Contact centres (call centres here in the UK) are set to experience a significant shift as AI-powered products like ChatGPT lead to a reduction in human agents, according to a recent report by Wedbush Securities.
The investment bank's study, based on a conversation with an industry expert, suggests that contact centre solutions businesses may need to adopt new metrics for pricing their solutions, focusing on seat count and transactions or conversations.
The report highlighted that while AI-powered tools have been utilised in the contact centre industry for some time, they have failed to meet expectations due to implementation difficulties. ChatGPT, a pre-trained AI model, has the potential to outperform previous models, making it more functional and easier to deploy.
Despite the decrease in human agent seats, spending on contact centre solutions has risen. Lower spending on agent seats is offset by increased spending on "ports" for self-service and AI-powered features. This trend indicates that contact centres are shifting toward more automated platforms to handle customer interactions.
AI adoption in contact centres has typically involved proprietary models developed by vendors, as well as cloud vendor offerings such as Google DialogFlow and Amazon Lex.
AI-powered tools serve three main functions: Self Service (voice self-service agents or chatbots), Agent Assist (tools that supplement agents during customer conversations), and Post Call Analytics (tools that analyse trends, sentiment, and summarise conversations).
The introduction of ChatGPT is expected to improve the customer experience in these areas, offering an exciting opportunity for contact centres.
However, the report suggests that in-house AI models may still be necessary for certain industries, such as healthcare, where complex and regulated conversations take place.
In terms of data security and privacy concerns, the industry expert explained that training voice bots and chatbots do not require sensitive data, and customers can access ChatGPT through Microsoft's Azure OpenAI Service for a secure experience.
Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI could potentially provide a competitive advantage in this space. However, the expert noted that customers with complex contact centre requirements are more likely to choose vendors with contact centre expertise over tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon, or Google.
As the contact centre industry evolves with the introduction of AI solutions like ChatGPT, vendors will need to be increasingly creative in their pricing models and strategies to stay competitive in the market.