Author: Paul Rilstone

For decades, customer contact centres have served as a frontline of corporate engagement, handling everything from basic enquiries to complex complaints. Traditionally, agents have relied on carefully constructed scripts to guide conversations, ensuring that each interaction adheres to company standards and ideally results in a satisfactory outcome. However, as artificial intelligence (AI) takes on a larger share of customer service workloads, the limitations of scripted interactions are becoming increasingly clear. Script-driven chatbots often falter when conversations veer off the expected path. They lack the flexibility or contextual awareness to respond to unusual questions, combine multiple requests, and ultimtaley, adapt in…

Fronting up to a bricks and mortar premises has ceased to be the default move for customers seeking information about, or assistance with, a supplier’s products or services. In today’s times, the contact centre is almost invariably their first port of call and, as a result, it’s become the beating heart of every organisation that deals with the public. The Covid experience highlighted the dangers of not having a resilient, high performing digital hub. Many companies that were unable to maintain their contact centre service levels during this era of unprecedented disruption took a financial and reputational hit. Conversely, those…