There are certain technologies that are hard to quantify and establish a precise value to determine if what you bring to the company is financially superior to what you have to pay for them. Many organizations use their institutional website as one of the solutions to interact with customers and complement the Call Center. However, some of these tools are becoming obsolete while consumers become more and more anxious and demanding, regarding the services they expect companies to provide. 
In this scenario, virtual agent solutions of customer service are arising. They allow, for example, to provide more precise responses and faster interactions compared to human capability, decreasing waiting time and solving problems in a shorter time. In other words, they improve service quality and customer experience. Also, these advantages can be greater because virtual agents are useful to gather information about the interactions and, thus, know more about the Customers.
Beyond the mentioned advantages, another “driver” that is booting this technology implementation is related to costs savings, because when virtual agents are used it is possible to address interaction traffic to them, instead of shunt the consultations to human attention of contact center area. The result is a rapid decrease of operation costs, since human sources are more expensive then the virtual ones.
Gradual Investment
It is important to keep in mind that, as in other technologies, there is a multilevel market of virtual agents, that makes this solution adaptable to each context. For example, an agent can be able to develop basic interactions on products and services offered and another one can keep a conversation going about a more complex topic.
Furthermore, it is a secure, scalable and easy to personalize solution that allows companies to offer client support in different languages, 24/7, on the website and on any other platform, interacting through voice and text.
Conclusion
Those companies that doubt if the implementation of virtual agent solution is an investment or a cost, should think about these simple arguments:
- Cost reduction: many organizations can take advantages of this solution by reducing cost in many different ways, for example, by decreasing the amount of contact center employees. Also, it is possible that virtual agents just answer simple questions, while humans (a more expensive source) keep responding more complex enquiries.
- Customer satisfaction: it is demonstrated that this system increase the rate of “first call” resolutions. Furthermore, virtual agents are available 24/7 through website, mobile and other devices.
- Higher incomes: this technology helps to improve incomes and the company’s ROI, thanks to cross-selling and up-selling. It also drastically reduces the number of abandoned calls. The client relationship management is more and more important. That’s why the implementation of more efficient and cost-efficient solutions to serve potential and actual customers can be never an expenditure, but an investment. In this point regard, technology is a saving and not a cost.
