The Era of Contact Center AI Copilots

ChatGPT from OpenAI continues to have an impact in all industries, as artificial intelligence (AI) makes a leap in capabilities that render it more human-like. These popular technologies have created widespread awareness of the power of large language models (LLMs) and generative AI - and what they can do for contact centers and customer experience, in particular.

Any transformative technology comes with early pitfalls and, in the case of LLMs and generative AI, hallucinations, data rights and privacy are causing businesses to proceed with caution. These have contributed to concerns that the technology isn't ready for widespread, autonomous business use.

Capabilities keep improving as bots evolve to virtual agents using LLMs and generative AI to handle more tasks with 24/7 coverage and to free up and scale your contact center workforce for more complex workloads. However, more time and technology guardrails are needed for pure, autonomous virtual agent trust and success.

But now AI copilots have arrived and they're making a leap forward in many human-assisted use cases.

The Advantages of Agent Copilots

Agent copilots offer a great opportunity to take all the functionality of LLMs and use that to help human agents do their jobs more consistently, effectively and efficiently.

Contact center copilots leverage generative AI to provide dynamic, precise and personalized support, moving beyond rigid, scripted responses. This flexibility enables copilots to help agents handle complex tasks, continuously improve through ongoing learning, and deliver increasingly accurate and relevant solutions.

Their ability to integrate across multiple platforms and applications further enhances their utility. And that makes them versatile and effective for contact center agents.

Because agent copilots are integrated with advanced AI functionality, they offer real-time, context-aware assistance. This enhances agent productivity by proactively predicting and seamlessly integrating with user workflows.

Agent copilots provide proactive knowledge and actions and use context to personalize responses based on individual preferences. Not only do they save time, but they allow agents to offer more consistent service to customers.

Copilots require a human in the loop to review and approve their work, significantly reducing the risk of providing incorrect information. You can also use a compliance bot to monitor and ensure accuracy.

For example, when a customer calls with a question about how to do something with a product, even a new agent with limited expertise can assist effectively with a copilot. The agent copilot accurately understands the customer's intent and has access to the latest information from the full knowledge base.

Here are some ways agent copilots and humans work together to benefit the contact center.

Streamline after-call work

When an agent takes a customer call, they are expected to take notes throughout the conversation, capturing the nature of the inquiry and outlining the next steps.

After the call, agents typically engage in after-call work, initiating the promised processes and following up according to a workflow that can take several minutes. This process often relies on the agent's memory of details and their individual interpretation.

Agent copilots streamline these tasks by automatically summarizing the call, allowing agents to focus on the conversation rather than taking notes. It understands the workflows and customer intents, incorporating them into the summary and initiating the appropriate actions. For example, it might recommend, "When opening this case, follow steps X, Y, and Z." More critically, the copilot can integrate directly into the workflow, passing on key intents from the conversation and advising the agent on any remaining details needed to complete the process - all while the customer is still on the line.

More consistent and accurate wrap-up codes

Wrap-up codes applied at the end of an interaction categorize the nature and outcome of the call. They help business administrators analyze call patterns, assess agent performance and identify common customer issues. These codes also offer insights into frequent reasons for contact, the effectiveness of call resolutions and areas that need improvement. Agents are responsible for selecting these codes manually.

Business administrators often want to use a wide range of wrap-up codes - ideally categorizing callers into hundreds of segments. However, asking an agent to sift through hundreds of options at the end of a call is impractical, leading to the most popular codes being selected more frequently.

With an agent copilot, wrap codes can be automatically selected based on the copilot's understanding of the interaction. This allows administrators to use as many codes as they need. The copilot generates a short list of the most relevant codes, or even a single code, which the agent can either accept or adjust as needed.

In addition to saving agents' time, there's huge benefit from more accurate reporting, consistency and lack of bias.

Recommend next-best actions

Genesys Cloud™ Agent Copilot uses advanced AI capabilities to optimize the next-best action by accurately interpreting user intent and presenting the most appropriate action to the agent. Administrators can define intents either by using a natural language understanding (NLU) model or by describing the intents manually. A large language model will then map these inputs to the corresponding intents.

Once the intent is identified, administrators can configure it to trigger a variety of actions, such as executing a specific action based on the data, launching a script or form, accessing a knowledge article or integrating with a third-party application accessible from the agent desktop.

One key advantage of the Genesys engine is its ability to extract entities, allowing us to pre-populate the next best action with relevant data. Whether it's customer details or product information, this enriched data enhances the precision and effectiveness of the next best offer generated by the AI-driven systems.

Training Considerations for Agent Copilots

Agent copilots are trained on comprehensive business data, reducing the need for traditional, extensive training for human agents. Rather than requiring agents to memorize large amounts of information, the copilots act as "knowledge managers." They offer real-time guidance and support.

This allows agents to learn and access information as needed. Additionally, it streamlines the learning process and improves efficiency.

Agent copilots are also trained on an organization's unique customer data, rather than general internet data. They use real conversations between the company and its customers.

As agents provide information on products, processes or customer concerns, the copilot leverages transcriptions of these interactions to continually refine and enhance its models, ensuring it delivers relevant and accurate support.

This approach minimizes hallucinations by relying on verified, reliable data instead of questionable internet sources. With hundreds or thousands of customer interactions happening daily, the copilot continually updates and refines its insights, ensuring that agents access increasingly precise and accurate information.

Lastly, agent copilots can be trained using an organization's unique knowledge bases, which typically contain comprehensive public and private information about the business and its products, including how they function. Imagine transforming all this information within a knowledge base into a contact center copilot that augments agent support, offering instant access to detailed and accurate knowledge.

The Next Logical Step for Contact Center Copilots

Copilots deliver immediate results, are easy to deploy and carry minimal risk. They shorten handle times, allowing fewer agents to manage more calls effectively. Additionally, anecdotal evidence shows that agents are highly satisfied with the performance boost they receive from copilot support.

If your current solution for assisting agents falls short, consider switching to a platform with built-in copilot capabilities. With Genesys Cloud, you can maximize the power of AI through a seamlessly integrated experience orchestration platform, enhancing both agent performance and customer experience.

See Genesys Cloud Agent Copilot in action. Book a demo today.

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