Did you know that recent research from CX Today shows that 50-75% of the total contact center operating budget is allocated to agent staffing, training, and salaries? Despite being the single largest and most important investment in the contact center, many teams are still struggling to maximize the return on their most important investment – their agents. These struggles manifest in a number of inefficiencies: lengthy ramp times, staggeringly high turnover rates, poor agent experience, and high operating costs chief among them. This is where AI copilots that offer real-time agent assist come in.
AI copilots in the contact center
AI copilots play a vital role in modern contact centers by augmenting agents’ capabilities, and in turn, enhancing productivity across various tasks and workflows. These intelligent assistants leverage AI and machine learning algorithms to analyze data, provide real-time insights, assist users in decision-making processes, and automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks. AI copilots act as veteran partners, working alongside agents to streamline processes, improve efficiency, and crucially, drive better outcomes. Agents are able to focus energy and resources on more strategic, higher-value activities – and the contact center on the whole is able to unlock new levels of productivity, innovation, and agility.
As more and more companies recognize the potential of these tools to enhance productivity and streamline operations, the market for AI copilots also gets increasingly crowded. With so many options available, companies must evaluate their choices to ensure they’re finding the right fit for their needs. Key considerations include integration capabilities with the existing tech stack, scalability, the level of customization, and data consumption and security.
What are the benefits of real-time agent assist?
There are a wide range of benefits from implementing real-time agent assist for agents in the contact center.
Let’s dig right in to the impacts felt across the organization – and how Cresta Agent Assist helps contact center teams reap these benefits:
Increased efficiency
Agents have always been tasked with a tremendous amount of after-call work – everything from summarizing the call to Agents are able to focus time and energy on the conversations and work that requires a higher degree of human-in-the-loop judgment and creativity. Since AI copilots analyze huge volumes of data, extract actionable insights, and provide real-time recommendations, agents have a lower cognitive load and are able to instead focus on upleveling their skills and improved decision making.
Cresta empowers agents with crucial capabilities, including automated note-taking, summarization, and generative composition capabilities, along with seamless CRM integrations. Agents experience a significant boost in productivity and workflow automation, resulting in reduced after-call work (ACW) and average handle time (AHT), allowing agents to handle more interactions without compromising quality.
To help visualize this, below is a digram showcasing a typical call flow, chat or voice, and how Cresta significantly reduces handle time, while making the agent significantly more effective, allowing them to concentrate on what matters most: the customer.
Real-time, effective coaching
Without implementing technology that enables real-time agent assist, supervisors can spend over 50%+ of their time listening to calls, which hinders their ability to gain a holistic view of agent performance and uncover coaching opportunities with precision and effectiveness. Disparate systems and siloed tools lead to inconsistent coaching mechanisms, hindering the development of agents and the overall team performance. Enabling the entire team with AI copilots allows for supervisors to provide timely and targeted feedback, increasing ramp time for new agents and rapid, personalized improvement in more veteran agents.
Cresta contextually analyzes conversations and presents coaching in various formats, including generative knowledge answers, hints, checklists, and suggested responses. When AI co-pilot isn’t enough, agents and supervisors can seamlessly collaborate through their user interfaces, facilitating continuous feedback and additional guidance whenever needed.
Cost savings
Operationally, implementing AI copilots and empowering agents with real-time agent assist leads to cost savings. By optimizing resource allocation, reducing manual effort and cognitive load, and streamlining manual processes, this AI-powered technology helps businesses lower costs – and importantly, funnel those savings right back into the business.
Improved agent experience
It’s no secret that contact centers experience extremely high turnover rates. The constant need for recruitment and lengthy onboarding processes drain resources in the industry, affecting productivity and profitability. Extended ramp-up periods for new agents diminish operational effectiveness. Without adequate support and guidance, new agents often struggle to meet performance expectations, leading to increased frustration, lower morale, and ultimately contributing to higher turnover rates.
By providing agents with the tools and support they need to excel in their roles, Cresta helps promote job satisfaction and reduces turnover rates. Lower turnover rates translate into cost savings associated with recruitment, onboarding, and training of new agents, as well as the retention of valuable institutional knowledge and expertise within the organization.
Elevated customer experience
Perhaps most importantly, real-time agent assist brings benefits to the customer. Agents are able to deliver much more personalized and timely interactions with customers, making for faster and more tailored calls, ultimately leading to higher customer satisfaction (CSAT) levels and increased brand loyalty.
Agent Assist:
Cresta’s unique approach to AI copilots
Cresta was founded in 2017 with the philosophy that AI should enhance rather than replace humans, emphasizing the importance of humans in the engineering feedback loop. This belief that the combination of humans and AI are greater together than what can be achieved individually is at the core of Cresta’s “agent assist” technology.
In 2018, Agent Assist Chat launched, providing chat agents with efficiency capabilities, starting with suggested responses followed by smart compose. Shortly after, Cresta launched hints capability, providing chat agents with real-time AI guidance, and from there, the dedication to innovation grew, expanding agent assist into voice channels. All of this innovation was created with the ultimate mission in mind: to make agents not only efficient but effective.
But what makes Cresta’s real-time agent assist approach so innovative and unique from traditional AI copilots out there? Here’s how we can help break it down:
| Traditional AI Co-Pilots | Cresta’s Approach |
| Relies heavily on basic keywords for understanding conversations | Uses advanced natural language understanding to grasp complex statements, emotions, and sentiment |
| Uses generic models with limited customization | Employs custom-built models tailored to the unique attributes of each business |
| Applies a uniform approach to all businesses | Offers personalized AI solutions crafted to the specific needs of each enterprise |
| Struggles to understand nuanced context | Provides deep contextual insights, improving the relevance and accuracy of interactions |
| Generates basic reports without actionable tools | Delivers real-time transcriptions and insights allowing supervisors and to take action immediately with Cresta Opera |
| Typically integrates with a single tool or dataset | Seamlessly integrates into existing tech stacks, including CRMs, cloud & on-premise contact center telephony, and more |
| Provides basic auto-completion features | Enhances agent efficiency with advanced features like generative responses, automated note-taking, and real-time behavioral guidance |
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Real-time agent assist solutions offer a wide array of benefits – from reduced handle times and improved customer satisfaction to cost reduction and enhanced agent efficiency. Enabling your team with this technology allows the entire organization to stay agile and responsive in the fast-paced contact center environment, adapting to ever-changing customer needs and market dynamics. To learn how you can transform your contact center and your agents’ performance, please reach out and schedule a personalized demo to see Cresta Agent Assist in action!
