Generative AI: Practical Applications for the Contact Center

Authors: Beth Schultz, VP of Research and Principal Analyst Not available for licensing. The last two years have ushered in a significant shift in how companies perceive the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in their workplaces, resulting in a rapid pace of adoption, especially for customer experience (CX) use cases. Generative AI has come on strong, with a sizable increase in use for CX between mid-2023 and early 2024. CX leaders who aren’t capitalizing on the opportunities generative AI provides to enhance the customer experience by streamlining interactions and resolving issues more quickly than ever while also boosting agent efficiency may soon find their companies at competitive disadvantage. As CX leaders plan for or evolve their use of generative AI, they should consider the following:

• Most companies already use AI for customer interactions, or plan to in 2024
• Most companies roundly agree that AI will impact CX, and positively so; spending increases will support AI build-up
• Generating content, whether for customers to read in self-service, marketers to use in creating customer campaigns, or agents to use during customer engagements, is a common starting place for many companies
• Generative AI has a role to play in optimizing customer experience, empowering contact center agents and supervisors, improving knowledge management, and driving up operational analysis and efficiency
• The use of AI, including generative AI, leads to measurable improvements across a wide range metrics, including average handle time, attrition, customer satisfaction ratings, and more.

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Table of Contents

• Executive Summary
• From AI to Generative AI as Business Essential
• Generative AI's Promise for CX Transformation
  • Optimizing customer experience
  • Improving the Agent Experience
  • Empowering Supervisors
  • Optimizing Knowledge Management
  • Operational Analysis and Efficiency
• Understanding AI’s Impact on Staffing
• Supporting Generative AI Initiatives
• Achieving Value and Meeting with Success
• Conclusions & Recommendations