The Revolution of AI in the Call Center: Convoso and Balto Explore AI’s Impact

All year, it’s been impossible to escape talk of AI. Now, the revolution is coming to the call center.

Convoso hosted a recent webinar, “The Revolution of AI in the Call Center,” to dig into all of the latest AI-related developments—and explore how this game-changing technology is reshaping call centers. 

The discussion, hosted by Convoso Senior Director of Product Marketing, Daniel Foppen, featured Balto CEO Marc Bernstein and Convoso Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer Bobby Hakimi. 

In a wide-ranging, fast-paced conversation, the trio covered everything from what’s behind the hype of ChatGPT to how conversational AI tools are driving better coaching and strategies. 

To help you keep up with the pace of change, we’ve compiled highlights of the webinar here. Tune into the video below to watch this important conversation in full.

Why is there so much excitement about AI?

“I think for the first time we actually have the ability to feed AI information. We can ask questions and it can respond. Before, we could give it text or certain information, and it could kind of make sense of it.” 

Now that we can converse with AI, we can begin to see the huge potential for this technology, said Hakimi: “It can solve math problems and write code, but this is just the beginning. We’re in 2023, imagine what we’re going to have in just the next year or two.”

Bernstein points to a single source for all of the excitement behind AI today: ChatGPT. “That’s it. ChatGPT was the catalyst; it was the thing that took AI from something that enterprise buyers and teams were poking around in and interested in into something that every single company is talking about with their boards, saying ‘We need an AI strategy.’”

ChatGPT did two things to drive so much excitement, according to Bernstein:

• It proved that large language models (LLMs) have practical value. Before ChatGPT, these systems showed some promise. But ChatGPT has shown that you can use AI to intuitively and conversationally interface with giant swaths of data.
• It democratized AI. ChatGPT has put the power of AI in the hands of the individual. No longer do you need teams of engineers and data scientists—or several months of work—to build and use AI-driven tools.

Will AI live up to the hype?

Playing devil’s advocate, Foppen pointed to the recent rise and fall of hype around Web3 applications. He asked Hakimi whether AI might similarly come and go as Web3 did. Here’s what he had to say:

“I don’t think that’s going to happen. AI really assists people and companies to do things more efficiently. We have all kinds of automation around us—this is just going to increase that and make these things more efficient. I think we’re way too creative…AI is going to reduce the time that humans spend on tedious tasks and free up that time to be creative and solve a lot of bigger problems in the world.”

– Bobby Hakimi

The Impact of AI in the Outbound Call Center

The panelists went in-depth on how AI is changing life at outbound call centers. During the discussion, Bernstein zeroed in on AI’s ability to take call recording, QA, and performance analysis to new heights. 

Not only is recording and analyzing call transcripts no longer something teams can only do for just some of their calls, but managers and decision-makers can much more quickly analyze their agent behavior across every single call at their call center. And they can do so using a simple phrase: “Show me all of my calls where…”

Tools like BaltoGPT enable natural language-based interaction with their call data. Instead of slowly sifting through call transcripts for hard-won insights, a manager can ask AI to identify specific trends in their team’s calls or streamline coaching by asking it to provide feedback on a single agent interaction. 

At the end of the day, this advance in AI is all about saving time.

“What used to take five steps now takes one. It used to take a whole bunch of filters and a really good knowledge of speech analytics, programming, and keywords. Now you just type in a box, ‘Show me the calls where this happened.’”

– Marc Bernstein

Call Center AI is Just Scratching the Surface

The sky’s the limit for this sort of conversational interaction, according to Bobby Hakimi. For instance, in addition to accelerating coaching and feedback, this sort of analysis can help teams fine-tune their approach before and during calls, too:

“You can even ask [an AI] for suggestions like ‘What is the best time to call based on my success rate, sales, conversion, or customer sentiment?’…All of that is information the AI can consume and give an answer back to you.”

Already, these capabilities and others are driving incredible improvements for call centers trying to get ahead of the curve. Soon, he said, those who fail to stay current with this game-changing technology will be at a significant disadvantage as teams coach their teams faster, improve their strategies, and scale their operations with the help of conversational AI:

“You can get very intelligent information that helps you make better decisions and optimize your contact center. And I think if you don’t have that edge very soon, you’re going to be left behind.”

Watch the Full Webinar and Get Started with Contact Center AI

This conversation was packed with unique perspectives and expert insights on so many aspects of AI’s growing influence on the contact center industry. Watch the full video to hear Hakimi, Bernstein, and Foppen dig into other topics like:

• Will AI replace call center agents?
• How AI can provide real-time guidance to agents
• How conversational AI can automate repetitive tasks and conversations
• Best practices for exploring AI solutions and getting started with implementation

Want to learn how you can get started with Voso.ai? Learn how our conversational AI solution can help you talk to more of your prospects. Lots more.