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Does AI really have a place in Quality Assurance?
Quality Assurance (QA) is an essential component of any Contact Center’s operations, ensuring that customer interactions continuously meet and exceed the desired standards. Over the years, QA practices have evolved from manual processes relying on spreadsheets to incorporating dedicated software solutions. However, with the invention of artificial intelligence (AI), there is a tremendous opportunity to revolutionize QA and achieve unparalleled accuracy and efficiency. So, how do you integrate AI into QA and what is its potential impact on organizations?
In the early stages of QA maturity, organizations rely on spreadsheets and in-house databases to produce basic reports. Evaluators randomly select customer-agent conversations for evaluation, which can lead to selection bias and insufficient actionable insights. The process is time-consuming, with evaluators manually listening to or reviewing transcripts of conversations. As organizations progress, they adopt dedicated QA software that integrates with telephony and ticketing platforms, enabling automated workflows for conversation selection and assignment. These advancements streamline the evaluation process and improve data accuracy.
AI has experienced significant advancements in recent years, with notable achievements like IBM’s Deep Blue defeating world chess champion Gary Kasparov and Google’s AlphaGo triumphing over the best Go player. Today, AI is ubiquitous, embedded in various technologies such as social media content moderation, chatbots, speech recognition systems, and fraud detection algorithms. One groundbreaking AI application is OpenAI’s ChatGPT, an AI language model that has gained mainstream attention. Leveraging generative pre-trained transformers, ChatGPT offers immense potential for enhancing QA programs.
Auto-QA, powered by AI, complements traditional manual QA practices, offering several benefits. One significant advantage is achieving 100% coverage of customer conversations across all channels. AI-driven analysis detects and redacts sensitive customer data, ensuring compliance and bolstering information security. AI algorithms identify pivotal moments within conversations, uncovering issues and events that may have gone unnoticed otherwise. Additionally, auto-scoring capabilities enable rapid evaluation and scoring of conversations, significantly reducing evaluation time.
Utilising generative AI, organizations can expedite the evaluation process, reducing evaluation time to just a few minutes. The AI system provides detailed reasoning behind each decision, generates improvement suggestions, and summarizes conversations in bullet points. This automation empowers QA teams to focus their efforts on high-risk conversations, deep-diving into manual evaluations and delivering targeted feedback and coaching to agents. By leveraging AI, organizations can uncover critical areas for improvement, mitigate risks, and enhance overall performance.
AI in QA generates vast amounts of performance data, which needs careful management. The data helps identify conversations and agents requiring attention, enabling teams to prioritize their efforts effectively. However, it’s prudent to limit access to this data to avoid information overload. Once the relevant conversations are manually evaluated and approved, they can be shared with agents to support targeted feedback, coaching, and training sessions. This streamlined approach ensures that agents receive actionable insights to improve their performance, driving meaningful change within the organization.
AI has undoubtedly found its place in Quality Assurance, revolutionizing the way organizations evaluate customer interactions. By automating routine tasks, expanding coverage, and surfacing pivotal moments, AI enables organizations to enhance the accuracy and efficiency of their QA programs. The integration of AI with human expertise empowers QA.
By Chris Mounce
Chris is EvaluAgent’s Digital Training and Enablement Specialist and an award-winning performance coach. He takes the lead on developing innovative training solutions relating to our product to deliver maximum value.
