Track: Information Systems and Information Technology

Abstract

Call centre, Advantages, Integrated systems, Artificial intelligence, Customer service.

The call centre industry is constantly changing, with it now being an integral part of organisations’ operations and a critical channel to many customers, who expect excellent customer experience. To be able to provide consistent excellence to customers, call centres are dependent on integrated systems which allow various systems within the ecosystem to interact with one another. With customers becoming more demanding regarding personal and efficient service, organisations have started to invest more into digital tools, with specific reference to robotics process automation (RPA) and artificial intelligence (AI) to assist them achieving their customer objectives. AI and RPA have been identified as the two technologies which organisations are depending on to automate processes and reduce repetitive activities for employees. The paper explores the advantages of using integrated systems in call centres by using eighteen in-depth semi-structured interviews. The benefits to organisations are that they leverage big data which contains rich customer information in creating a customer profile that allows the organisation to know their customers, which in turn they can use for cross sell and upsell opportunities of products. Even though benefits have been confirmed, it is recommended that artificial intelligence (AI) which is being enabled by the integration of systems and which ultimately act as a benefit of integrated systems to both customers and organisations should be further explored.