Table of Contents
What is Conversational AI for Contact Centers?
What Does This Technology Mean For Customers and What Are the Benefits?
What Are the Benefits to Your Contact Center?
It’s Not Limited to Customer Interactions
Uses Cases by Industry
FAQ
What is Conversational AI for Contact Centers?
Conversational AI, sometimes also referred to as voice AI, AI-powered voicebots, or phone AI, has become an integral component of modern AI-powered contact centers, driving automation, efficiency, and enhanced customer experiences. This technology leverages natural language processing (NLP) and advanced algorithms to understand, process, and respond to voice-based customer queries, significantly reducing the dependency on human agents for routine interactions. Voice AI is especially important when companies struggle to keep up with customer inquiries in which a large chunk of the total inquiries are extremely common. The adoption of conversational AI is projected to grow significantly, rising from 17% to a whopping 76%1.
The best voice AI technologies have limited hiccups/mistakes and understand intent on the first try. They also respond faster with minimal delay, creating a more human-like and seamless conversational experience.
Businesses notice tangible results after implementing high-quality contact center voice AI. These tangible results all lead to better experiences for your customers, increased efficiency for your business, boosted customer loyalty, increased revenue from upselling, and lowered costs. We will dive into some of the tangible benefits contact centers see after implementing voice AI later in the blog.
What Does This Technology Mean For Customers and What Are the Benefits?
Less waiting
“No waiting on the phone? Awesome!” – Your customer. One major benefit is offering your customers little to no wait time. AI-powered voicebots are always available to take their requests, and if it is a quality, industry-hardened/tested solution, they will have their inquiries resolved accurately.
Consistent Messaging
Voice AI references data you point it to, and therefore it will consistently reference that data and not deviate when implemented correctly. This will ensure that your contact center is providing consistent responses and processes to customer inquiries, which will eliminate situations where a customer has been misdirected. This will greatly reduce customer frustration.
Faster Resolutions
Artificial Intelligence is fast, and when it’s accurate, it’s a superior tool for common inquiries. Due to the speed and accuracy, your customers will experience faster resolution times. This further contributes to better customer experiences that foster customer loyalty.
Personalized Interactions
By integrating with customer data systems (e.g., CRM), voice AI tailors interactions based on the customer’s history and preferences, making experiences less robot-like, more relevant, and more natural.
24/7 Availability
Customers will no longer need to call only during business hours and can benefit from having their inquiries resolved at any time, even during holidays. This is not only great for your customers, but also for your business since offering around-the-clock support only adds to your brand’s positive image of putting customer care first.
Hand-Offs With Context
Everyone has experienced having to repeat themselves after being transferred to another agent. This feels like your time is being wasted and can add to customer frustration. The best contact center voice AI solutions automatically hand over detailed context to the next live agent in the scenario where the voice AI could not help the customer with their inquiry.
What Are the Benefits to Your Contact Center?
Increased Live Agent Availability
Your agents will have more time to handle complex inquiries when voice AI is taking care of more routine and common requests. This also reduces agent burnout from having to handle the same tasks over and over again which can become tedious.
Cost Savings
There are multiple ways in which a contact center can save costs by using voice AI. One way would be to reduce live agent time which costs more than having voice AI handling inquiries. Gartner projects that by 2026, conversational AI will reduce contact center agent labour costs by $80 billion3. Another way would stem from reducing hold times. When customers spend a lot of time on hold, businesses have to pay for those minutes. This incurs additional unnecessary costs which become significant in most cases. A third way to keep in mind is less agent turnover. Since you are effectively boosting agent experiences, job satisfaction will go up and a contact center would incur less costs due to training and onboarding new agents.
Revenue Growth
You read that right, Voice AI can drive revenue. But how? By upselling the customer! What plays a big role in upselling is the context Voice AI will have available. It will use the customer’s interaction history and profile to suggest upgrades, add-ons, or complimentary products or services.
Data and Insights
With Voice AI capturing and logging intent data in real-time, contact centers have a better view of their customers and gain new strategies to improve their support. Maybe there is an opportunity for a new process that was overlooked. That new process can then be implemented for live agents and the conversational AI solution.
Uses Cases by Industry
Below are some examples of how Voice AI can handle various inquiries across different industries.
It’s Not Limited to Customer Interactions
Voice AI isn’t limited to just customer interactions in a contact center, it can also be used for employees to better their experiences with the company they work for. They benefit from faster answers and no wait time for commonly asked questions such as HR-related questions. They also benefit from getting consistent information that stays in line with the organization’s policies, effectively reducing confusion.
Below is a demo we created showing one use case of voice AI being utilized for employees for HR-related inquires.
In Summary
Voice AI is revolutionizing contact centers by automating routine interactions, enhancing efficiency, and delivering exceptional customer experiences. Leveraging natural language processing (NLP), it offers faster resolutions, consistent messaging, and personalized, 24/7 support.
For customers, this means reduced wait times and seamless transitions when escalation is needed. Contact centers benefit from increased agent availability for complex tasks, cost savings through reduced handle times and turnover, and even revenue growth via personalized upselling. Applicable across industries and even internal operations, Voice AI is reshaping service and efficiency for contact centers worldwide. It is no surprise that investments in this technology are forecasted to grow 4.8x by organizations across North America2.
Ready to launch your AI project for your contact center? Get in touch with an expert today.
Check us out on LinkedIn!
FAQ
1. What is Voice AI, and how does it work?
Voice AI refers to technology that uses artificial intelligence and natural language processing (NLP) to understand, process, and respond to voice-based customer interactions. It works by analyzing spoken language, identifying intent, and providing relevant, automated responses or escalating the query to a human agent when necessary.
2. How can Voice AI benefit contact centers?
Voice AI reduces operational costs by automating routine tasks, improves agent availability for complex issues, and enhances efficiency by reducing average handle times. It also provides 24/7 support, helping businesses handle high call volumes without increasing staff while boosting customer satisfaction with faster and more consistent service.
3. What kind of tasks can Voice AI handle?
Voice AI can assist with common tasks such as answering FAQs, booking appointments, order tracking, resolving account issues, providing real-time updates (e.g., flight status), and even upselling or cross-selling products based on customer profiles.
4. Is Voice AI secure for handling sensitive information?
Yes, high-quality Voice AI solutions use robust encryption, adhere to compliance standards like PCI DSS and GDPR, and may include advanced features like voice biometrics for secure authentication. This ensures customer data is handled safely and efficiently.
5. Can Voice AI integrate with my existing systems?
Most Voice AI platforms are designed to integrate seamlessly with existing CRMs, ticketing systems, and contact center software. These integrations allow the AI to pull customer data for personalized interactions and log insights for operational improvements.
References
1,2 Forrester “How Conversation Intelligence Platforms Can Drive Better Business Outcomes”,
3 CCW “News: Gartner Predicts Conversational AI Will Reduce Contact Center Agent Labor Costs by $80 Billion in 2026”