Call Centers Get Smarter — Thanks To AI

Call centers are experiencing increasingly greater volumes, with more than 55 billion agent-assisted calls being handled each year in the U.S. alone. Any business with a call center needs an efficient way to respond to this high volume of customer inquiries. To maximize call centers’ capabilities and efficiency, operators are turning to a host of tools and technologies, including voice recognition and artificial intelligence (AI).

In the May “Call Center Commerce Tracker,” PYMNTS explores the latest developments in the call center space, including technological innovations, security concerns, and partnerships between call center operators and providers.

Developments from Around the Call Center World

Voice recognition is fast gaining popularity in the call center space as providers work to up their security defenses. One such player turning to voice-recognition technology is Sensory, which recently launched TrulyNatural, a native voice-recognition platform.

The use of AI is also becoming more widespread for both voice-based and text-based solutions. Brazilian IT service provider Stefanini has developed a chatbot named DAVI for Taiwanese networking equipment manufacturer D-Link, which is intended to automate a portion of D-Link’s customer service operations, answering a range of technical questions from customers.

Despite these new innovations, call centers continue to face difficulties, and are often targeted by fraudsters. In one such case, Singapore extradited Hitesh Madhubhai Patel of India to the U.S. to face justice for a call center scam that swindled millions of dollars out of American victims. Patel allegedly ran the HGlobal call center based in India, which scammed thousands of immigrants living in the U.S. Fraudsters called, posing as American tax or immigration officials, and threatened immigrants with arrest or deportation if they did not send money to accomplices in the U.S.

For more on these and other call center news items, download this month’s Tracker.

How AI is Making Call Centers Smarter

Call centers are facing a call-surge crisis, with more than 55 billion contacts made each year. According to Paul Lasserre, VP of product management and AI at Genesys, call centers have two options to meet the challenge: hire more workers or upgrade their existing infrastructures.

In this month’s feature story, Lasserre discussed how Genesys partnered with Google Cloud to provide an AI-based solution to address the growing tide of calls without sacrificing customer satisfaction. Find the rest of the feature story in the Tracker.

About the Tracker

The “Call Center Commerce Tracker” serves as a monthly framework for the space, providing coverage of the most recent call center commerce news and trends. The Tracker also includes a provider directory that highlights the key players comprising the call center ecosystem.