Embracing AI in the contact centre starts with a top-down analysis

Embracing AI in the contact centre starts with a top-down analysis.

By Craig Smith, CX Automation Manager

The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) across the contact centre is rapidly accelerating, with a survey from unified communications & collaboration research firm Metrigy highlighting that over 70% of contact centre operators increased spending on AI in 2023 and 2024.

According to Gartner Inc., the global conversational AI and virtual assistant market represents the fastest-growing segment in the contact centre space.

The report states that the number of AI-assisted customer interactions continues to increase, with most applications used to augment live agent engagement, instead of fully offloading to a virtual agent.

ai in the contact centre

Conversational AI a key focus

However, contact centre decision-makers are investing in conversational AI capabilities as a long-term strategy to offload more engagements to AI-enabled virtual agents.

“Conversational AI deployments already comprise the majority of the solutions we currently implement in the contact centre environment,” affirms Craig Smith, CX Automation Manager at Connect.

Overall, Gartner estimates that contact centre AI will handle 14% of all interactions by 2027.

“The challenge facing contact centre decision-makers is determining the most appropriate application and flavour of AI to meet their specific engagement and customer experience (CX) challenges and requirements,” he continues.



Top-down analysis delivers RoI

According to Smith, maximising the return on investment (RoI) and realising the expected performance gains from an AI deployment requires a top-down business analysis, rather than trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole by implementing the latest iteration in AI technology as a cure-all, like expensive generative AI (GenAI) solutions.

“While there is a lot of hype and noise related to GenAI adoption in the contact centre, operators need a compelling use case to warrant the capex required to implement this advanced technology,” continues Smith.

A top-down approach places greater emphasis on the business analysis phase, where contact centre consultants perform an in-depth review to identify and understand the major operational and customer pain points and challenges a client faces to determine the most applicable solution.

By gathering as much data as possible and engaging with the customer to listen and learn, the consultants gain deep insights that give them a holistic understanding of the business’s needs.

The consultant team uses this information to develop the foundational understanding needed to recommend and design solutions and define the AI toolset that will deliver measurable and meaningful business impact.



Tangible returns from AI investments

“The potential improvements in CX, costs and agent productivity from implementing the right AI solution are massive,” asserts Smith.

For example, automated chatbots can typically offload a large volume of common contact centre engagements by addressing repetitive issues with pre-programmed responses.

A thematic analysis can easily identify the common phrases customers use most often when contacting the contact centre. The contact centre solution provider can then assign intent and outcomes to these phrases to deliver automated direct dialogue capabilities that can support basic transactional engagements.

“With a relatively small investment compared to a GenAI implementation, the resultant improvement in average handling time (AHT) and CX from an automated chatbot solution can deliver outsized results,” continues Smith.



Supporting complex engagements

Contact centres that require more advanced chatbot automation leverage conversational AI capabilities to effectively handle the majority of the more complex automated engagements that contact centres currently field. This could include traditional conversational AI technologies, GenAI or a mixture of the two.

Typically, conversational AI models are built with open natural language processing (NLP) interfaces, designed to allow users to interact with the chatbot using natural language, rather than requiring specific commands or keywords. These capabilities enable chatbots to handle a wide range of interactions in an intuitive and user-friendly manner to enhance overall CX.

However, the ultimate success of a conversational AI implementation in the contact centre comes down to the design and detail of the solution, with non-human curated systems prone to costly errors that can erode RoI.

“The key to realising the full value of any AI implementation, whether it is a basic automated chatbot, virtual conversational voice assistant, or GenAI-based application like agent assist or a virtual agent, is partnering with a service provider that has experience in analysing business needs and designing AI solutions, with access to a range of relevant solutions to meet your specific requirements,” concludes Smith.



AboutConnect.

Connect combines global contact centre and customer experience (CX) expertise, deep domain knowledge, and unparalleled industry skills to make the complex, simple. Since 1990, we have leveraged our vendor-independent managed services approach to digitally transform how organisations communicate, both internally and externally. We specialise in combining the most relevant technologies and services from leading vendors and platform providers to create opti-channel engagement solutions, orchestrating frictionless experiences and simplifying complex communication challenges.

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