The pressure is rising for contact center operators to provide a high-quality personalized experience for their customers and for technology providers to make it easier for operators to provide this level of service. This pressure has been exacerbated by the need to address a shortage of human agents in contact centers as omnichannel volumes continued to increase. Enterprises have used Virtual Agents in the contact center to help respond to these pressures and needs. Virtual Agents are being used to handle repeatable inquiries (e.g., commonly asked questions) and, over time, can be used to handle increasingly more complex tasks. Today advances in AI technology are giving rise to an additional intelligent agent in the contact center:

Copilots. Copilots can effectively fill the gaps in agent resources such as staffing, time, and even knowledge by working alongside human agents. Because they can understand a customer’s intent in real time, they can act as a personal coach and guide human agents to help them resolve customer problems faster. They can also assist supervisors in better training and managing their teams. Human agents will be freed up from repetitive tasks, get access to the knowledge they need faster, and devote their limited resources to the most pressing support or employee issues. Copilots will also be valuable when onboarding or training new human agents, especially as remote onboarding is increasingly common. With Copilots, new human agents can become proficient much faster and avoid rookie mistakes, thanks to having a real-time digital coach.