Overview
Faster responses. A human touch.
We can pretty much guarantee that your customers hate Interactive Voice Response (IVR): “Press 8 if you want to speak with customer service.” You can now move past that to improve first-contact resolution, reduce hold times, smooth channel and agent handoffs, and boost agent efficiency. This is a major opportunity for competitive advantage as only 2% of contact center calls are now handled by AI (Source: Gartner). Out-of-the-box bots are not the answer, since they’re usually only able to answer simple FAQ questions.
Infused with IBM Watson® Text to Speech and IBM Watson® Speech to Text — both based on our market-leading natural language processing (NLP) — IBM Watson Assistant can deliver the benefits of AI-powered search and intelligent document processing to quickly find information in unstructured documents. The benefits of AI voice, AI voice chatbots, and NLP include increased customer and agent satisfaction, improved call resolution rates, and reduced operational costs.
Impact
Reduced cost per contained conversation
USD 6.00
A 2023 Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact™ study, commissioned by IBM, modeled a composite organization based on real client data that shows USD 6.00 saved per contained customer conversation.
Optimized call routing
USD 7.75
The same model shows USD 7.75 saved per correctly routed call with Watson Assistant. Watson Assistant gathers upfront information and efficiently routes calls to the appropriate customer service agent, helping reduce transfers and time-to-resolution.
Less time waiting
30%
DXC Technology saw 30% reduction in average call-handle times, enabling customer service representatives to provide better quality service.
Capabilities
Superior language processing
IBM is known for its leadership and expertise in AI. Watson Assistant is powered by our powerful natural language understanding (NLU) and conversational AI, which means your customers enjoy a natural conversation with a human touch, while you can rely on transcription accuracy.

Omni-channel experience
Phone implementations put the user first, not the channel. Help a caller find information or complete a task by texting or sending them to your website. SMS enables two-factor authentication, appointment confirmation, or updating contact information.

Seamless agent hand-off
Live agents see prior engagements from virtual agents at hand-off, smoothing the transition. The info is pushed to the other tools agents use to review the entire buyer journey. Your customers will appreciate not having to repeat information at every step.

Partnership
Helping you leverage CCaaS
To bring you the benefits of contact center as a service (CCaaS) we integrate Watson Assistant with the systems of CX and many other vendors. By automating, you can reduce your total cost of service, deliver answers faster, and offer more accurate routing.
Testimonial
With IBM’s wealth of experience in AI, we were able to work together to seamlessly integrate Watson Assistant into our call centers, helping us provide thousands of citizens in a matter of days with trusted, reliable information about COVID-19.
Kristine Campagna
COO of COVID Operations, Rhode Island Department of Health
Ready to build your AI virtual agents?
Footnote
All client examples cited or described are presented as illustrations of the manner in which some clients have used IBM products and the results they may have achieved. Actual environmental costs and performance characteristics will vary depending on individual client configurations and conditions. Generally expected results cannot be provided as each client's results will depend entirely on the client's systems and services ordered.