an agent. As conversations occur, the software is transcribing the conversation, the AI tool searches for potential answers to provide to the agent. Traditional IVR’s are quickly being replaced by system generated conversations for many different use cases. Automation within the IVR will help deliver accurate responses to customers within a few seconds. Defining the orchestration level will require a brainstorming session to cover almost every possible scenario within a business. Once defined and implemented, this will significantly reduce call volumes and increase first-call resolution rates.
Journey Orchestration is another topic that leverages AI technology. The advantages of implementing journey orchestration include knowing when to interact with your potential customer on their preferred channel at their preferred time. This can also drive sales in an e-commerce business that may be losing revenue due to customers abandoning their shopping carts because they lack sufficient information to complete the purchase.
The key questions are: Is your business ready to make this change? Does your business share the same vision as ours? Do you have the internal skills to discover and implement an AI power solution?
Written by:
Shaun Cothill
Business Development Executive – Safricloud