Microsoft Beckons the Self-Learning Contact Center with Its Upcoming AI Agents
Tech Trends: Contact Center AI Improves Citizen Experience and Agent Workspace

We believe the role of a customer support person is evolving, and we need to ensure they’re equipped for it. Developing a code of ethics for regulating AI use is an important way to ensure that you’re adhering to ethical and compliance standards. The guideline you implement will depend on how you use AI, but they should always ensure you’re adhering to data privacy regulations, prioritizing transparency, and eliminating bias from interactions. This frees up property managers to spend less time on detailed, micro tasks and more time on strategy and management.
US guidelines also require companies to leverage tools to detect AI-generated content, deepfakes, and other solutions used for fraud. AI solutions can even assess networks and conversations in real-time, looking for evidence of security issues. Although there are security and compliance concerns to address when implementing AI into a contact center, intelligent tools can also help to protect businesses and their customers.
The complexity of implementing a voicebot into your system may prompt you to use the same framework for every region, country and target audience. Some platforms are stronger at understanding certain languages and weaker at dealing with others. Additionally, the framework used to process data can lead to compliance issues, as the regulatory environments of different countries can vary. The AI revolution isn’t just driving the creation of higher quality chatbots (with generative AI). There’s also an incredible opportunity for businesses to leverage AI across a range of channels, including in the voice landscape.
Organizations need to implement safeguards to detect and rectify issues wherein AI might accidentally generate inaccurate, misleading, and potentially damaging information. This is crucial to not only staying compliant but preserving strong relationships with your customer base. Standards are developing all the time, throughout countless countries and territories.
They also require companies to implement comprehensive strategies for handling personally identifiable information and enabling end-to-end encryption. The EU and US aren’t the only regions investing in new regulatory requirements, though they do represent some of the biggest markets for many contact centers. Everywhere you look, government groups are working together to craft a future where we can access generative AI without harming data privacy or compromising civil rights. They are now entering the agentic AI space with the ability to automatically create, test, and deploy bots efficiently and effectively.
Drafting or Informing Real-Time Customer Responses
For example, a provider may assess 100,000 calls over a month and determine that 20,000 of those calls were spam. Grubb says that expert analysis can reveal how much time is saved by blocking spam calls and how many hours are wasted responding to them. These may include processing onboarding documents, mechanizing data entry, or developing a customer profile. Before rolling out such technologies, businesses need a deep understanding of the common practical tasks that users find themselves needing to complete and what frustrates them most.

However, reports have begun to suggest that certain companies are avoiding AI deployment, due to the high costs of running advanced models. With real-time generative AI translations, contact centers can deliver culturally nuanced and consistent support to customers worldwide, without additional costs. Managing a comprehensive contact center is becoming increasingly challenging in today’s world, as consumers connect with businesses through a wide range of channels.
However, delivering global support can be more complex, requiring companies to invest in dedicated teams to serve customers who speak various languages. AI can reduce the need to hire additional language support, with real-time translation options. It’s easy to see why, as AI tools have the ability to streamline operations, make teams faster and more efficient, and greatly improve customer satisfaction rates. However, for companies making the transition into the new age of AI-powered contact centers, it’s important to look beyond the hype. Generative AI can infer CSAT by analyzing the sentiment and context of customer interactions across all communication channels. Natural language can be interpreted, and generative AI can be used to understand the customers’ overall emotions and level of satisfaction.
The 18 Agentic AI Use Cases
Agents aren’t the only professionals in the customer service team who can benefit from access to an intuitive contact center virtual assistant. Technically, this works, and agents and customers can engage in phone conversations while speaking different languages. In the near-term, the focus will be on using AI to enhance agent productivity and efficiency, freeing up skilled human workers to handle more complex, high-value interactions. But as the technology matures, the vision shifts towards a more autonomous, bot-centric model, with AI-powered “supervisors” overseeing a workforce of digital workers. Hannah emphasizes that AI agents are supporting human agents, rather than replacing them. The transition to more autonomous bot-to-bot interactions is still a few years away for most organizations.
20 Excellent Use Cases for a Contact Center Virtual Assistant – CX Today
20 Excellent Use Cases for a Contact Center Virtual Assistant.
Posted: Wed, 15 Jan 2025 08:00:00 GMT [source]
With its end-to-end architecture, agents on the Genesys Cloud have support from start to finish in their workspace. Agent assist gives new and tenured agents the same prescriptive guidance on policy and procedure adherence, minimizing the possibility of error and resistance to change. Often, tenured agents become used to doing things a certain way, and changes to processes or policies can introduce errors. Bulk Messaging Support has been created to provide details of when and where each message was sent so that recipient and responses can be individually managed. SMS messages can also be sent to 50 numbers at the same time in 8×8 Work, which will be a particular help to the recruiting sector and others that need to send the same message to multiple contacts.
AI agent-assist tools could even help companies deliver a more proactive level of service by leveraging IoT capabilities to monitor the performance of devices and other technologies in real-time. With IoT insights, agents can more efficiently troubleshoot complex problems remotely and even reach out to customers before issues escalate. The use of AI-based virtual agents will enable the Dubai Police to use chatbots and orchestrate journeys across all the various touchpoints citizens have with the agency. The first use case will be for self-service on the Dubai Police mobile application. The second phase will include voice and digital channels supported by its contact center, designed to create a unified, AI-powered experience regardless of the channel.
Too many companies start implementing AI from the top down, deciding on high-level use cases and automating processes prematurely. Examples include overly complex processes for canceling services, with SiriusXM getting hit by a lawsuit for not allowing customers to delete an account simply. One interesting byproduct of the increased personalization is that it enables businesses to shift agents from a support role to a quota-bearing sales position.
Bots used to address customer service requests should use straightforward language that’s easy for your customers to understand, as well as straight-forward menus. Avaya announced it is partnering with The Beyon Group, a global leader in enterprise CX, to create the Avaya Communication & Collaboration Suite delivered through the Beyon cloud. In fact, almost two thirds of agents say they want to access generative AI tools in the contact center, to help them enhance customer interactions. “We do this globally, across all channels, and in the cloud – all to make our customers successful and help them improve their agent and customer experiences,” Creasey concludes. NICE is also leveraging AI to support supervisors and CX leaders, providing real-time and historical insights into CX operations along with actionable steps to optimize employee and customer experiences. 8×8 Supervisor Workspace is available on desktop and mobile bringing visibility and actions in one place, alongside insgiths, guidance, and assistance to manage agent and queue activity.
Apple Bails on Auto-Summarizations: Should Contact Centers Too? – CX Today
Apple Bails on Auto-Summarizations: Should Contact Centers Too?.
Posted: Tue, 21 Jan 2025 18:43:18 GMT [source]
Today, we’re sharing some of the most significant trends influencing the evolution of agent-assist software in the contact center. As above, that approach starts with the contact center isolating their customers’ most common queries. Then, instead of only defining the best place to handle the query, it will define THE single best possible way to resolve it. Kohli and his team at HCLTech can help contact centers with such analysis and execute on this next evolution of contact center triaging.
According to Griessel, these two-hour periods are always busy, giving agents an opportunity to discuss development opportunities, share concerns, and suggest ways to improve experiences. However, perhaps most critically, JetBlue’s human agents – or “crew members” – are onboard. That’s largely thanks to a careful strategy of empowerment and prepping agents for the future of AI, which started long before the introduction of Amelia. The second solution is an AI Translator that – as the name suggests – automatically translates texts to help agents engage with customers in any language. As AI algorithms become more advanced and agent-assist tools continue to integrate with a wide range of emerging technologies, these solutions will become pivotal to the future of the contact center.
Already, countless organizations are leveraging generative AI to improve customer service, creating more intuitive chatbots and virtual assistants. In the world of AI agent assist tools, generative AI can significantly improve the level of support each agent can access. With the latest AI-powered tools, agents can instantly access the data and insights they need to streamline issue resolution, enhance sales conversations, and track crucial metrics. As AI advances, agent assist tools can generate personalized responses to customer queries in seconds, track sentiment scores, and streamline onboarding processes.
Streamlining Workflow Automation
They must make decisions more quickly and cater to increasingly discerning and demanding customers. We’ll reach a point where human supervisors do one percent of the work, and the AI does 99 percent.
The future will reveal which strategy – focusing on customer journey workflows or transactional records – will lead to deeper CCaaS integration into the overall tech stack and business processes. We will see more co-innovation and partnerships between CCaaS and broader CX vendors that recognize the necessity of integrating their offerings to provide comprehensive solutions. „People have little or no knowledge of IoT and other connected devices and the data they’re sending and receiving over the network,“ Gold said.
Hyper-Personalization with AI Agent Assist Tools
NYC’s GPT-powered bot that told small business owners to break the law springs to mind. While that’s an extreme example, other contact center operations are leveraging the technology to achieve smaller gains, like in the post below. The ability to customize that solution to the individual customer is also an exciting part of the solution. Those results emphasize the power of such voice applications and perhaps underline the potential of use cases like the AI-fueled angry customer filter. After deploying Sanas, those BPOs – alongside other global enterprises – cut agent turnover rates by as much as 50 percent, with reps receiving significantly less abuse. In addition, the telecoms giant aims to apply AI across more of its operations, claiming to view the technology as a path to a “happier future for all”.
- They must make decisions more quickly and cater to increasingly discerning and demanding customers.
- During an interview at T-Mobile Capital Markets Day, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, doubled down on this before sharing his excitement about how ChatGPT will improve customer experiences at T-Mobile and beyond.
- Additionally, it will provide predictions for the next wave of AI developments so operations leaders can ensure their strategies remain relevant and effective.
We’re already seeing an increase in companies using generative AI to create intuitive chatbots and virtual assistants. As mentioned above, conversational AI tools are a common component of conversational intelligence. Because they can process language and analyze interactions, they can offer companies insight into customer sentiment, track customer service trends, and highlight growth opportunities. Older chatbots were primarily rule-based solutions that used scripts to answer customer questions. Advanced chatbots, powered by conversational AI, use natural language processing to recognize speech, imitate human interaction, and respond to more complex inputs. Robotic process automation figures to play a significant role automating repetitive and manual tasks in contact centers, greatly reducing the time agents spend handling such responsibilities.
The Top Ten Contact Center Technologies & Capabilities of 2024 (So Far!)
The broader lesson here is the importance of realistic, strategic partnerships that complement rather than compete. Throughout the year, prominent industry analysts and thinkers have shared their thoughts in conversation with CX Today. As that trend continues and additional AI use cases bubble to the surface, it’s fascinating to consider what the CCaaS platforms of tomorrow will look like.
Talkdesk’s AI agents help to achieve this by perceiving their environment, making decisions, and taking action to realize specific goals. By combining AI Agents with industry-leading cloud intelligence, we can now automate complex use cases at a scale and quality previously unattainable. “The integration of AI Agents into Talkdesk Ascend AI represents a pivotal advancement in how we deliver intelligent, seamless CX solutions. So, while he acknowledges that AI has the potential to deliver some powerful outcomes, users have the option to engage with a UC platform that facilitates those benefits without the risks and concerns of AI. Through his company ULAP Networks, McDonald is spearheading a movement of AI-free, secure alternatives for UC. He contrasts this with vendors who are “forced” to talk about AI, even if – he purports – it’s just automation being marketed as AI.

To unlock the full benefits of voice AI for automating crucial processes, whether it’s customer self-service, note-taking, or customer journey analysis, you need a flexible ecosystem. Look for a solution that can easily integrate with all voice engagement channels, recording tools, biometric systems, and anything else your business might use. They rely more heavily on algorithms for natural language processing (NLP), text to speech (TTS), and speech to text (STT). Plus, it’s often more complex for bots to understand spoken language than written text, thanks to varying dialects, speech clarity, and other factors. Conversational AI is emerging as a critical component of most modern contact center operations. Rapidly evolving algorithms are offering companies a range of ways to improve customer experiences, boost efficiency, cut costs, and even access more valuable data.
Then, there’s the agent piece of the AI pie, especially when applying conversation automation. That’s critical as handling times climb higher and agents get fewer easy calls to take a breath. Natural language understanding (NLU) also played a key role in early chatbots, uncovering customer intent and presenting scripted responses. By diving into the data of each conversation, AI tools can help you discover broken processes across different customer intents. The best-placed tools can help enhance your workforce management (WFM) strategy, enabling better staffing decisions and even reducing operational costs.

Consistent coaching is crucial to boosting the productivity and performance of your contact center team. Many contact center organizations have recently shifted their focus to security and fraud prevention. Some large agencies previously were not able to determine how many spam calls they received.

Text-to-speech capabilities support more than 40 languages and offer improved analytics, insights, and performance metrics to boost efficiency, productivity, and customer satisfaction. Finally, one of the biggest benefits of AI in the contact center is that it allows companies to process and evaluate huge volumes of data with incredible speed. Combining cutting-edge artificial intelligence and call analytics tools ensures companies can make better decisions – drawing insights from every interaction – across multiple channels. Studies have shown that generative AI and conversational AI tools like ChatGPT can improve productivity by up to 87%. These tools can rapidly analyze data and surface insights for agents throughout the customer journey. The digital world has empowered companies of all sizes to deliver services and products to customers all around the globe.
These three use cases demonstrate how creative applications of AI can transform customer interactions. AI in customer experience relies on algorithms that sift through massive datasets to understand individual customer preferences, behaviors and purchasing habits. By analyzing variables such as browsing history, past purchases and interaction patterns, these algorithms detect subtle trends and patterns.