Call Center Outsourcing Services: BPO vs. Conversational AI

By Replicant
March 25, 2022

Call Center Outsourcing Services: BPO vs. Conversational AI

Every year, artificial intelligence (AI) technology becomes more sophisticated – and it’s no surprise that it is becoming commonplace in the world of customer contact centers.

While many companies continue to use call center outsourcing services and assign contact center tasks to third-party organizations through business process outsourcing (BPO), conversational AI is a smarter, more cost-effective alternative.

“Companies of all stripes have invested heavily in tools and technologies to help them understand their customers more deeply and to gain the advantages of superior customer experience,” says a study by McKinsey. AI remains one of the central technologies that helps businesses understand customers and fulfill their needs and can now be tied closely with contact center activity.

What is Conversational AI?

Conversational AI for customer support solutions can be an important component of successful call center management, managing basic customer inquiries without human intervention. By automatically responding to common inquiries from multiple touchpoints, AI can completely resolve Tier One customer service requests without a live agent or hold time. For more complicated needs, the conversational AI system refers customers to experienced live agents.

What is the Difference Between BPO and Conversational AI?

When companies use call center outsourcing services to replace or temporarily assist their contact center, they pay a third-party workforce to manage customer service inquiries. However, high training costs and turnover as well as language and cultural barriers makes outsourcing services an expensive way to add additional staff.

As one of the most advanced contact center innovation ideas, conversational AI fully automates Tier One customer service interactions. Without additional staff and the associated training and technology expenses, AI decreases response time and rapidly resolves customer issues. It also scales infinitely, making it a more cost-effective alternative to call center outsourcing services.

Advantages of Conversational AI

The artificial intelligence (AI) market experienced a sudden popularity surge in 2020 due to the global pandemic, and it shows no signs of slowing down in coming years. An article by Fortune predicts that the AI market will grow to exceed $360 billion by 2028.

AI for customer support solutions provides a number of benefits:

With technology continually improving, organizations can enjoy the benefits of AI without negatively affecting customer satisfaction. AI-backed automation can often resolve customer service issues with the same or better satisfaction scores as agents. It needs less time to solve problems and is available 24/7, which substantially shortens or completely eliminates wait time.
Through conversational IVR, this solution completely removes Tier One tasks from agents’ workload. As a result, staff can handle more time-consuming requests that would otherwise go to outsourcing services.
Conversational AI is the cheapest answer to a staff shortage because it simply reduces the need for outsourcing services staff.
Contact center automation is extremely cost-effective, as contact centers only pay for what they use. They also don’t need to undertake the expenses of agent training, office space, or updated hardware.
Contact center automation provides much-needed analytics that help your contact center understand customer needs and continually improve.

Replicant’s Call Center Outsourcing Solution

With advanced automation and AI technology, Replicant facilitates the best of both worlds and provides call center outsourcing services that are easily implemented and scaled. Intelligent conversational AI manages tier one requests, freeing your live agents to focus on complex inquiries that require empathy and a human touch. Learn more about Replicant’s contact center automation solutions for your business.