Zoom’s Virtual Agent Brings AI-Powered Solutions to Contact Centers

Photo 182080590 © Andreistanescu

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Customer loyalty to a brand is often set by the series of interactions (online or offline) that connect them to your company. But consumers are fickle. Customers are increasingly discerning and expect “on-demand,” personalized experiences and superior service across all interaction channels in exchange for loyalty. In fact, a recent survey found that 59% of consumers said they would leave a brand after one negative experience.

Consumer expectations are high, and businesses must foster and reinforce brand loyalty with every customer interaction. Over the last few years, contact centers have played a much bigger role in maintaining that loyalty. When social distancing has banned most face-to-face contact with businesses, contact centers are no longer just another touchpoint in a customer’s journey. They were often the most important ones. Zoom is one of the companies deploying AI into contact centers to support that critical touchpoint.

AI models have become smarter and generative AI has become a tool that people interact with every day. We’ve seen that with integrations to Microsoft’s Bing search engine and 365 Copilot, and Google’s integration to Workspace as a productivity assistant. Zoom’s virtual agents are now bringing human-language chatbots to call centers. Let’s take a look at how generative AI chatbots are critical to customer satisfaction and what it takes for these bots to succeed. It also reveals how Zoom developed a bot that “Zoomies” (Zoom employees) call “Zoe.”

Grow the need for a better customer experience

In early 2020, when Covid-19 swept the world, bank branches closed, a large amount of shopping moved online, and many turned to Zoom for personal interactions. In my family, like many others, everyone made his Zoom calls several times a day. This included business meetings, online schools, family gatherings, and even wine tastings. For many, these meetings were a natural extension of working remotely and were very easy to navigate. For others, the learning curve was a little steeper.

This sudden and often new interaction has made Zoom grow tremendously. Zoom’s revenue increased 169% in the first quarter affected by the pandemic. In the following quarter, that number jumped to 355%. New customer subscriptions accounted for his 81% of revenue. It was all great for the company, but the sudden surge created new problems to solve. It’s customer service.

Early in the pandemic, businesses rushed to deploy chatbots to manage customer issues. Companies like Zoom that already have chatbots in operation have found the sheer volume and complexity of interactions to be more than they expected. Prior to infusing chatbots with conversational generative AI, interactions with customer service bots were primarily driven by decision trees. This put customers in a continuous loop that was frustrating and unable to contact a human. If a customer ends up meeting a live customer service representative, that representative doesn’t even have easy access to historical account data or the context of the customer’s inquiry.

Zoom is aware of these limitations and has set out to modify the company’s customer service user experience. What happened next is an amazing success story. The chatbot built for Zoom’s customer support was so successful that Zoom turned it into a product offering, Zoom Virtual Agent.

Problems that created bots

As Zoom began releasing new features for its customer service chatbot to accommodate its growing and diversifying user base, the company recorded millions of customer requests and chatbot sessions each month. Zoom used that data to create an intelligent, scalable Zoe, which he solved one of the company’s growing challenges.

Zoe quickly achieved an amazing 93% self-service rate. That means 93 out of 100 customer inquiries were effectively resolved without the need for physical agent assistance. This has resulted in a staggering cost savings of over $13 million per month.

Bots + humans are better than the sum of their customer service parts

For businesses, it is clear that chatbots can reduce the workload of contact center agents and alleviate staffing issues. After all, the chatbot works his 24/7 and is easy to deploy and scale. This is especially important in incident response, for example when there is a major travel disruption due to a major storm. Plus, the bot’s ability to resolve most issues quickly frees up valuable human interaction time for more tricky issues or customers who just want to talk to someone live.

Independent research commissioned by Zoom shows that when consumers reach out to customer support, most want quick, knowledgeable, and friendly resolutions. Consumers are less interested in channels. This is why brands direct people to efficient, user-friendly digital interfaces to help customers, reducing the workload of contact center agents.

The Value of Knowledgeable “Agents” in Building Customer Trust and Loyalty

Zoom’s continuous training and development to ensure human agents have the latest product knowledge and expertise has helped the company achieve the highest customer satisfaction scores. A virtual agent based on a large language model of AI is also essentially no different, as it is trained on brand- and product-specific information. Chatbots are highly specialized and trained on company data, service manuals, product sheets, etc., so they can answer inquiries correctly.

Also, when chatting teeth About 70% of customers expect their support team to have comprehensive information about the reason behind a call. Zoom Virtual Agent intelligent routing facilitates chat escalation to live agents by transferring chat history. This saves customers from having to repeat themselves. This simplifies interactions between customers and agents while helping agents resolve issues faster and more effectively.

Add a virtual agent to your Zoom portfolio

Zoom’s strategy to expand its offering beyond virtual meetings is very smart. Nearly everyone has used Zoom and is at least somewhat familiar with the interface. By incorporating other points where people connect, from Zoom Events to Zoom omnichannel contact centers, the company uses its brand affinity and familiarity to drive solutions well beyond its conferencing capabilities.

Virtual Agent integrates with contact-center-as-a-service (CCaaS) and CRM software to seamlessly connect with Zoom contact centers and leading CRM providers such as Zendesk and ServiceNow. An ecosystem approach is smart for Zoom. It brings a familiar experience to new deployments, but also allows room for the reality that companies are mixing technology stacks.

Finally, Zoom has helped address the painful fact that call centers are notorious for high employee turnover. By reducing agent volume and stress and allowing them to focus on the moment that matters, Zoom facilitates scenarios that enable enterprise customers to deliver superior customer service while enhancing the employee experience.

Chatbots have become so sophisticated and human-like that it can be difficult to identify who (or what) you are chatting with. Intelligent chatbots like Zoe can also generate advanced real-time analytics to help improve your products and inform future interactions. While we don’t believe contact centers will eliminate human agents anytime soon, chatbots can greatly improve customer insight, reduce repetitive tasks, reduce negative interactions stemming from customer dissatisfaction, and generally It helps contact center personnel do a better job. For all these reasons, Zoe deserves a round of applause.