Transitioning to an AI-driven omnichannel contact centre - Blog Series Part 1 of 3

The contact centre is entering a bold new AI-powered era – thanks to modern cloud CX platforms that offer truly transformative AI and automation capabilities. This will be music to ears of any organisation that wants to deliver the proactive, intelligent and personalised experiences today’s customers expect. 

In today’s world of the AI-driven cloud contact centres, an omnichannel approach enables organisations to transcend the limitations of on-premises and disconnected legacy systems that are difficult to update, integrate or scale. Plus, they’re able to harness AI tools and advanced features to automate contact centre workflows, reduce support costs, deliver seamless end-to-end customer experiences – and the resulting benefits have been impressive. 

According to recent research by NICE, business leaders utilising an AI-powered CX platform say they have been able to: 

• Uplift customer sentiment by 16% 

• Increase calls handled per agent per hour by 21%  

• Divert over 2,500 calls a month from voice to chat 

• Resolve 4,000+ calls a month using self-service models 

But that’s not all. Alongside stating that AI knowledge management and agent assist tools mean their organisation can resolve customer issues faster, 74% of business leaders say AI has significantly improved their agent retention rates. 

In this blog, we explore how support leaders can transform their contact centre operations, mobilising new capabilities to initiate a truly digital and AI-first modern customer experience. 

The Shift to AI‑Led CCaaS for Smarter CX 

Transitioning to an AI-driven Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) platform is a game changer for any organisation that wants to automate routine tasks, empower agents, and enhance every aspect of their customer support operations. 

Today’s scalable Platform as a Service models make it possible to synchronise interaction data across voice, live chat, email and social. Something that is foundational for enabling an omnichannel contact centre that delivers a real-time and unified view of every customer’s journey. But that’s not all. 

Providing access to advanced AI tools and technologies via a subscription model, these contact centre as a service solutions enable organisations to embed AI into their contact centre operations in a multitude of ways.  

These include: 

• Leveraging AI to provide seamless, data-driven and personalised omnichannel experiences across all touchpoints (voice, SMS, email, chat, social); customers will never have to repeat themselves. 

• Deploying self-service options (intelligent conversational chatbots and virtual assistants) that provide instant responses to routine enquiries 24×7 without human intervention. 

• Initiating intelligent routing, using AI to analyse customer intent, sentiment, and interaction history to route customers to the most appropriately skilled agent for a faster resolution. 

• Empowering agents with AI co-pilots that provide real-time contextual information and next-best-action suggestions during live interactions, together with automated conversation summaries. 

• Using AI to analyse call flows and track core KPIs (AHT, FCR, CSAT, agent escalation rates) and using these insights to improve workflows, optimise agent training and uncover systemic inefficiencies. 

Steps to Enable AI‑Driven CX

However, moving to an AI-driven omnichannel contact centre is a strategic transformation that requires some careful planning and preparation. This step-by-step guide sets out the key considerations you’ll need to keep in mind if you want to fully leverage AI and gain a distinct CX edge. 

Step 1: Define your business goals 

Evaluate your existing operations to identify pain points and set some specific goals. These could include improving first-contact resolution, reducing AHT, or enabling 24/7 customer support. 

Understanding your starting point and setting some key objectives will enable you to measure ROI and identify where AI will have the most impact. 

Step 2: Start small and build incrementally 

Rather than going for a risky big-bang approach, implement in phases. The goal here is to test innovations, demonstrate early ROI, and progressively expand. Start with high-impact AI and automation tasks such as email automation or chatbots. 

As organisational familiarity with AI technologies grows, new AI tools and automations can be introduced into day-to-day operations and workflows in a highly controlled and strategic way. 

Step 3: Get your data ready 

AI models are only as good as the data that fuels them, so preparing contact centre data in readiness for AI implementation will be a must have.  

The start point for this process involves gathering, cleaning and consolidating data from all contact centre touchpoints (chat logs, call recordings, emails and CRM systems). This data will then need to be centralised into a unified data layer that delivers ease of access and management – and is optimised for CX. 

With the right AI-ready data foundation in place you’ll be able to implement a single version of the truth, containing customer intent, knowledge and sentiment. All of which helps agents make better informed decisions and transforms the customer experience in ways that were previously impossible to achieve. 

Step 4: Invest in your own talent 

Your agents will need to know how to leverage new AI tools effectively. Whether that’s understanding how AI tools will complement their abilities and make their work easier. Or getting hands-on training on how to apply AI insights, so they can resolve customer issues faster and with greater precision. 

 With conversational AI handling high-volume simple queries, you’ll be able to focus on creating a workforce of ‘super agents’ who are skilled at problem-solving and handling complex empathetic interactions.  

Step 5: Prioritise governance 

Without a proper governance layer, AI initiatives will fail to deliver on promised results due to issues like poor data quality, bias, security risks or a lack of human oversight.  

Implementing robust security systems that will protect sensitive customer data and ensure compliance with relevant data protection is just the start. Governance frameworks will also need to guide the development and deployment of AI, ensuring that AI is used ethically and that appropriate scrutiny and accountability is built in.  

Step 6: Drive organisational buy-in 

AI is not a plug-and-play tool – it’s a transformative technology that requires strategic planning and clear communication on how the strategic deployment of AI will enable the organisation to address specific business problems.  

To win hearts and minds, leaders will need to demonstrate ROI (cost reduction or improved efficiency), address employee concerns, and proactively manage the human-AI collaboration dynamic. They’ll also need to collaborate with key stakeholders to identify the ‘quick win’ use cases that will help build trust and organisational momentum.