When organizations think of leveraging artificial intelligence, they too often conclude the technology doesn’t apply to their business needs. That’s largely because they overlook an important capability that AI enables: automation. AI can help organizations set up processes for handling common, repetitive and time-consuming tasks.

So, what does this have to do with customer care? Well, you are either using AI in your customer care workflows or there are ways to use it that you may not have considered. Virtual assistants, for instance, are a prime example of how automation can transform both workflows and customer experiences.

In the midst of crisis situations, hospitals and healthcare organizations need to be able to communicate important health and safety information to patients in a timely manner — and at scale. During COVID-19, hospitals have scrambled to set up nonessential personnel to work remotely, including call center staff. This has led some hospitals to look for alternative ways to communicate with their communities. Here’s how one CDW customer recently implemented call center automation.

More and more organizations are looking to migrate services to the cloud and toward a more OPEX subscription billing experience — but how does that change affect the contact center? As the contact center technical architect for CDW’s research and development group, I spend much of my time looking at products and determining where they fit within our customers’ spectrum of needs. Cloud Contact Center has been at the forefront of my research and development.

In this series, I am taking a deep dive into several collaboration solutions and how they may fit into your business. Check out my first blog post about RingCentral, and keep reading to learn about our next featured vendor: Five9.

Retailers are looking for technology solutions that can meet a particular need, whether it’s improving the customer experience, enhancing productivity or increasing revenue. I was excited to see some of the latest entries in the field in January at the National Retail Federation’s annual convention.

Retailers, vendors and industry experts at the event demonstrated an array of solutions and shared their perspectives on how technology will affect the industry this year. Here are four takeaways from Retail’s Big Show.

Today, we’re in the age of usage-based insurance. With modern automobile technology and new data-gathering methods, insurance companies can answer many questions about drivers: How fast does a person accelerate? How hard does he brake? What time of day does she typically drive? Using AI and data analytics, insurance carriers can correlate this data with the likelihood of a driver filing a claim, leading to personalized pricing, safe-driver discounts and more.

Practically the entire retail industry may be using AI by the end of 2020. And yet, AI is still in its infancy in most deployments, with many retailers uncertain about exactly how the technology can improve their businesses.

That’s why I’m looking forward to a number of AI-focused sessions at this year’s annual convention of the National Retail Federation.