Natural Languaje Processment or NLP is one of the greatest advances of the Artificial Intelligence and a key tool inside a contact center. We tell you more.
The concept of PLN encompasses codifying, understanding, interpreting and knowing how to use the language of the human being. Machines that listen to us and understand us, that go through language barriers, which extract information from our conversations, spoken or written, to improve the customer experience. This is how a contact center uses NLP.
¿What is NLP?
In simple terms, Natural Language Processment, or NLP, is a form of Artificial Intelligence that allows a digital application to understand the human being language, either way spoken or written.
NLP applications use the computers to translate languages, convert voice to text and text to voice and to create conversational agents similar to humans, the famous chatbot, to help the employees, customers and partners of an organization to deal with problems, questions and concerns.
NLP uses two main methods to process speech: syntactic analysis and semantic analysis. Syntactic analysis applies rules about sentence structure (syntax) to derive part of the meaning of what is said. Natural Language Processing complements this with semantic analysis, which attempts to extract the true meaning of words. Algorithms translate spoken words into a format that the computer can use.
Although many improvements have been made, the PLN is still not perfect. For example, it has the difficulty to detect some conversational nuances such as sarcasm. We already know that a “yes, of course” sometimes means the opposite. Also, speech habits such as a thick accent, slang, muttering, or stuttering can mess it up.
Maybe this natural processing thing may sound like science fiction to you, but you don’t need to go far to find it. Surely you have ever talked to Siri; Alexa has told you a joke o have asked Google about the weather. They are all examples of NLP.
The evolution of contact center
When was the last time you called a company on the phone? Today’s consumers have a range of channels to communicate with companies. For example, an email, a message, social networks or a chat. Each user chooses the option that is most comfortable for him.
In addition to being omnichannel, today’s contact centers are data-driven. Companies have a large amount of digital data about their customers and, with Artificial Intelligence and Big Data, they can process this data and use it to respond, in the most accurate and relevant way possible, to incoming inquiries and complaints made by customers to their contact center.
In the hands of a contact center company, the data base has ceased to be an element with which to establish commercial actions/trade and has become a tool to make life easier to the workers and customers.
AlI in the contact center
If you have ever exchanged SMS with a customer service bot or have chatted with one, you have already experienced the Artificial Intelligence of a campaign in action. Artificial Intelligence is in constant evolution, These are some of the services that Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning tools can offer in a contact center:
Personalized Agent designation / Custom Agent Appointment
Artificial Intelligence playing matchmaker. And don’t worry; we don’t talk about Tinder in contact center times, but almost. AI ensures that calls go directly to the most appropriate agent for each of them, based on data about the customer’s query, the experience of each agent, the complexity of the call, etc.
Context is key
So simple yet so complicated, as knowing if the customer is angry before picking up the phone. Artificial Intelligence can analyze or detect the context of the contact center interaction using information such as historical data about the customer involved. That way, the agent knows how, when and why he acted the last time he had an interaction with the company.
How NLP speaks with the customers
Even though it is safe to say that you have already figured it out, NLP isn’t just about a chatbot o a conversational assistant. It really is any technology connected to the human being language, being this in a speaken voice or written text.
NLP can email from spam, categorize documents documents based on their text content, summarize relevant highlights from longer documents, automatically transcribe recorded voice conversations, convert written text to speech, and extract relevant clauses from a legal contract. Even transcribe, in real time, a conversation between agent and client.
In this way, PLN is useful in a contact center to decipher the meaning of what a customer says or writes, so that the best response can be provided as quickly as possible.
Sentiment analysis, the last barrier
Sentiment analysis and its importance in marketing. Imagine the importance of its correct application in a contact center. We are talking about getting the AI to analyze the tone of voice and even the cadence of the language to detect the status of the caller.
The goal is to understand the customer’s emotions and the meaning of their words. The lack of the speech of a person who calls, Whether they pause, raise their voice, sound excited, bored or frustrated, can help the agent deal with that person more efficiently, to sell and to solve their problem , if there was any. It’s not just a matter of personal satisfaction, angry customers cost money. Studies suggest that calls involving anger or even cursing from the customer take 8 minutes longer to resolve. In addition to the bad experience for the agent, if time is money, the swear words are very expensive for contact centers.