AI Contact Center vs Traditional Contact Center: A Complete Comparison

The world of contact centers is changing rapidly. As customer expectations continue to rise and businesses feel pressure to reduce costs, automated solutions are replacing traditional contact center environments.

AI contact center solutions drive automation deeper into workflows to accomplish customer service tasks faster and at scale. In this ultimate guide, we’ll examine how traditional contact centers compare with AI-powered models and explore the top benefits that contact center automation can provide.

Let’s get started!

AI Contact Center vs Traditional Contact Center

Traditional Contact Center Defined

Traditional contact centers primarily refer to operations that rely on a human workforce to manually service customers via phone or digital channels such as email and live chat. Agents use outdated technologies such as IVRs, basic ticketing systems, and unstructured knowledge bases.

Here are some major components of traditional contact centers:

• Manual call/chat resolution by live agents
• Routing customer inquiries by phone number or digital channel instead of intent-based routing
• Workforce management through shift-based scheduling
• Legacy customer databases and disintegrated tech stacks
• Limited opportunity for automation or artificial intelligence

Limitations of Traditional Contact Centers

Although traditional contact centers form the nucleus of most CX operations today, many organizations struggle with the following common challenges:

• High costs to maintain large teams of agents
• Lengthy training cycles and agent turnover
• Inability to scale up for spikes in demand
• Poor and inconsistent customer experience
• Slow response times and longer wait intervals

However, thanks to advancements in machine learning and automation, modern contact centers are beginning to embed AI throughout the contact center value chain.

What is an AI Contact Center?

An AI contact center uses artificial intelligence, intelligent automation, and machine learning to resolve customer engagements without human intervention. From simple tasks all the way to complex queries, businesses are automating work across the contact center with AI contact center solutions.

Important Characteristics of AI Contact Centers

AI contact centers go beyond traditional automation by providing the following capabilities:

• Autonomous AI agents
• Automated responses in real-time
• Predictive intent recognition
• Intelligent orchestration across channels
• 24/7 customer service without manual staffing

Combining these functionalities allows AI contact centers to deliver intelligent contact center solutions that serve customers in a proactive and outcome-based manner.

At its core, traditional contact centers are built around people and existing technologies. When you integrate AI into your contact center, you simplify your tech stack with a composable architecture that will give you faster resolutions at a fraction of the cost.

10 Benefits of Contact Center Automation

To help you better understand what AI contact centers have to offer, here are 10 benefits of contact center automation:

1. Quicker response times: Automated AI responds to thousands of requests at once and provides near-instantaneous answers.
2. Available 24/7: Autonomous AI doesn’t require shift changes and can handle customer requests day or night.
3. Lower operational costs: You won’t have to invest as much on manpower when AI is handling services.
   Also read: Why AI-native Contact Centers Will Replace AI-enhanced Ones (Faster Than You Think)

4. Greater first-contact resolution: AI agents utilize contextual info and knowledge bases to provide better resolution the first time.
5. Increased scalability: Digital contact centers can easily scale on demand to meet higher interaction volumes.
6. Hyper-personalization: Intelligent contact centers can analyze customer data in real time to deliver personalized responses and recommended next steps.
7. Better employee experience: AI contact centers free up time for your employees to focus on value-added services and higher-level problem-solving.
8. Consistent experience: AI interacts with customers the same way every single time (unlike humans!).
9. Real-time reporting: Track important KPIs with advanced dashboards that provide managerial oversight.
10. Omnichannel automation: AI contact center solutions allow you to automate voice, chat, email, SMS, and digital experiences all from a single engine.

These benefits work together to revolutionize the way contact centers operate for both employees and customers. By unlocking powerful AI capabilities, your business can enjoy a higher ROI and happier customers.

Intelligent Contact Center Solutions: What Makes Them Unique?

Ok, so what makes an intelligent contact center different from your basic automation use cases? Here are a few things to consider.

1. Self-learning Autonomous AI Agents

Artificial intelligence tools have come a long way since the development of simple rule-based chatbots. Intelligent autonomous AI agents can perform full work items from start to finish. They can analyze customer intent, complete tasks, and even trigger human escalations if necessary.

Plus, these types of agents continue to learn from interactions across all channels.

2. Omnichannel Intelligent Orchestration

Traditional contact centers silo data by channel. Whether it’s email, live chat, phone, or SMS, humans have to pick up the tickets and resolve the issue. Intelligent contact center solutions break down these silos by weaving automated workflows throughout channels.

This creates a cohesive experience for the customer and prevents loss of context.

3. Outcome-based Pricing

AI contact center platforms are shifting from hourly pricing to outcome-based metrics. This means you’ll be paying for resolution rates and customer satisfaction instead of the number of agents and time spent logged in.

4. Human-in-the-loop

Many advanced contact center platforms also allow humans to remain in the loop of certain tasks. Rather than replacing your workforce, AI empowers agents to handle more nuanced and complex issues.

5. Empathy and Reasoning

Most chatbots are rule-based, meaning they lack the ability to truly understand tone and display empathy. Emotional AI is another benefit of intelligent contact center solutions. Reasoning technology allows AI to mimic human emotions during interactions.

Use Cases Leveraging AI Contact Centers

Here are some practical examples of how companies are implementing AI contact centers today:

• Banking/Financial Services: Automate common FAQs like balance inquiries, fraud alerts, and compliant escalations.
• Insurance: Streamline claims processing, coverage questions, and loss reports.
• Telecom/Utilities: Multilingual virtual agents can lighten the load for common plan changes, outage reports, and billing concerns.
• Healthcare: From appointment booking to benefits verification and even real-time appointment updates.

Challenges with Intelligent Automation Adoption

While there are many benefits to AI contact centers, some enterprises face the following challenges when migrating from traditional environments.

• Integration into Existing Legacy Systems: Older contact center systems may require API-led connectivity.
• Data Quality: Poor data quality can lead to inaccurate AI-based decision- Learn how to establish proper data governance.
• Balancing AI and Human Effort: Identifying which tasks should be reserved for your contact center employees can be tricky.
• Ethical and AI Compliance: As with all AI use cases, it’s important to develop and maintain ethical AI. This includes privacy, security, and unbiased decision-making.

How Hexaware’s Intelligent Contact Center Solutions Can Help

Hexaware specializes in providing enterprises with AI-native contact center solutions. Using our Agentverse™ solution, we’re able to deliver autonomous agents that can drive measurable outcomes for your business.

Hexaware Agentverse™ for CX

Agentverse™ for CX is Hexaware’s AI-first contact center solution that shifts the focus from contact routing to intelligent resolution. Here are some key features of our intelligent contact center platform:

• Intelligent 24/7, multilingual customer support
• Omnichannel orchestration
• Outcome-based performance model
• Optional human-in-the-loop functionality

Say goodbye to legacy tech stacks and hello to a simplified contact center with Agentverse™ for CX. Our digital contact center solutions allow you to increase agility across the enterprise while empowering both your customers and employees.

Future Trends in AI Contact Centers

As we wrap up, here are a few trends to look out for in the future of AI contact centers:

• Predictive AI: Artificial intelligence solutions will be able to anticipate customer needs faster than ever.
• Emotion-sensitive automation: Taking empathy one step further, AI will soon understand tone and emotion to hyper-personalize engagements.
• Conversational AI: Language processing will continue to improve, making interactions more seamless in every language.
• Outcome-based pricing: Enterprises will begin to move away from pricing models based on worker utilization.

The traditional contact center landscape is changing thanks to AI and intelligent automation. As you can see from this guide, there are many benefits to replacing outdated technology with a digital contact center solution.

Want to see AI in action? Request a demo with one of our experts today.

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