The AI revolution in CX: Generative AI for customer support

A few years back, the world was bursting with promises about AI transforming contact centers, yet the reality was a long way from meeting the hype. Solutions required significant resources and expensive data scientists to train and update and oftentimes didn’t work as well as promised. That’s when we started to work on redefining AI in the contact center space—creating an AI-powered contact center platform that wasn’t just buzz, but a tangible game-changer.

Our vision was clear: AI revolutionizing the contact center industry by impacting outcomes throughout the customer journey, making it smoother, efficient, and rewarding. All while being simple to deploy, manage, and deliver value from day one.

Our innovation strategy sparked the development of a holistic suite of CX AI products, seamlessly integrated and native to our cloud contact center platform. Our goal was to empower our customers to achieve the outcomes that truly mattered to them.

We broke down barriers with Industry Experience Clouds—an innovation that pre-designed and integrated AI specifically tailored for various verticals. This wasn’t just a step but a huge leap toward democratizing the adoption of AI.

Fast forward to today, and we’ve transitioned from elementary AI tools to sophisticated generative AI systems, revolutionizing the landscape of customer support. This journey represents not just technological enhancement but a complete reimagining of the customer experience.

We kept pushing boundaries by adding generative AI for customer support to drive crucial outcomes. Empowering agents with real-time generative AI knowledge, interaction summaries that slash average handling time by up to 15%, identifying trends in topics and sentiment across all conversations to improve customer satisfaction, or automating customer conversations to reduce costs. All through potent no-code tools, such as Talkdesk AI Trainer™, placing the reins of AI control directly into the hands of our customers, without the need for expensive data scientists.

This is a new era of automation and intelligence meticulously designed for the contact center. Generative AI for customer service is a new narrative of contact center AI—one where promises meet real-world requirements and innovation defines the future.

The role of generative AI in the contact center.

AI technologies in contact centers should be user-friendly and intuitive, allowing companies to implement them in-house without extensive technical expertise. From the first day of implementation, AI should deliver measurable improvements in customer service efficiency and operational effectiveness with the following:

• Automation. AI automates routine tasks, streamlining workflows and allowing contact center staff to focus on more complex issues.

• Self-service. By resolving more interactions through self-service options, AI reduces the workload on human agents. Customers get quicker resolutions to simple queries, increasing overall satisfaction.

• Voice and chatbots. AI-powered voice and chatbots efficiently handle simple and complex inquiries, freeing up human agents to address more complex customer issues.

• 24/7 service. AI enables contact centers to provide round-the-clock service, ensuring that customer support is available anytime, enhancing customer convenience and satisfaction.

• Agent empowerment. AI tools aid in improving agent productivity by helping them address customer queries swiftly and accurately, leading to better customer interactions and outcomes.

• Data-driven insights. AI points key patterns and trends in customer interactions, providing actionable insights that can drive strategic decision-making and help in making data-driven decisions.

Generative AI for customer support across industries.

When applied across industries, generative AI’s focus and capabilities facilitate outcomes that seemed futuristic until recently. Businesses globally have seen significant impacts—the ability to send proactive alerts, more upsell and cross-sell opportunities, and an unprecedented level of personalization—of generative AI across the customer experience arena.

For example, in healthcare, digital assistants streamline appointments and inquiries, as seen in Memorial Healthcare Systems’ reduced call volumes. Similarly, Carbon Health reduced patient wait times and clinic answer rates by 40%.

Banks, too, are experiencing major improvements. Generative AI in banking goes beyond basic functions to comprehensive customer service. From asset management and smart refinancing to maintaining account balances and managing fund transfers, the scope is expansive. Take WaFd Bank’s experience: integrating generative AI into their customer support has led to a staggering 95% reduction in cost per interaction. It’s a significant win in cost-efficiency, but more so, it’s the quality of customer service that stands out. This AI-driven approach has enabled WaFd Bank to tailor interactions more effectively, making them not just efficient but also more impactful.

Generative AI addresses common pain points across industries, impacting areas such as reducing wait times, enhancing interaction quality, providing personalization at scale, offering 24/7 service availability, maintaining consistent service quality, enabling proactive problem-solving, reducing costs, and improving employee satisfaction.