February 13, 2025
Running a contact center efficiently is crucial for cutting costs, especially since up to 80% of expenses come from paying agents, supervisors, and managers. Any tool that saves time on calls and optimise workflows can directly improve productivity and reduce costs. This is where Agentic AI comes in.
What is Agentic AI?
Agentic AI refers to smart AI tools that understand goals, make decisions, and take action. Think of Agentic AI tools as a Swiss Army knife for customer support, capable of streamlining processes, automating tasks, and providing intelligent insights. These tools can be used to support human agents to be more productive and effective in the contact center.
Let’s look at the different areas where AI can complement human agents:
Automating Routine Tasks
First of all, Agentic AI can be used to handle simple tasks like data entry, appointment scheduling, and basic customer queries. This speeds up processes and frees human agents to focus on more complex and value-added activities. By automating these routine tasks, contact centers can significantly reduce the time spent on each interaction, leading to increased productivity.
Intelligent Routing
You can use Agentic AI to do the initial customer greeting and, based on context, route them to the most appropriate agent. This intelligent routing improves efficiencies and avoids unnecessary transfers between agents, ensuring that customers are connected to the right person the first time.
Transcribing and Summarization
Have an Agentic AI assistant listen in to conversations and provide transcription to the agent and automatically generate summaries. The agents can approve these with a click of the mouse and let the Agentic AI do the task of uploading them to CRM systems to ensure records are accurate and up-to-date. This not only saves time but also ensures that all customer interactions are well-documented, which is crucial for providing consistent and high-quality service.
Autocompletion of Text-Based Interactions
To speed up text based interactions AI can support human agents by providing autocomplete and make answer suggestions based on the context of messaging interactions. Agents can use predefined responses suggested by the AI, saving up to 50% of typing time. This feature allows agents to handle more interactions in less time, boosting overall productivity.
Real-Time Knowledge Assistance
By listening in to customer conversations in real-time AI can analyze and provide agents with recommendations for responses and next best actions. For example, AI can suggest relevant knowledge base articles or troubleshooting steps, helping agents resolve issues faster and more efficiently.
Multilingual Support
Deploying AI to translate interactions between agents and customers can open international markets without additional costs. Skilled agents can respond in their language, and AI translates these responses for the customers, ensuring clear and effective communication.
Scalability
One of the great things about Agentic Ai is that once you have it build it can be used over and over again. AI can scale to handle more interactions, making it essential for businesses experiencing growth or seasonal spikes. AI can manage the extra load, ensuring consistent service quality.
Data-Driven Insights
Another strength of Agentic AI is that it can process vast amounts of data to identify trends, patterns, and areas for improvement. These insights are invaluable for contact center managers and supervisors and can inform decisions to help optimize business processes. For example, AI can pinpoint customer pain points and suggest process changes to enhance the customer experience.
Improved Agent Satisfaction and Retention
Agents supported by AI assistants perceive this as an improvement to their working environment. They are better informed and can deliver more effective service, leading to higher job satisfaction and reduced agent churn. Additionally, AI support means faster training and onboarding, as agents do not need to learn all product or service details if the AI assistant can provide this information during calls.
Key Metrics for Measuring AI Impact
The deployment of AI in contact centers can be measured through various metrics:
- Average Handle Time (AHT): Using AI in the different areas as explained above can significantly reduce AHT, allowing agents to handle more interactions.
- First Time Resolution (FCR): By providing real-time information and knowledge, agents can resolve customer inquiries more effectively without needing callbacks or transfers.
- Self-Service Utilization: Also known as containment rates, this measures the percentage of calls handled autonomously by voice or chatbots. We expect to see the capabilities of AI grow to not only handle simple, standard transactions but increasingly handle more complex queries.
- Agent Retention: Empowering agents with AI tools improves job satisfaction, reduces training times, and enhances agent retention.
- Total Cost per Call (CPC): AI can reduce the total cost per interaction handled, contributing to overall cost savings.
Conclusion
The innovative use of AI in contact centers significantly enhances operational efficiency. AI-driven features such as virtual agents, intelligent routing, transcription, sentiment analysis, and agent assistance transform how contact centers operate. By reducing costs and improving agent retention, AI contributes to a more sustainable and profitable contact center operation.
Integrating AI in contact centers is not just a technological advancement but a strategic imperative for businesses aiming to excel in operational excellence. As AI technology continues to evolve, the potential for Agentic AI to transform contact center operations will only grow. Embracing this technology today can set your contact center on a path to greater productivity, efficiency, and success.
