Your customers are more demanding than ever - and they expect service at their convenience. Your customer service function must adapt to avoid losing business - and this is where AI comes in: not to replace your human team, but to support it where it matters most. So how do you achieve the perfect equilibrium between AI and your contact centre team? Neil Davey is the managing editor of MyCustomer. An experienced business journalist and editor, Neil has worked on a variety of newspapers, magazines and websites over the past 15 years, including Internet Works, CXO magazine and Business Management.

Our panel of experts discuss the best uses of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the contact centre. An IVR has a set of simplistic predefined rules that it follows in a deterministic manner. An example might be a "sales" rule that transfers the caller to the Sales Department. In contrast, AI, which includes areas like Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning techniques, can understand statements instead of simply giving the user a set of choices. Also, with IVR, a predefined input gives a predefined output.