Analog to Dialog:Transforming CX with Voice

The First Customer Complaint

Customer Support is one of the oldest responsibilities a business has undertaken. Customer complaints have been a fixture from the time businesses began.
The example of Ea-nâsir, now a popular internet meme comes to mind.Ea-nâsir was a copper merchant in the early 1700s – BCE that is. He used to travel from the present-day Persian Gulf to purchase copper, and sell it in Mesopotamia.
One of his transactions was selling copper ingots to a man named Nanni, who found the copper to be of substandard quality and etched out a complaint, now immortalized as the oldest customer complaint on record.
“I have sent as messengers, gentlemen like ourselves, to collect the bag with my money (his refund) but you have treated me with contempt by sending them back to me empty- handed several times, and that through enemy territory,” Nanni complained.

Ea-nâsir doesn’t seem to have taken Nanni seriously, and we don’t know what (if any) methods of customer support he practiced. But all we remember him for now, is this complaint.

What’s the lesson CX leaders should learn from this?

Even a solitary complaint can ruin the brand and reputation of your organization.

And though we’ve come a long way since Ea-nâsir, many organizations still think of customer support as a burden or a cumbersome obligation, devoting little resources to it, developing an analog CX architecture doomed to fail at the first sign of trouble.

Where Does Analog Support Fail?

First, what is analog support?

In today’s context, analog refers to outdated or legacy tech, oHen used in contrast to digital-first or future-ready systems. Analog support today represents traditional call centers rather than omnichannel contact centers. It’s a lack of meaningful self-service, dependency on IVR and call transfers, siloed agent roles, fragmented customer data, and limited post-interaction insights.

Essentially, it’s an overstretched workforce with agents who handle minimal queries per channel and limited authority to resolve issues.

Analog support leads to scenarios like:

The Result? Analog support is a frustrating experience for customers who feel they’re battling barriers to get help.

With growing customer expectations, the limitations of analog support make it clear: the future of CX belongs to seamless, instant, and conversational solutions.

To reference a popular futuristic quote, bots are the future.

And while chatbots are ubiquitous and offer convenient, comfortable resolutions, we’re reminded again, of customer behavior & preferences – they like calls.

ó2% of customers still prefer resolving issues over the phone.

Talking through issues helps customers present their situation clearly and captures the urgency and emotion behind the complaint.

Voice Bots bring together the best of both worlds – the ability to speak on call to explain your issues, and the rapid & accurate responses that bots offer.

Why Voice Bots Are Better Than Chat Bots

Speed and Convenience:

Speaking is generally faster than typing. Voice bots allow users to interact hands-free, which is ideal in scenarios where typing may be inconvenient, such as while driving, cooking, or multitasking. This real-time, natural flow of conversation makes voice bots highly convenient.

Natural Interaction:

Voice bots leverage natural language processing to provide a more conversational experience. With improvements in voice recognition technology, they can handle spoken language nuances, including tone, pauses, and varied speech patterns, providing a more human-like interaction.

Contextual and Emotional Detection:

Voice bots are now able to pick up on tone and other vocal cues, which can help them gauge user sentiment and respond more empathetically. This emotional detection can be harder to achieve in text-only chatbots.

It’s clear that Voice Bots represent one of the fastest, most accurate ways of helping customers. But intrinsically, what value do they bring to your CX tech stack?

How Will Voice Bots Elevate Your CX?

Consider a typical day for your customer support team. Here are the FAQs they encounter –

These represent upto 40% of your customer inquiries.And agents spend a proportionate amount of time tending to these queries, instead of solving more complex problems.This is the single most important problem voice bots solve.The ability to automate LI (Level 1) Support Queries will free up agents for higher order work, and drive down cost per interaction. But that’s not all.

Kapture’s Voice Bots are trained with vertical LLMs, and are capable of supporting niche scenarios such as delivering overdue payment notifications, medicine reminders, updating addresses, and more.