A newly released report commissioned by Five9 shows that 73 percent of contact centers now use AI tools in their operations.
Compare this to just 19.3 percent in 2019, and take up of AI has almost quadrupled.
Five9 found that organizations are using AI-powered chatbots to handle mundane, repetitive tasks, and to help agents during live interactions through functions like recommending next-best actions and offering real-time coaching.
Indeed, the survey found that of the companies using AI, 90 percent are doing so to assist agents during direct customer interactions.
Five9 pointed out that the high use of conversational AI was surprising, given that it’s considered an advanced capability, relying on technologies like natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) to operate.
In addition, the vendor noted that respondents likely included basic intelligent voice response (IVR) systems in their answers, which don’t rely on advanced NLP or ML algorithms.
Yet adoption of NLP and ML driven technologies – alongside automation and analytics – will likely continue to become cornerstone features of the modern contact center.
Testament to this, the study finds that of the 27 percent of contact centers not currently using AI, more than a third plan to do in the next 12 months.
European companies in particular seem interested, with 53% of those not currently using AI intending to adopt it in the next year.
Less than Five9 percent of respondents had no plans of integrating AI into their contact center operations.
Participants in the survey included organizations with more than 250 employees in various industries, such as banking, technology, and healthcare.
Almost half of the enterprises surveyed had revenues greater than $1 billion and over half had more than 2,500 employees.
U.S. companies made up half of the participants, with European companies taking up the rest.
Uncover more thought-provoking insights from the Five9 study by reading our article: 90% of Contact Centres are Focusing More on Agent Experience.
