Move over, scratchy hold music—artificial intelligence (AI) is about to transform the contact center industry. It offers the promise of enabling new options for improved customer experience and optimizing the effectiveness of human contact center agents.

For decades, customers calling to complain, place an order, or ask a simple question have been stymied by rigid call menus, oft-misdirected calls, and seemingly endless hold music. Ever since automatic call technology first took hold in the 1970s, even the most mild-mannered callers have at times found themselves shouting into their phones for help, voices quivering as they repeat, yet again, their request with every transfer made.

In that light, the rise of the IT contact center and the ease of communicating via email or text was a great advance. Now, an even greater opportunity has emerged with the application of artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities such as chatbots, Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVAs), and machine learning. From speech analytics that can read emotional cues to just-in-time delivery of info that can help agents provide faster, more accurate customer service, AI is here to help.  

AI’s transformative potential in customer care

Today’s contact center is the ‘customer front door’ for brands in retail, financial service, healthcare, and other industries. And modern consumers don’t want to be kept waiting at the door. Whether via voice, text, or social media, they crave a quick and personalized experience from the first “hello” onward.

Organizations benefit in many ways when customers are happier with their service experience. However, they must balance the costs of high-touch service with the bottom line and the limitations of previous-generation communications systems.

Self-service capabilities promise to more effectively satisfy requests from customers while at the same time increasing the productivity of agents in the contact center. However, self-service implemented with IVR technology is problematic with deep and hierarchical menus, having to repeat information several times, and waiting while agents search for information.

New capabilities in conversational AI interfaces such as virtual agents and chatbots allow customers to state their requests in natural language, without needing to progress step-by-step through a menu, or utter specific keywords. The customer can “converse” through voice or text and quickly resolve simple, routine requests. For problems that are more complex or for customers who prefer a live agent experience, the chatbot transfers the contact to a human agent along with additional context. The customer experience should be the same whether in an IVR, using a chatbot, or speaking to an agent.

It’s a new playing field, but many vendors are already making this potential a reality in today’s competitive customer care environment.

Three things AI vendors get right

Cloud-based AI capabilities into conversational interfaces, machine learning, and APIs that enable seamless integration with customer care systems. Many of these capabilities have been honed with experience with Google’s Assistant, but more recently with OpenAI’s and ChatGPT, a generative AI model trained by the internet.

With AI in the contact center, there are many advantageous capabilities that used to be very complex and difficult to accomplish. Today, AI allows for the automation of call resolution via virtual agents as well as empowers agents with useful insights via Agent Assist. Virtual agents enable simple, routine requests to be automated for rapid resolution. Human agents can focus on those calls when their expertise is most valuable. AI empowers the agent with insights from machine learning to resolve the customer’s request more rapidly and effectively.

A few highlights of Google Contact Center AI:

1. It plays well with others. Technology can now reduce the voice footprint and bring the best resources in the world from other vendors to bear on different aspects of voice technologies, whether language or context-driven. Generative AI and automation are making the contact center a highly efficient and near-human-like communication resource.

2. Rapid resolution of customer requests. Large Language Models (LLMs) have allowed for the creation of more natural, effective, and human-like responses by understanding context and nuance in language. AI-driven contact centers let customers describe requests in their own language, not the computer designer’s language. Open-ended questions allow the Virtual Agent to rapidly assess the intent of the customer and source the best way to resolve the request.

3. It directly supports live agent assistance. With AI, contact center agents have more time to spend with customers, and call flows are streamlined. As a result, both customers and agents are benefiting. If live agents are needed during a call, customers are connected with the most appropriate agent faster. Agent Assist operates in the background even after transitioning the call to a live agent, prompting the agent with information helpful in resolving the customer’s issue. Generative AI can create summaries post-call and be readily available for agents for edit or approval. Furthermore, Generative AI can add comments in transcription for insights into actionable business decisions, training needs, and overall quality assurance.

The contact center of the future?

Conversational AI offers great potential to balance customer satisfaction and agent productivity. Customer care platforms of the future will need to be well-designed to ensure customer experience benefits from the blending of the best of both humans and computers.

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June 5, 2023