Optimizing call center performance with gen AI

CXReview (link resides outside of ibm.com) is a ready-to-use conversation analytics platform for quality control, compliance management and powerful customer insights. “Essentially, what we do is we help our clients bring cutting-edge technology into their call center operations so that they can help their agents perform and deliver an excellent customer experience,” explains Jay Patel, Voice AI Specialist at CXReview. The firm and its clients work with organizations across a range of industries, from retail to government, to deliver excellent call center services.

“Call centers often face challenges related to quality and compliance (QC) given the volume of calls they manage. We often find that only 2% of calls are reviewed for quality and compliance, as a manual QC check typically takes four times longer than the call itself,” notes Patel. Failure to adhere to quality and compliance guidelines can be extremely costly for organizations in regulated industries. Not only can it result in legal fees and fines, but it can also hurt the company’s overall position in the market and compromise the customer experience. These reasons are why CXReview’s platform aims to help call centers strengthen security and risk management as well as performance.

In a recent effort to further optimize its platform, CXReview began working with IBM Client Engineering to pilot generative AI (gen AI) with ExpertSource. ExpertSource is a client that receives 50,000 to 70,000 calls a day and needs to complete 31 checks for compliance management and quality of service per call.

“Our goal with this generative AI pilot is to make the platform even more usable to provide an even greater depth and breadth of information, which our clients can use to make decisions to improve the performance of their call centers,” says Patel. “As you explore the power of generative AI, I think you will begin to see real value that it can bring into business: not just the ability to monitor and audit calls and help check for quality and compliance, but the ability to summarize that information so that business leaders can use it to make strategic decisions,” he adds.

Previously, the firm was using traditional processes to monitor and audit calls for quality and identify instances of noncompliance. It then introduced a service using IBM Watson® Discovery, enabling a comprehensive and automated monitoring process. QC managers could now receive near real-time updates on performance and infractions and, when necessary, offer coaching to agents shortly after the call ends.

“At ExpertSource, we strive to create and sustain world class customer experience in every client interaction and, in order to achieve this, it is imperative that continuous improvement and compliance become a part of our operational culture. There are multiple tools and products in the industry to meet call monitoring needs, but we chose CXReview as their team offers customization at product stage; supported by the IBM team and platform their proposition is revolutionary and very compelling. CXReview and IBM are making phenomenal efforts and investments in making customer interactions more effective and efficient, we are delighted to be working closely with them to use gen AI for pushing the boundaries in CX.” Anil Wadhwa, CEO ExpertSource.

“With a supporting call center partner like ExpertSource, we are now looking to use IBM® watsonx.ai™ to help summarize our calls, and next to add IBM watsonx Assistant™ to make it easier for our clients to interrogate the conversation datasets CXReview houses for their call center,” says Patel. The vision is to make it very quick and easy for clients to see a summary of each call provided by the IBM watsonx.ai AI studio and then, through the chat interface powered by the IBM watsonx Assistant solution, submit questions in natural language, and receive answers about various subsets of call data.