Avaya published a global survey of nearly 2,800 IT and business decision leaders from 17 countries which found that over 90 percent see AI as a crucial element in the digital transformation of their organization and 94 percent recognize the ability of AI to transform the performance of their contact centre.

The study also revealed that 81 percent believe failing to properly adopt artificial intelligence now will cost their company throughout the next decade. However, 42 percent of organizations admitted they are currently only 40-60 percent through their implementation of AI in the contact center.

“AI: The De Facto for Contact Center Experience” is a new research report conducted by Vanson Bourne and sponsored by Avaya, that looks at AI in the contact center, including the current status of implementation, practical implications and the benefits and challenges of AI. The global survey saw 32 percent of respondents from the Americas, 43 percent from EMEA and 25 percent from Asia Pacific.

While the overwhelming majority of respondents’ organizations are using AI within their contact centre for improving customer self-service (47 percent), resolving customer issues faster (44 percent) and predicting customer needs (41 percent), the report found that over a third of respondents are doing so via chatbots to interact with customers, considered by some to be one of the most basic forms of AI. The survey found respondents are looking to go beyond chatbots, but need help in doing so effectively.

Going Beyond Chatbots

Even though only a quarter (25 percent) of respondents’ organizations have fully implemented an AI strategy, over half (51 percent) want to expand the number of areas of their business where AI is implemented. For example, roughly 40 percent would like to predict caller intent with speech analytics and/or analyze caller emotion to optimize the experience of engaging via phone.

As AI becomes more prominent, 85 percent of decision makers cite that they will need to seek out more third-party support to fully integrate the technology into their contact centre.

“As businesses seek to deploy AI in their contact centre, they can immediately reap the rewards with greater agent productivity and efficiency, which has the additional benefit of significantly improving customer satisfaction,” said Chris McGugan, Avaya SVP, Solutions & Technology. “Anticipating customer needs and leveraging AI to better meet those needs leads to higher first contact resolution rates for customers and ultimately financial gains for the organizations effectively utilizing AI in their contact centres. Additionally, as customers transition from static matching to utilizing AI in behavioral pairing such as skills based routing or proactive outbound messaging, agents are empowered and fully contextually aware to monitor and manage the full customer journey all from a single, intuitive user interface leading to flexible, automated decision making in the future.”

Benefits of an AI Strategy

By implementing AI, 55 percent of respondents cited both a better experience for customers and increased customer satisfaction. While at least a third surveyed also noted other expected benefits such as predictive analytics, improved revenue and higher lifetime value. When it comes to developing an AI solution in-house or buying from a third party, 52 percent of respondents in all regions cited a mix of in-house and third-party development as preferable.

The full report is available now. For additional information regarding Avaya’s capabilities and assets, please visit www.avaya.com/ai-research.

About Avaya

Businesses are built on the experiences they provide, and every day millions of those experiences are built by Avaya (NYSE: AVYA). For over one hundred years, we’ve enabled organizations around the globe to win – by creating intelligent communications experiences for customers and employees. Avaya builds open, converged and innovative solutions to enhance and simplify communications and collaboration – in the cloud, on-premise or a hybrid of both. To grow your business, we’re committed to innovation, partnership, and a relentless focus on what’s next. We’re the technology company you trust to help you deliver Experiences that Matter. Visit us at www.avaya.com.