Now In Progress: Agent Transformation

Authors: Robin Gareiss, CEO and Principal Analyst

Artificial intelligence (AI) is profoundly changing many areas of customer experience, from self-service capabilities to analytics and the role of agents. AI for the latter is becoming a business mandate, with CX leaders eyeing a balance between revenue growth, efficiency boosts, and customer satisfaction improvements.

AI impacts agents in a few measurable ways:

• AI virtual agents automate simple (and in some cases, complex) customer interactions, offloading workloads.
• AI agent assist helps agents resolve customer issues and/or close sales more quickly and successfully.
• AI-enabled analytics delivers customer feedback to agents in the form of coaching so they can continuously improve.

Company responses to these shifts are dramatically different. On one end of the spectrum, CX leaders are focusing on operational efficiencies and reducing staff as AI does its thing. On the other end, CX leaders capitalize on the opportunities AI presents by hiring more agents who can not only serve customers but sell to them.

Table of Contents

• The Transforming Agent
• Virtual Agents Deliver Full Automation
  • Virtual Agents, Defined
  • Virtual Agents Making Impact
• Agent Assist, or Copilot, Supercharges Agents
  • Revenue Generation Trumps Cost Savings
• Analytics Plays a Bigger Role for Agent Transformation
• Are Agents Getting Too Effective?
• AI’s Priority in CX Spending
• Conclusions and Recommendations