Contact Centres Have Increased Adoption of AI, But Struggle to Capture ROI: Study

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LiveVox Holdings, a cloud-based provider of customer service and digital engagement tools, released the results of a study conducted by Forrester Consulting to identify the key use cases and challenges when deploying AI technology in the contact centre.

The study, entitled “Contact Centres and AI: Sounds Like You Need Help Full Benefits” surveyed 315 IT and operations leaders responsible for AI contact centre technology and found that while AI technology adoption within the contact centre has increased and resulted in improved customer experience (CX), measurable ROI has been delayed by a number of significant challenges.

The top-ranked obstacles preventing contact centres from achieving ROI from AI technology investments include the high cost of implementation (43 per cent -top three rank), not having access to necessary customer data (40 per cent), and a lack of skilled in-house staff (38 per cent). Additional findings include:

• AI Adoption is Well Underway. On average, executives report that they are using three AI tools in their contact centres today, with a quarter of respondents reporting use of more than four. Even so, only about half are using chatbots, AI virtual agents, real-time speech and text analytics, and agent assist. Overall, by wide margins, contact centres with 100 to 250 agents lead the way in adoption of AI and are using a range of tools including robotic process automation, chatbots, and virtual agents.
• Delays During Initial Deployment and Routine Updates are Widespread. Over 50 per cent of contact centre decision-makers say they are unable to make the changes needed to machine learning (ML) models and AI tools because they depend on vendors and lack the staff and expertise to do so themselves. Additionally, high implementation costs, limited data access, and the need for integration with legacy CRMs slow down initial deployment for 40 per cent of firms.
• High Expectations, Low Measurable ROI. Although many contact centre leaders believe AI tools will raise both customer and agent satisfaction, fewer than half of respondents experienced benefits from implementing AI tools. However, 80 per cent still agree that a pre-integrated AI solution could provide greater flexibility to deploy, test, and change applications quickly.

“The adoption of AI within contact centers remains both the largest potential benefit and biggest challenge to delivering an exceptional agent and customer experience,” said Louis Summe, CEO and co-founder, LiveVox.

“In order to remove the barriers around AI adoption and implementation, contact centres need to partner with technology companies that understand the application of practical AI and how the technology can be seamlessly integrated within agents’ workflows. AI is not a silver bullet; the technology must be easy to implement and manage, informed by data, supported by informed people, and consistently applied throughout the customer journey to deliver tangible, measurable ROI.”