Running a contact center hasn’t ever been easy, but it’s become increasingly difficult in recent years. With growing call volumes, higher customer expectations, budgetary restraints, and the struggle of ensuring every agent has access to the right information, it can feel like a slog.
Which is exactly why the addition of contact center AI software can help. 90% of service professionals using generative AI report that it helps them serve customers faster. And, according to Gartner, 60% of customer service and support leaders are under pressure to adopt AI.
From automating repetitive tasks to providing real-time insights, AI tools can streamline operations and ensure agents stay consistent and informed. Imagine an AI that can not only help predict and plan for peak times but also analyze every interaction and score it for your QA team.
In this blog post, we’ll explore how AI contact center software works, followed by 9 real-world examples of how it’s already being used in contact centers. Then, we’ll show you some of the biggest outcomes from AI adoption and give some tips on how you can get in on the action.
Contact center AI software is already making a massive impact on the industry. Research shows that AI in telecommunications was valued at $1.45 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 28.2% through 2030.
By automating routine tasks and offering data-driven insights, AI helps you improve customer satisfaction and operational efficiencies in ways we’ve never seen before. But how does it all work? Let’s break down some of the terms and tech you’ve probably heard of:
One of the most common applications of AI contact center software is the addition of conversational AI to improve callers' self-service options. Companies have adopted AI-powered chatbots and virtual agents to handle routine customer queries like frequently asked questions, order tracking, and account management.
These aren’t just text-based, either. Virtual agents can be integrated into your telephony system to guide customers through the self-service options we just mentioned, direct them to the right agent or department, or collect customer feedback.
Beyond routing calls, AI can power your entire routing system. Virtual agents use NLP, NLU, and sentiment analysis to listen and understand customers' wants and needs. They can then use that information to send customers to the agent with the skills to help them.
This isn’t only limited to helping customers find the right agent, either. Intelligent call routing powered by AI can take shape in a number of different applications, such as:
Contact center AI software can analyze live conversations and provide agents with real-time suggestions, whether it’s relevant knowledge base articles or best next steps. This helps improve the quality and speed of interactions and can also help agents feel more confident in their work.
These AI tools can also pull from your data and QA systems to help your training team identify their strengths and weaknesses. They can identify skill gaps and enable the creation of personalized training programs to improve themselves and overall customer service standards.
AI can analyze these treasure troves much faster than any human can, offering deeper insights based on customer sentiment and determining why customers are reaching out in the first place. They evaluate the emotional tone of customer interactions, providing better insights into customer satisfaction and even helping agents resolve issues before they lead to escalations.
Beyond monitoring calls as they happen, AI can help identify the root causes of why your customers are calling. This helps your contact center identify issues within other parts of your business and be proactive with your efforts to correct them before they spiral out of control.
Contact centers create a massive amount of data, but not all of it is used. AI can use your historical data and behavior patterns to anticipate customers' needs and preferences, leading to a more personalized experience overall. They can also analyze customer interactions across all of your communication channels, whether it’s over a call or email.
With that data, you can make actionable insights into how your contact center functions, spotting areas that need improvement or helping you make informed decisions about product development and marketing strategies. These AI tools can even scour social media websites to keep you informed on customer trends when they’re not contacting you.
One of the biggest advantages that contact center AI software can bring is better coverage of your customer interactions. With huge average monthly call volumes, there’s no realistic way for a call center to have their agents analyze every single one.
But with AI, you can. It’s able to analyze and automatically score every single interaction that comes through your call center, opening up a wealth of information about both your customers and your contact center.
That data can then be used to improve your training sessions, fix inefficient workflows, and even feed into other analytics like root cause analysis.
Just like with text analytics, most AI tools can collect audio data—whether from phone or video calls—and transcribe it to text.
AI contact center software can then take that text and apply it to many different aspects of your business, such as improving your training and QA processes, performing text analytics, or simply offering transcriptions for important calls and personalization.
Additionally, not all businesses can hire multilingual support, which can make some customers feel left out or make some markets entirely unreachable. With NLP and NLU, many AI tools can translate nearly any language in real-time, enabling agents to communicate with customers and offer them aid without hiring new employees or using third-party translation services.
AI can automate the QA process, freeing up your evaluators. With 100% interaction coverage, AI can analyze calls and score them, too. It can analyze trends, compliance issues, and areas where agents may be struggling. It can even be used to gamify performance metrics for your agents, which can boost morale and keep them engaged.
Then, evaluators can use that data to create effective, personalized training for agents. This frees them up from using time and resources combing through hours of call data, so they can spend more time working to improve agent engagement and performance instead.
Compliance is crucial for almost all industries, especially contact centers that handle sensitive data. Contact center AI software helps make sure that your agents are adhering to regulations like GDPR and CCPA by monitoring interactions and flagging non-compliant language or actions.
Additionally, AI algorithms can monitor interactions for suspicious patterns that might indicate fraudulent activity or put customers' data at risk. This helps your customers not only feel safer when working with your agents but can make a significant difference for contact centers that handle sensitive information like payment or customer data.
When it’s done right, AI contact center software can completely overhaul how your call center operates. It goes beyond just automating routine processes; it brings a powerhouse of new functionality and reach that seemed unattainable without significant investment in resources. Let’s break down some of the biggest benefits:
When you deploy contact center AI software effectively, one of the biggest impacts is on customer satisfaction. AI systems can dramatically reduce wait times by handling multiple customer interactions at once. This means that routine queries are addressed immediately, and your human agents can focus on more complex issues. Lower wait times = happier customers.
Additionally, AI-powered systems improve your first call resolution (FCR) rate by providing accurate and relevant information. Solving customer issues on the first call is a guaranteed way to boost customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores, saving time for your customers and your agents.
AI tools can help your agents significantly improve their performance by providing real-time feedback. They provide instant guidance during calls, letting agents make the necessary corrections on the spot. This type of immediate feedback ensures high-quality interactions are always possible and helps boost confidence (and competence).
AI contact center software also helps keep your internal knowledge base up to date by learning from every interaction. This means your agents always have access to the most current information, helping them stay efficient and reducing time spent searching for answers.
Plus, AI can improve your QA processes, too, enabling personalized agent training based on analysis of 100% of interactions—not just a limited sample size.
AI is excellent at spotting inefficiencies within your workflows and processes. It analyzes them and identifies bottlenecks, giving you the chance to streamline operations for a smoother experience for customers and agents. By highlighting areas that need improvement, AI helps you optimize resource allocation and boosts overall efficiency.
On top of trends in your operations, contact center AI software can detect trends in customer behavior, giving you valuable insights. You can then take these insights and anticipate customer needs, letting you be proactive instead of reactive. Additionally, their deep analytics helps you get a full picture of your call center operations so you can make data-driven decisions with confidence.
Maintaining compliance is easier with AI systems that can monitor interactions in real-time. AI observes calls and flags any deviations, providing better compliance without any extra overhead. It also helps automate routine compliance checks and documentation processes, reducing the burden of administrative tasks on your staff.
In addition to observation, AI-powered automation helps minimize the risk of human error. With AI handling compliance monitoring and routine tasks, you can ensure a higher level of accuracy, protecting your organization from possible compliance issues.
Choosing the right contact center AI software can feel mind-boggling, with so many AI call center solutions on the market. But getting it right is crucial for elevating your efficiency and customer satisfaction.
While it’s not exhaustive, we’ve got a list of some important things you should be considering when adopting a new AI software:
Implementing AI in your contact center can bring massive benefits, from happier customers to more efficient operations. When aligned with your goals and integrated with existing tools, it boosts both efficiency and customer satisfaction. For instance, AI-driven analytics can pinpoint operational bottlenecks, helping you to resolve issues before they escalate.
Plus, using these tools effectively can give your business the competitive edge. Your ability to deliver real-time insights and faster, more efficient support means you’re not keeping pace with the competition—you’re setting it.
Scorebuddy’s GenAI Auto Scoring is here to help you meet your goals and exceed your expectations. By using AI to automatically evaluate 100% of customer interactions, you can free up manual labor and get better insights into how your contact center runs.
Ready to see how AI can paint a complete picture of your contact center and drive growth too? Get a demo of GenAI Auto Scoring today and cut your QA costs in half.
