Artificial Intelligence in contact centres refers to the use of advanced technologies, such as AI agents (chatbots), languge models, machine learning and natural language processing to provide a high quality of customer service and improve the efficiency of contact centers. 

What are the benefits of having AI as part of the contact centre software mix
AI brings several benefits to the world of contact centres, including: 

• Improved customer experience 
• Increased efficiency through automation 
• Cost savings as fewer agent resources are needed 
• Real-time actionable insights by analysing large volumes of customer data 

What are some use cases of AI in contact centres?  

AI is used in contact centres in a variety of useful ways. These include: 

• AI Chatbots and AI agents/assistants: These can handle routine queries and provide quick responses to customers. (See: How do AI Chatbots Work?)
   
• Emotion detection: This is used to analyse customer interactions to determine their emotional state, allowing agents and AI chatbots to respond appropriately and provide more empathetic support. 
   
• Entity recognition: This can pick out named entities, like dates, amounts and post codes, from within a general piece of text. 
   
• Intent recognition: This uses AI to understand from within the conversation the intent of what a customer is trying to do or say. 
   
• Propensity guidance:  This uses Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning to predict the outcome of a conversation and route it down the best path, as seen in Webio's Propensity Studio. 

Is AI replacing human agents in contact centres?  

Even as AI chatbots become ever more natural sounding with sophisticated conversational AI, they can never fully replace human agents. Rather, AI augments their capabilities and draws alongside agents to make their jobs easier while providing a better service to customers. AI can handle routine tasks, allowing human agents to focus on more complex queries that require human empathy and advanced problem-solving skills. 

What is the future of AI in contact centres?  

AI has proven to be an undeniable success in contact centres and it will continue to advance in sophistication as the technology grows to be able to handle more complex customer interactions. It is also likely to play an important role in predicting and preventing customer issues before they occur, as well as providing personalised and empathetic customer experiences. 

To learn more, see: 

• Contact Centre Automation 
• What is AI in Customer Communications? 
• What is a Self-Service Portal? 
• What is an AI Copilot in Contact Centres?