Looking back about 10 years ago, a call placed to a customer service center had a high likelihood of ending with the caller screaming, “REPRESENTATIVE!” into their phone. This early iteration of AI and natural language processing (NLP) was not very intuitive and could only manage a few simple tasks. Fast-forward to the present day and AI is ubiquitous and quite robust. Digital assistants like Alexa, Google, and Siri are at our beck and call, Netflix and YouTube use AI to recommend videos, and chatbots help customers manage their packages or even order a pizza. In fact, Gartner estimates that by 2022, 70% of customer interactions will involve emerging technology, such as chatbots or machine-learning applications.
AI is definitely a positive force in the CX space, allowing agents to focus on more specialized tasks, while AI handles the mundane customer requests like tracking packages, locating a nearby store, or retrieving billing information. It should be noted that most of AI usage within CX is customer-initiated or “inbound AI.” However, recent strides have been made in computer-initiated or “outbound AI” and the results are shockingly good, as seen in the video below.
One area where advancements in AI can make a huge impact in business is recruiting talent. Current AI software is available that will search resumes for specific keywords, job qualifications, experience, education, and so forth, ranking each resume accordingly so the recruiter has a better idea of which candidates to target. However, at this point, there are still a lot of questions that need answering. Typically, a follow-up call or email would be performed by the recruiter to each candidate to narrow the field, but what if AI could handle this task as well? One such firm, MarketSource, a global leader in sales recruitment, hiring, onboarding, and management, is about to find out.
MarketSource is a sales solutions company, focusing on both B2B and retail. For over 40 years, they have been partnering with organizations of all sizes to recruit, hire, and manage sales teams. After years of subpar performance and poor customer service with their CX software vendor, inContact, it was time to make the switch to a more robust platform and a true omnichannel experience. Bright Pattern was the clear choice for MarketSource and in late 2018, they began the transition. Implementation was completed in 2019 and the Bright Pattern platform has been live for just a couple of months, but already the impact for MarketSource has been huge. They’ve seen a massive reduction in onboarding times, improved call tracking, and access to vast amounts of historical customer data. With the help of Bright Pattern, they will soon begin rolling out AI to aid in the recruitment process.
MarketSource envisions the new process as follows:
- After resumes are collected and ranked, AI chatbots are deployed to engage the candidates and gauge their interest in the position and collect preliminary data (e.g. location, job type, hours, etc.).
- Based on the candidate’s responses, the information is transferred to the appropriate recruiter.
- Positive responses to specific questions can trigger notifications to recruiters, who can then view chat history and immediately approach the candidate appropriately.
By narrowing down the field of potential candidates using AI, MarketSource will drastically reduce unnecessary calls to unqualified or uninterested candidates, saving time and money. This streamlines the entire recruiting process and in the words of Rachel Gilbert, Social Media & Digital Content Development Specialist for MarketSource, “Overall, it will be a better experience for candidates and recruiters straight from the beginning.”
