ChatGPT Set to Take Centre Stage in Contact Centres

If there is one thing business owners need to be acutely aware of, it’s that great – and hopefully exceptional – customer service is the cornerstone of their success. Treat a customer badly or with indifference, and they’ll be heading off to your competitor without a second glance. They might even leave a bad review. This can be difficult to deal with and potentially challenging for your business, which is why you need to do all you can to ensure your customers get the best experience with you from beginning to end.

If you manage a contact centre, it’s crucial to recognise this. After all, a contact centre epitomises customer service as this is its main function. You might and probably should be looking for the next big thing in customer satisfaction, and one such innovation is ChatGPT, a cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) technology that’s revolutionising the way contact centres are able to interact with their customers. With its ability to “understand” and respond to natural language, ChatGPT is being hailed as a game-changer within the industry. Read on to find out more about how this technology might be set to take centre stage in contact centres, and why you need to know about it.

What is ChatGPT?

Before we can dive any deeper into how ChatGPT might improve customer experience levels within your contact centre, it’s probably a good idea to understand a little more about exactly what ChatGPT really is.

ChatGPT, a combination of chat and a shortened form of “generative pre-trained transformer”, is the brainchild of the technological minds at OpenAI. It’s an AI language model that has been “trained”, or had a lot of documents and information uploaded to it, with a huge amount of data from the internet so that it can learn and mimic human-like conversations. In simple terms, ChatGPT is a virtual language bot that can hold conversations – albeit basic ones – with customers.

What Are the Benefits of ChatGPT for Contact Centres?

We’ve talked about how ChatGPT has applications in contact centres to ensure customers get the most up-to-date and accurate information in a timely manner. But what exactly are the benefits of ChatGPT for contact centres when humans have been working in them for decades?

Enhanced Customer Experience

Let’s face it, no one likes waiting on hold or having to navigate through complex IVR systems. With ChatGPT, contact centres can bid farewell to those frustrating experiences and give their customers a smooth journey from beginning to end.

The AI understands customer queries and responds promptly and accurately. This means shorter waiting times and happy, satisfied customers. And don’t worry that using ChatGPT could put people off getting in touch. A study indicated that more than 80% of customers would like more self-service options to resolve their issues. ChatGPT fits the bill perfectly.

Cost Efficiency

Money is always an important factor in any business decision, and when it comes to the traditional contact centre, there can be big challenges to face when you want to scale up to handle a higher volume of callers. Budget plays a huge role, and sometimes it just won’t be enough to hire and train sufficient numbers of human agents.

This is where ChatGPT can offer another benefit. By automating responses to the most common queries, it will free up valuable human employees to answer more difficult questions that AI can’t process. This allows contact centres to scale up without the massive additional cost that would usually be involved.

According to the tech experts at Gartner consultancy, AI-powered virtual agents will be responsible for as much as 30% of marketing materials for outbound messaging by 2025, so it’s clear that this is a direction most savvy contact centre managers will need to learn more about.

What Are the Disadvantages of ChatGPT for Contact Centres?

As much as it all seems great when you think of how useful ChatGPT could be for your contact centre, it’s wise to consider the opposite side of the coin so you can make an informed decision.

Lack of Emotional Intelligence

Let’s not forget that ChatGPT, for all its advantages, lacks the human touch. It might ace the art of generating fast, coherent responses, but it struggles when it comes to empathy and understanding human emotions. In emotionally charged situations, customers might feel shortchanged, longing for a human to talk to so they can really explain what they need.

Limited Contextual Understanding

While ChatGPT is a quick learner, it’s not perfect. Sometimes it might offer inaccurate or irrelevant information. Sometimes it might even make things up! This is especially true if it’s faced with complex or ambiguous questions. It just knows it has to provide an answer.

To avoid potential misunderstandings, contact centres need to carefully monitor ChatGPT’s responses and ensure human intervention when necessary. Training is also important. You’ll need to put time and resources aside to train ChatGPT to be more accurate, and continually improve.

Can ChatGPT Be Used in Contact Centre Training?

The short answer? Yes! ChatGPT can be used in contact centre training. There is, of course, a longer answer, so read on to find out more.

ChatGPT can be a fantastic tool when it comes to contact centre training. Imagine having a virtual coach or mentor that guides new agents, helps them learn best practices, and equips them with the skills to handle diverse customer scenarios. With ChatGPT’s ability to provide instant feedback and guidance, agents can level up their performance and deliver exceptional customer service.

As Jason Roos, CEO of Cirrus, says: “ChatGPT has the potential to transform contact centre training, allowing organisations to create an immersive learning experience for their agents.”

The Future of ChatGPT in Contact Centres

Chat GPT can be used, and is being used, in contact centres right now, but the future has a lot more in store for this form of AI. Contact centre managers should be intrigued, if not excited, about the potential changes ahead.

To begin with, the integration of ChatGPT will eventually become seamless, ensuring it can work with current contact centre platforms without any issues. Why is this important? It means that human agents and AI can work together to produce the best results, and it means that customers won’t have to deal with any downtime or disruptions.

There will also be multilingual support. ChatGPT currently shines when using English, but English is not the only language needed in contact centres. Future iterations of ChatGPT will undoubtedly support many languages, catering to a diverse customer base.

And the big advance: there will be more evolved emotional intelligence. AI researchers are working hard to equip ChatGPT with advanced emotional intelligence so that it doesn’t just understand the facts in the queries it has to handle, but can also detect and respond to human emotions. Imagine the empathy and understanding it could bring to every interaction!

Contact Cirrus Today

Are you ready to start using ChatGPT to transform your contact centre? If so, contact Cirrus today. Discover how our cutting-edge solutions can help you leverage ChatGPT to enhance the customer experience, optimise costs, and stay ahead of the game.