It's no secret that artificial intelligence is booming. It affects all sectors, all core businesses. And that of customer relations was no exception: optimization of repetitive tasks, personalization of interactions, improvement of customer satisfaction while reducing costs, the benefits are numerous. During a fascinating interview, Fabrice Péry-Kasza, now interim manager, and customer relationship expert, deciphers the impact of artificial intelligence in the public liability sector. He tells us about his career and how he saw the profession evolve with the advent of AI, the challenges that this represents, but also the limits of this tool.
Fabrice Péry-Kasza, career of a customer relationship expert
With more than 30 years of experience in customer relations, Fabrice has a keen eye and opinions based on the evolution of his profession. First director of operations in one of Teleperformance's subsidiaries where he learned the rigor and management of production, the RC expert then cut his teeth at Disneyland Paris where he managed ten markets and twelve nationalities in addition to the VIP service: “a very good school of requirements in terms of seamless experience”. He went on to Wundermann where he worked as a consulting director. There, he was entrusted with the management of major accounts in the consumer and automotive sectors such as Danone, Unilever, Ford or even IBM. Building on his experience, he created his company in which he worked for 14 years before selling it to an international group. Today, Fabrice acts as an Interim Manager and supports some of the company's clients.
The major developments that have marked the customer relationship sector
The first evolution that Fabrice remembers is the CTI: telephony-computer coupling. That is to say that “it was the first time we had automatic call machines that were coupled with automatic card installers”. A real revolution for a profession that worked only on paper: “I arrived at the very end of this period when “call centers” worked on cards, one paper sheet per file, and the computerization of calls was beginning to become widespread”, remembers our interlocutor.
Very quickly followed the arrival of offshore customer relationship centers, which was “a big shock”. Indeed, with the expansion of marketplaces and “pureplayers”, they had to find a quick and economical solution to a problem that had been underestimated: “These pure-players realized that customers needed a lot of telephone contact (...) and they did not include that in their business model”. Because of its cost, offshore has emerged as the ideal solution to the explosion of demand and need.
Finally, process automation (RPA) and generative AI have gradually emerged, making it possible to optimize workflows. Fabrice explains: “A call center is like a factory, productivity comes first, while being qualified, of course, but you have to “deliver”.” Customer service must be responsive and able to handle a large number of requests.
However, over time, he observed a cross between productivity, quality and sales rate as well as a shift in jobs from physical sales to distance selling. Little by little, the customer relationship business became commonplace and became truly professional. If at the beginning, the people who worked in call centers considered this job rather temporary, today the profession of telephone counselor is a profession in its own right. Indeed, faced with increasing demand, RC players had to react to offer a qualitative service to their customer, even remotely, which therefore resulted in real training for telephone advisers. This specific training also makes it possible to improve the customer experience as well as the quality of customer service significantly.
AI in business customer relationships, a strategic role
Optimization of flows
Artificial intelligence has been democratized over the years, until “exploding in the last five years”, confirms the expert. Today, adopting artificial intelligence has become obvious for businesses that want to optimize their flows. Highly effective AI tools, or interactive voice servers (IVR), are compelling examples.
IVR, for example, allows some businesses to guide customers by voice alone, without having to press keys. This process is called conversational intelligence. Thanks to this innovation, customers are quickly directed “to the right service or the right contact person”, explains Fabrice, an effective and relevant tool.
Advisor Support
AI also improves the effectiveness of customer advisors through real-time recommendations to better guide them in their responses. This makes it possible to optimize interactions with customers in order to quickly guide them to an appropriate response. But also thanks to the qualitative and predictive analysis of calls, to assess customer satisfaction and anticipate their needs.
Some companies also use AI to recommend certain items that can help the customer and thus avoid clogging up telephone lines and to be more productive by avoiding the call center agent from repeating information already present on the website.
Automatic conversation summary
Another revolutionary point according to our interlocutor: the summary of the discussion between the call center agent and the customer. This function allows “to analyze huge volumes of conversations, which was almost impossible before that because of divergent human interpretations, and approximate spellings and grammars”. A task that was previously unrealistic.
Speech Analytics
Finally, to go even further in customer satisfaction, Speech Analytics is now a must. This tool allows you to analyze customer conversations in order to improve their experience. The software can categorize different conversations by topics or behavior, detect weaknesses that could be resolved more quickly, anticipate needs... But also classify customer emotions. Speech analytics transforms interactions into strategic information to optimize customer relationships and anticipate customer expectations.
The challenges of artificial intelligence
According to Fabrice, while artificial intelligence has real advantages for managing customer relationships, it also requires an additional level of security. According to him, businesses “have an interest in having strong cybersecurity partners.” The malicious attacks that a business can receive are numerous and AI could increase this risk.
As a result, some companies even tend to move away from the cloud and return to “on premise” systems disconnected from the web or even use backup systems on magnetic tapes in order to reduce vulnerabilities and protect themselves more.
Fabrice takes the example of a car manufacturer: a competing manufacturer “can also hack your artificial intelligence, add bad information to it or put in erroneous information and pervert your knowledge base and break your market.” External attacks are therefore a real challenge for companies using AI, and data protection must be a priority.
Another challenge in the advent of AI is the loss of critical thinking. Fabrice explains: “For me, it's a real ethical issue.” Indeed, it seems essential to learn and train people to develop their critical thinking skills in order to be able to work even when the AI is not working, or to detect when the information is not relevant. Without this ability, employees risk becoming too dependent on automated systems, compromising their autonomy and effectiveness in unforeseen situations.
What are the prospects for AI and customer relationships?
Has AI become a necessity?
Although Fabrice does not fully confirm this, he still supports the idea that for some companies that encounter regular recruitment problems due to permanent turnover, it is tempting to say to himself that it is easier to manage AI than to “human risk.”
However, Fabrice nuances: while AI makes it possible to solve certain problems related, among other things, to recruitment, task automation or qualitative analysis, he also believes that maintaining human activity remains essential in this job. For example, to guide older people who are not familiar with these methods. AI seems to be positioned more as an aid than a necessity. In particular, he relies on the fact that it is very beneficial for “repetitive tasks that have no added value” because it relieves the counsellor of an annoyance in his position.
In addition, the expert also maintains that all the information that AI is able to gather and transmit only reinforces the importance of the role of team leader: “they must master the fundamentals of management in order to be able to use this information and share it with their teams.” He adds: “Today, AI provides information, but it does not give momentum to humans.” Indeed, the customer relationship sector requires qualities specific to humans: to be open, to like to talk and to have empathy. “The majority of people think that by asking questions, you embarrass people, when in reality, you are interested in them and people take that as an expression of interest,”explains Fabrice. So it seems that artificial intelligence cannot do all the work!
Towards a dehumanization of customer relationships?
Businesses want to retain their customers, but they often tend to apply the rule that a large consumer deserves great attention and vice versa. Businesses then seek to automate everything in order to save money. It therefore seems that fewer and fewer humans will be involved with customers, even if they will have another role: “human jobs are going to change”, declares Fabrice. In particular, he refers to the roles of humans in controlling bots, but also in managing more complex and explosive situations, for example.
Moreover, in the telesales sector, AI is not really decisive at the moment. Indeed, interactions in this area are more complex and require a high level of personalization. Even if, despite everything, artificial intelligence can help later by analyzing calls and sales (is it a solid or fragile sale, should the customer be called back...?) , this service nevertheless requires a humanized response.
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