Generative AI in Contact Centers

Whether we like it or not, AI is already transforming contact centers and the way businesses interact with their customers and handle customer service operations. Generative AI is one of those high-impact technologies. Gen AI-powered solutions truly offer a bunch of benefits, helping contact centers streamline different processes, deliver exceptional service experiences, boost agent productivity, and reduce operational costs, to name just a few.

No wonder that customer service is one of the top three business functions with the highest rate of adoption or investment in generative AI, according to Gartner. So, what are some of the most common use cases for generative in contact centers, and, most importantly, how can contact centers benefit from implementing gen AI-based solutions? We’ll talk about just that (and more) below.

What is Generative AI, and How Does it Work?

So, what exactly is generative AI? In a nutshell, generative AI refers to AI models that are capable of generating new content (including text, images, audio, video, or code) in response to the inputs (prompts) they receive.

Gen AI uses deep learning models, particularly large language models (LLMs) like GPT, that are trained on massive datasets, which allows them to understand context, respond to various input types, and generate coherent responses. Like conversational AI, generative AI models use machine learning (LM) to refine and improve their performance over time by improving the accuracy of their output.

The applications and use cases of generative AI span across industries and different business functions. And even though implementing gen AI solutions does come with certain risks and challenges, 78% of business executives believe that the benefits of generative AI outweigh its risks, based on Gartner’s poll.

Top Use Cases of Generative AI in Contact Centers

Now, let’s take a closer look at some specific generative AI contact center solutions:

AI agent assist (auto-generated replies)

Generative AI is the foundation for AI agent assist solutions (also known as AI virtual agents). And many AI contact center software providers are already offering these tools, even though the exact functionality and capabilities may differ across providers. But overall, these solutions are designed to improve the experience for contact center agents by providing them with real-time assistance and insights. Here’s how:

• Real-time reply suggestions: AI agent assist solutions make life easier for your reps by analyzing live customer interactions (both voice and digital) and offering real-time reply suggestions to agents based on the context of the conversation. That helps agents respond to customer queries faster and provide more accurate responses without having to craft each response from scratch. For your customers, that means shorter resolution times and increased customer satisfaction.

• Instant access to knowledge sources and customer data: Think about how much time contact center agents typically spend searching for the information, whether it’s product details, FAQs, troubleshooting guides, support documentation, or customer data from CRM. AI agent assist tools automatically retrieve this information from your integrated knowledge sources and deliver it to your reps instantly right when they are handling customer interactions, without agents having to ask for it.

• Automated note-taking and CRM updates: Manual post-interaction note-taking might be time-consuming – but AI agent assist solutions come to the rescue by automatically updating the details and outcomes of every interaction in your CRM system. Not only does it help you ensure no critical information slips through the cracks, but it also saves your reps a great deal of time and effort by automating tedious yet necessary admin work.

Recommended reading: How AI Benefits Customer Service and How it is Used in Contact Centers

Gen AI chatbots

While customer service chatbots are primarily built on conversational AI, some solutions often incorporate generative AI as well – and gen AI makes chatbots a lot more efficient and human-like. Conversational AI chatbots often use rule-based scripts or decision trees to guide interactions and provide contextually relevant, predefined responses. But since generative AI uses large language models like OpenAI’s GPT, it allows AI bots to create responses more dynamically and engage with users in more human-like conversations.

Gen AI chatbots can deliver customer support 24/7, answer customers’ most common questions, and help them resolve certain requests independently without getting your reps involved. And many companies are already leveraging that in their customer service operations. For example, based on Intercom’s report, 45% of customer support teams are already using AI-powered chatbots. Most of those teams also reported that up to 30% of their customer support requests are being successfully resolved by AI.

Recommended reading: Enterprise Chatbots: Features, Benefits, and Common Use Cases

Personalized product recommendations

Generative AI solutions aren’t just great for customer service interactions. They are also highly efficient in sales by helping you capitalize on cross-selling and upselling opportunities through personalized product recommendations. Gen AI tools can analyze customer data, including browsing history, previous interactions, past purchases, and customer preferences and proactively recommend relevant products or services to users, often without them having to ask.

This is particularly helpful to retail and e-commerce businesses. Imagine a customer returning to your website for another purchase. The gen AI engine can initiate a conversation with them proactively and offer relevant products based on their past purchase history. Similarly, it can suggest additional products to go with the current purchase, helping you increase the average order value and maximize your revenue. On top of that, delivering hyper-personalization in real time helps you improve customer experience and drive better customer loyalty.

Recommended reading: AI in Sales for Contact Centers: From Lead Generation to Conversion

Interaction summarization

Interaction summarization is another important use case for generative AI in contact centers. And luckily, many contact center software providers offer this feature. It automatically generates concise and accurate summaries of voice and digital interactions between your reps and customers, turning long conversations into easily digestible summaries. Based on the provider’s capabilities, these summaries can be presented in different formats (paragraphs, bullet points, or tables) and include information like:

• An overview of the customer’s issue and resolution steps provided
• An outline of action items and follow-up steps to be taken
• Insights into the customer’s sentiment throughout the conversation
• Notes on the outcome of the interaction, etc.

VoiceSpin’s AI call summary feature is an excellent example. It summarizes key details of every call so your reps can spend less time on administrative tasks and more time interacting with your customers. It also simplifies and improves the follow-up process. Whenever an agent needs to follow up with the customer, the AI call summary gives them a quick overview of the previous interaction, so they don’t have to read through the entire call transcript or listen to the recording.

Beyond that, along with tracking performance metrics and KPIs, managers can use insights from call summaries to evaluate the quality of interactions and assess agent performance.

Customer sentiment analysis

Customer sentiment analysis involves analyzing customer interactions in real time to better understand customers’ emotions, sentiments, and customer intent. For example, in voice interactions, sentiment analysis technology uses speech recognition, Natural Language Processing (NLP), and Machine Learning (ML) to determine the sentiment of the speaker, which is then classified as either positive, neutral, or negative.

Some solutions can even capture more specific feelings like frustration and anger. The system does that by analyzing the speaker’s words and vocabulary, intonation, pitch variations, loudness, the amount of frustration in their voice, and other variables.

The gen AI engine can then alert agents in real time if a customer seems frustrated or angry so they can adjust their tone throughout the conversation or take other steps to de-escalate the tense situation. AI might also recommend specific phrases and empathy statements that your reps can use to calm the customer and improve customer satisfaction.

Enhancing your knowledge base 

Your knowledge base is a powerful self-help resource for your customers to search for the information they need or resolve issues independently whenever it’s convenient for them. And it’s also a primary source of knowledge for AI chatbots and gen AI agent assist solutions. But one issue with the traditional knowledge base creation and maintenance in contact centers is that the process relies on manual input and updates from human agents, which might be time-consuming and isn’t always effective.

The good news is that you can use generative AI to accelerate and enhance the process of knowledge base creation and maintenance. The gen AI engine can expand your existing knowledge base articles, help you create new ones, or even shift the tone of articles with just one click.

And what’s even better, gen AI can analyze your customer interactions to help you identify common issues customers are facing and spot gaps in your knowledge base, so you’ll know exactly what content should be created to address frequent customer concerns. That helps ensure your knowledge base is always accurate, relevant, comprehensive, and aligns with your customers’ needs.

Real-time language translation

Real-time language translation is another (not so common yet) use case for generative AI in contact centers and call centers. While there are many solutions that allow you to translate chats and messages in real time, enabling your agents and customers to interact in different languages – the same options for voice communications have remained rather limited, at least up until recently. Mainly because of the complexity of the entire process. But generative AI has made it possible.

Though real-time call translation solutions are still in their early development stage, there are already tools out there that can be used for real-time voice translation in call centers, enabling call center reps and customers to engage in voice conversations while speaking different languages.

Moreover, gen AI models can even maintain the tone of each speaker, ensuring that responses sound more natural and less robotic. For multilingual call centers, that means reduced communication barriers and operational costs, as there’s no need to hire reps who speak different languages to support multilingual customers.

For example, OpenAI demonstrated earlier this year how this works with GPT-4o:

Modifying agent accents in real time

Real-time accent neutralization solutions are finalizing our list of generative AI use cases in contact centers. Krisp and Sanas are great examples of what these solutions are capable of. In the call center environment – especially in BPO call centers –  agents’ accents may create misunderstandings, often frustrating customers and standing in the way of efficient communication and issue resolution.

That may lead to longer handle times, lower FCR rates, and, ultimately, financial losses for contact centers. In fact, according to ContactBabel’s 2024 US Contact Center Decision Maker’s Guide, the cost of mishearing and repetition per year for a 250-seat contact center exceeds $155,000 per year.

Real-time accent softening tools are designed to minimize accent-related communication barriers in contact centers, ensuring every interaction is smooth and understandable and improving the experience for both customers and agents. Plus, they improve handle times and FCR rates, increase customer satisfaction scores (CSAT), and reduce agent turnover.

Benefits of Using Generative AI in Contact Centers

If you aren’t yet sure that implementing generative AI in your contact center is a worthwhile investment that will start paying off almost immediately, we’ve summarized the key benefits below:

24/7 customer support

Based on research from Salesforce, 77% of customers expect to interact with someone immediately when they contact a company. And you can’t always provide immediate support 24/7. With AI bots, you can deliver support around the clock, even when your reps are not available, and enable your customers to find answers on their own without relying on your support team’s limited availability.

Better yet, some of the most advanced AI bots that combine conversational AI and gen AI capabilities can do a lot more than just answering FAQs. They can provide delivery status updates, handle returns and exchanges, process payments, renew subscriptions, set and reschedule appointments, book reservations, troubleshoot tech issues, and more.

Faster resolution times and enhanced CX

Speech of support matters. Period. And generative AI is here to help agents answer customers’ questions and resolve issues faster with AI agent assist solutions. As we’ve already mentioned above, these tools can provide your reps with real-time guidance and recommendations on how to best handle each interaction by pulling information from your knowledge sources and generating contextually relevant responses. The outcome is:

• Shorter Average Handle Times (AHT)
• Better First Call Resolution (FCR) rates
• Reduced call/ chat transfers and escalations
• Increased Customer Satisfaction Scores (CSAT)

Improved agent experience

Many gen AI solutions we’ve outlined here can make things easier for your customer service reps. With AI reply suggestions and real-time recommendations, agents don’t have to waste time searching for the information in your knowledge base and CRM to respond to customers’ questions. And with AI chatbots, they don’t have to answer repetitive questions over and over again – the chatbot can handle common questions and automate simple issue resolutions while freeing up your reps to focus on other higher-value tasks.

Optimized quality monitoring

Gen AI can help you automate and optimize your quality monitoring process while also improving the experience for your managers and supervisors, too. With conversation summarization, they can easily assess the quality of customer interactions without needing to read the transcript of every conversation or listen to call recordings. Conversation summaries can also help you better measure your reps’ performance and quickly understand where they need additional training.

Increased engagement and sales

With real-time personalized product recommendations, you can proactively engage your website visitors right as they are navigating your website and increase sales. For example, the gen AI engine can initiate proactive conversations with users who added items to their shopping carts, encourage them to finalize the purchase by offering immediate assistance or discounts, and help you reduce shopping cart abandonment. AI can also recommend complementary products, which is a great way to increase the average order value.

Reduced operational costs

There are many ways gen AI can help you reduce contact center operational costs. For example, generative AI chatbots can deliver customer support around the clock, reducing your overall inbound call volume and your contact center workload. Reducing workload, in turn, can help you avoid agent burnout, improve job satisfaction, and prevent costly agent turnover (which has always been incredibly high in contact centers). Moreover, gen AI solutions enable agents to provide multilingual support, so you don’t have to hire more agents as a single rep can support customers in multiple languages.

The Future of Contact Centers and How AI is Transforming the Industry

Generative AI and other AI-driven technologies are obviously changing the way businesses operate and interact with their customers today. 

AI-powered solutions enable contact centers to provide automated customer support, better understand their customers, deliver more personalized interactions, and improve the experience for agents by automating a large portion of the tasks that were previously done manually. AI tools also help contact centers optimize the quality assurance process, streamline agent training and onboarding, and cut down on operational costs.

That being said, consumers are also becoming more receptive to AI and interacting with AI-powered self-service solutions. For example, based on the stats published by Outgrow, 74% of customers would choose to interact with an AI chatbot over a human agent to look for answers to simple questions.

The bottom line is: if you haven’t yet implemented AI in your contact center operations, it’s just about time to upgrade your contact center tech stack.

Recommended reading: Contact Center Industry Trends for 2025 and Beyond

Stay Ahead of the Trends with VoiceSpin’s AI-first Contact Center Software Solutions

Being in the industry for over 15 years, at VoiceSpin, we truly believe that AI will completely transform the contact center industry in the near future – and we’re already witnessing this transformation right now. 

From automating manual tasks and improving CX to optimizing the QA process and preventing customer churn – AI is bound to bring massive benefits to contact centers and improve operations at every level. That’s why we’ve been building AI-powered contact solutions even before AI became mainstream. Our key offerings include:

• AI predictive dialer: Our AI predictive dialer uses AI and Machine Learning algorithms to intelligently score and prioritize your leads and connect them to the best-suited sales reps to help you increase the efficiency of your outbound calling campaigns and maximize your conversions.

• AI speech analytics: VoiceSpin’s AI speech analyzer can monitor and analyze 100% of your calls and help you automate your entire QA process. Assess the quality of customer interactions and save your QA team hours of manual work while also ensuring compliance with keyword detection and real-time alerts.

• AI call summarization: With AI-generated call summaries (that include key points, call outcomes, action items, and other insights), you can easily review customer calls without having to read the entire call transcripts or listen to call recordings for more efficient and personalized follow-ups.

• AI Messaging: AI Messaging allows you to integrate multiple digital communication channels (including email, live chat, social media, and WhatsApp) into one platform and manage customer interactions across all touchpoints from a single omnichannel inbox, enabling your reps to deliver a seamless CX.

• AI reply suggestions: Our gen AI engine empowers your team to respond to customer inquiries faster and more effectively by improving their replies or generating them from scratch based on the context of the interaction, saving your reps time and effort and reducing your average handling times.

• AI chatbots: By integrating VoiceSpin’s AI chatbot, you can deliver support 24/7 and enable your customers to get answers to their questions and resolve basic issues independently while freeing up your support team to focus on higher-value activities and those complex issues that require a human touch.

Book a no-obligation demo call now to learn more about VoiceSpin’s AI contact center software solutions and how we leverage generative AI and other AI technologies to help businesses automate processes, improve efficiency, enhance customer service, and ultimately win more sales.