Is Real-Time Agent Assist Right for Your Contact Center?
The world of customer service changes fast. To keep up, contact centers need to mix the right people skills with the latest smart technology. One of the hottest tech tools right now is Real-Time Agent Assist.
For many companies, Real-Time Agent Assist is elevating customer service to new heights. Yet other companies who are using Real-Time Agent Assist in their contact center are finding their productivity and customer experience dropping dramatically.
Why is Real-Time Agent Assist working for some contact centers but not all? The short answer: Coaching effectiveness.
Effective coaching is key to training and growing your frontline reps. Even with the latest in AI, a contact center’s most valuable asset is its people.
While AI tools like Real-Time Agent Assist can elevate a good coaching program, it shouldn't replace it.
In this article, we’ll look at some of the pros and cons to consider when implementing Real-Time Agent Assist in your contact center, and also discuss how AI-Enabled Coaching makes a perfect compliment alongside or instead of Real-Time Agent Assist, depending on your unique contact center requirements.
If you'd like to explore further we recommend you check out our comparison of Real Time Assist, Conversation Intelligence, QA Automation, and AmplifAI
Before diving into the pros and cons, lets cover the broader definition of Real-Time Agent Assist, and Real-Time Assist tools in general.
What is Real-Time Agent Assist?
Real-Time Agent Assist is a specialized form of Real-Time Assist technology focused on supporting customer service agents in contact centers. It offers live, AI-powered guidance to agents during customer interactions, such as on-screen prompts, suggested responses, and relevant information, aiming to improve response quality, decrease handle times, and boost overall customer satisfaction.
What is Real-Time Assist?
Real-Time Assist leverages AI to provide instant, automated support across a spectrum of digital platforms. From online gaming experiences, like poker sites, to intelligent systems that offer split-second data analytics for financial traders, Real-Time Assist is used in environments where immediate, intelligent support can be the difference between success and failure.
Below is a brief comparison of common use cases and how Real-Time Assist, and Real-Time Agent Assist each handle those.
Real-Time Agent Assist is the more advanced contact center focused option.
Pros of Real-Time Agent Assist
Real-Time Agent Assist brings several key benefits to the table for contact centers.
When leveraged in combination with other contact center coaching programs, it can significantly increase overall call center productivity, by enabling agents to deliver on-brand customer experiences.
These are the pros we see as having the greatest potential impact:
Immediate Support
Real-Time Agent Assist offers contact center agents real-time support during customer interactions, using conversational intelligence to supply agents with the information or actions needed.
Onboarding Assistance
Real-Time Agent Assist speeds up the learning process with instant feedback and directions. This hands-on learning helps new agents quickly become proficient, allowing trainers to allocate more time to those who need it most.
Better Compliance
In industries with strict regulations, like financial services and healthcare, Real-Time Agent Assist acts as a safety net, providing agents with reminders to ensure adherence to rules, minimizing the risk of penalties protecting your company's integrity.
Enhanced Call Handling
With immediate assistance from Real-Time Agent Assist at their fingertips, agents can handle some calls faster, potentially increasing the volume of calls managed overall.
Cons of Real-Time Agent Assist
Real-Time Agent Assist has some incredible benefits! However, it can be easy to focus on its strengths without also considering the limitations of Real-Time Agent Assist in your contact center.
Here are a few of the cons to consider to get when deciding to implement Real-Time Agent Assist:
Limited Scope
While Real-Time Agent Assist is great for handling routine tasks, it struggles with more complex customer issues. Real-Time Agent Assist is designed for a specific set of tasks. If it's presented with something outside of those tasks, it may not be able to guide the agent to handle the situation appropriately.
Lacking Human Touch
Real-time agent assist cannot replicate the human touch. While the world of AI is improving rapidly, according to a 2024 study by Bachkirov and Kemp, these "AI Coaches" a.k.a. Real-Time Agent Assist will never be able to replace the human coach. Expecting Real-Time Agent Assist to replace your human coaches will not yield favorable results for your team.
Over-Reliant Agents
Real-Time Agent Assist may unintentionally limit an agent's learning and development. If agents become overly reliant on immediate answers, they might not develop the necessary problem-solving skills to handle complex situations independently, leading to a potential stagnation in their skills growth.
Data Privacy Concerns
As Real-Time Agent Assist processes customer interactions, there can be data privacy concerns if not handled correctly. While it might not be against any data regulations its important to consider this carefully.
Integration Challenges
Though designed to be user-friendly, Real-Time Agent Assist can only integrate so deep into your contact center analytics. AI is only as good as the data and integrations it has to work with.
Technical Issues
Since Real-Time Agent Assist operates in live customer interactions, any unexpected technical issues can have immediate and detrimental effects. Whether it fails to provide the right prompts to agents, lags in real-time or leads to device screen flicker during customer interactions, or completely stops working in the middle of a service call, technical glitches will affect service quality and decrease customer satisfaction.
Real-Time Agent Assist is Not a Replacement for Coaching
Real-Time Agent Assist although a great tool for conversational intelligence, and to assist agents during calls, it is often marketed as a contact center coaching software, or an AI Coach, which it actually isn't.
The most recent study by Bachkirova and Kemp in 2024 took aim at tools like Real-Time Agent Assist a.k.a AI Coaching:
Our conclusion is that AI ‘coaching’ does not meet these criteria. However, in considering various genres of organizational coaching along simple model-based types, we identify a number of elements in human coaching that could be augmented to various degrees by the use of AI.
Implementing Real-Time Agent Assist expecting it to resolve problems like high call center turnover, agent productivity, and improved CSAT might leave you in the group of contact centers that experienced drops in all of those areas AFTER implementing Real-Time Agent Assist.
If you have Real-Time Agent Assist implemented in your contact center and are experiencing some of the cons that we've listed, or, just want to get the most out of your implementations, there is integrations with AI-Enabled Coaching software that you should know about.
Real-Time Agent Assist and AI-Enabled Coaching
Many contact centers implemented Real-Time Agent Assist for the instant prompts and compliance training it can offer agents during live calls, and that is all they needed it for.
Others, implemented Real-Time Agent Assist thinking it could improve or enhance coaching of agents, essentially removing the human element from the coaching equation.
The latter group are the ones who will be disappointed in the results they achieve.
Leveraging a holistic call center performance management software that empowers humans with the tools, data, insights, and actions, they need to effectively manage and coach their teams is what you're looking for.
AI-Enabled Coaching software like AmplifAI fills in the gaps left by Real-Time Agent Assist, and not only is a replacement, but can also integrate with it creating an even more in-depth range of data to augment coachings.
Check out our latest deep dive comparison of Real Time Assist, Conversation Intelligence, QA Automation, and AmplifAI
We've listed a few of the drawbacks of Real-Time Agent Assist and how AI-Enabled coaching resolves these.
Limited Scope
- Real-Time Agent Assist: Struggles with non-routine, complex customer issues.
- AI-Enabled Coaching: Utilizes data from top performers to offer broad, adaptable strategies for a wide range of scenarios, enhancing agents' ability to tackle complex issues.
Lacking Human Touch
- Real-Time Agent Assist: Cannot replicate empathy or fully grasp customer emotions.
- AI-Enabled Coaching: Leverages human insights, behavior-linked actions, and speech analytics to foster genuine empathy and understanding in customer interactions.
Over-Reliant Agents
- Real-Time Agent Assist: May inhibit the development of independent problem-solving skills.
- AI-Enabled Coaching: Promotes continuous learning and development through personalized feedback, reducing over-reliance on automated prompts.
Data Privacy Concerns
- Real-Time Agent Assist: Raises concerns over customer data privacy.
- AI-Enabled Coaching: Ensures a privacy-first approach while still offering personalized, effective coaching insights.
Integration Challenges
- Real-Time Agent Assist: Can be difficult to integrate without disrupting existing workflows.
- AI-Enabled Coaching: Designed for seamless integration, enhancing rather than complicating the call center tech ecosystem.
Technical Issues
- Real-Time Agent Assist: Vulnerable to glitches that can directly affect service quality.
- AI-Enabled Coaching: Provides a reliable, stable platform that minimizes downtime and technical disruptions.
Should You Implement Real-Time Agent Assist in Your Contact Center?
Real-Time Agent Assist is invaluable at offering instant support and assisting with call quality assurance and compliance. If you need a tool that can analyze conversations in real time and offer prompts to your frontline agents during calls, then Real-Time Agent Assist could work well for you.
If you're hoping to use Real-Time Agent Assist to engage, retain, and motivate agents, improve CSAT, CX, and your overall call center productivity, you will be disappointed in the ROI of a stand alone AI Coach like Real-Time Agent Assist.
Bachkirova and Kemp left us with these thoughts to consider:
Our analysis highlights implications for various stakeholders of coaching, which includes coaches themselves, educators, buyers of coaching, professional bodies, AI developers and funding bodies, in particular. We hope they all will be less seduced by the ‘beautiful idea’ of AIC and related promises and not mislead those who are in need of real coaching.
AIC = AI Coaching
Whether you should implement Real-Time Agent Assist rests solely on how you intend on using it in your contact center and the pain points your hoping to resolve with leveraging AI in this way.
If you would like to know more about Real-Time Agent Assist and integrating within a broader performance management eco-system, or, a comparison to AI-Enabled coaching we'd be happy to walk through the pros and cons of each solution to see if its a right fit with your contact center, Schedule a comparison.
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