Providing flexible work capabilities is no longer optional for most employers. Workers expect to be able to do their jobs from anywhere, and the retail industry is no exception. The modern office is less a physical space than a shared connection point for employees and business resources, giving rise to the “digital workplace.”
Increasingly, retail businesses rely on cloud-based communication platforms—Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) and Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS)—to meet the collaboration needs of their teams and the service needs of their customers. These cloud platforms open the door for enhanced capabilities and integrations, including the addition of artificial intelligence (AI) tools.
By unifying the comprehensive data offered by CCaaS and the power of AI insights, retailers face an unprecedented opportunity to transform their businesses. This article will examine how AI tools can expand the potential of cloud communications platforms and what retailers need to know about their implementation.
Understanding the role of UCaaS and CCaaS in retail
UCaaS and CCaaS are essential communication platforms in contemporary, digitally enabled workplaces.
UCaaS provides employees with various integrated communication channels, such as chat, voice, video, and conferencing solutions. These platforms also incorporate collaboration tools, such as file sharing, cloud storage, version control, and more. The goal of a UCaaS platform is to offer a single, cohesive space where employees have all the tools they need to communicate and work together—without the requirement of being in the same location.
CCaaS platforms are more prevalent in businesses like retail, which have a greater need for customer service tools. Today’s consumers expect omnichannel communication with the brands and companies they patronize, and CCaaS offers the capabilities that brands need to satisfy these expectations. With CCaaS, the challenges of maintaining a contact center—including, but not limited to, call routing, escalation paths, and reporting—are handled by experts and hosted in the cloud. Agents have access to work from anywhere, and administrators have a flexible platform with which they can build the framework for a world-class customer experience.
Harnessing digital workplace data for customer insights
Cloud communication platforms like UCaaS and CCaaS create opportunities for automation and efficiency gains, streamlining retailers’ day-to-day operations. At the same time, these platforms also enable the transformative power of AI analytics for retail business strategy.
Retailers can use contact center platforms to accumulate detailed data on customer service operations over time. With the capabilities of AI, retailers can analyze this data and begin uncovering valuable customer insights.
Chat logs, call transcripts, video, and in-depth metadata on customer interactions provide the raw materials for AI tools to surface patterns in customer behavior and preferences. These can include:
- Favorite products and features.
- Seasonal purchasing trends.
- Product bundling.
- Customer sentiment analysis.
- Product feature and style preferences.
- Recurring service requests.
- Call escalation trends.
Read more: Embracing a digital workplace transformation
Shape retail strategy with customer intelligence
Utilizing the insights gained from AI analysis of CCaaS data, retailers can optimize their business operations for cost-effectiveness, responsiveness, and customer satisfaction. In an industry with notoriously rapid fluctuations and tight turnarounds, customer insights give retailers the tools to predict and plan for changes in the market. Stock up on seasonal items before a spike in demand, or design a shop layout that pairs items commonly purchased together. Alternatively, craft targeted promotions that address shifts in consumer sentiment or frequently asked service questions.
The benefits of contact center data analysis also extend behind the scenes of customer experience. Predictive consumer insights create the opportunity for retailers to streamline logistics, reducing uncertainty and improving employee productivity. Awareness of purchasing trends results in improved warehouse operations, with less excess stock and better access to in-demand items. Customer behavioral patterns shed light on staffing needs, both in-store and in contact centers, reducing excess costs. The insights that AI can uncover within customer data empower retailers to make every business decision increasingly informed.
Considerations for successfully integrating AI
While the potential benefit of AI tools in combination with CCaaS is enormous, retailers have several factors to consider when proceeding with an implementation:
- Interoperability: UCaaS and CCaaS are part of a larger business technology ecosystem. Introducing additional AI tools requires ensuring that these tools integrate with existing solutions.
- Employee alignment and training: To fully utilize AI tools, teams need to be aware of them and educated on how to use them properly. Without buy-in from team members, AI tools might, at best, go underutilized or, at worst, be perceived as a hurdle.
- Monitoring and refinement: Ongoing measurement against goals is critical to achieving the desired outcomes of AI implementation. As with adding any new tool, retailers must determine critical indicators of the solution’s success—such as increased customer satisfaction scores or reduced escalated service calls—and regularly measure their progress.
In addition, as AI technologies develop, the regulatory landscape surrounding them continues to change. Retailers will need to consider protecting sensitive customer data, complying with privacy laws and best practices, and contingencies for potential data breaches.
Partnering with expert cybersecurity professionals and CCaaS solutions providers like CBTS offers retailers crucial guidance when navigating the intricacies of AI implementation.
Read more: Security and compliance enhancements for UCaaS solutions
Building the future of retail through AI in CCaaS
The advent of CCaaS elevated retailers’ customer service capabilities with unprecedented adaptability and reliability. The integration of AI is the next step forward for the customer experience. As AI evolves, retail businesses can automate more CCaaS workflows, escalate and route interactions more intelligently, and allow human agents to focus on providing exceptional support in cases requiring a personal touch.
AI will also grow its impact in less customer-facing sectors, enabling increasingly refined insights from the customer data accumulated through contact center platforms. As large language models improve their vocabularies and interpretation, AI tools will be able to more closely assess customer sentiment and tone in contact center records and escalate or make recommendations accordingly. With additional business data, AI can cross-reference business strategy with customer outcomes and provide a more complete picture of results.
Unlock the transformative potential of AI for retail businesses with CBTS
In the modern retail landscape, digital transformation is necessary in order to keep up with a highly competitive industry. CBTS has more than four decades of experience supporting leading retail businesses with the latest intelligent communication solutions and offers expert consulting and support from the strategy phase onward. Take advantage of CBTS’ industry knowledge to develop the proper CCaaS foundation for your business and keep ahead of the competition with the newest AI-enabled customer intelligence tools.
Contact CBTS today to discover the customer insights AI and CCaaS can unlock.
