Agent Assist: How it Works, Key Features, and Top Providers

Agent Assist is just one of the many transformative advancements businesses are adopting as they turn to AI-powered solutions to support their agents in real time while building stronger customer interactions. Agent Assist takes conversations between agents and customers and extracts context to aid agents giving them instant access to relevant information, next-best actions, and even responses.

Whether your contact center team does customer support, sales, or technical support, Agent Assist is here to bridge the gap between the human touch and the efficiency of artificial intelligence (AI). In this guide, we’ll look into how Agent Assist works, the key benefits it provides, essential features to look for, real world use cases, and the leaders in the space.

• What is Agent Assist?
• How it Works
• Key Benefits
• Best Use Cases
• Top Providers
• FAQs

What is Agent Assist?

Agent Assist is an AI-powered tool that gives your contact center agents access to instant insights, on-the-fly recommendations, and case-related information. Agent Assist does not replace your agents, rather it gives them a virtual co-pilot that boosts their performance by cutting down time spent looking up details and guiding them through complex customer interactions using sentiment analysis, machine learning, and natural language processing (NLP).

Companies are investing in this powerful, time-saving tool with expenditure in the Agent Assist market expected to grow to $124.6 billion by 2034.[*] Agent Assist ensures agents have immediate access to knowledge bases, troubleshooting steps, compliance requirements, and CRM data in a non-distracting and seamless way. This technology helps your team provide customers with more personalized service with faster resolutions, making it a critical part of any modern contact center’s arsenal.

How Does Agent Assist Technology Work?

Agent Assist is made possible through the combined efforts of AI, NLP, and machine learning processes that intersect to lend support to customer service agents. It may seem complicated, but the process can be broken down into the following steps:

Capturing Data and Real Time Monitoring

Agent Assist’s effectiveness comes from continuous listening of customer interactions. This process is not limited to voice calls, information is extracted from live chats, emails, social media interactions and messaging. The omnichannel technology hones in on recognizing speech patterns and analyzing text in real time to uncover common issues, themes, and even the emotions behind customer inquiries.

Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Sentiment Analysis

Using NLP, the system will then take the collected data and parse it for meaning, context, and intent behind customer messages. Sentiment analysis takes this one step further by determining and categorizing the customer’s emotional state–whether they are satisfied, neutral, frustrated.

For instance, if a customer shows they are upset over a delay in an order delivery, Agent Assist will recognize the sentiment and tone and advise the support agent. Agent Assist can either generate an apologetic response and even offer potential solutions like expedited shipping or a refund to make things right.

AI-Enabled Analysis and Recommendations

Agent Assist speedily processes the captured conversations to cross-reference it with company-provided data sources like CRM systems, past customer conversations, product/service documentation, and existing knowledge bases. Using the results of this analysis, Agent Assist will then provide relevant responses, next best steps, and troubleshoot information to the agent through its interface.

Say a customer has a question about product warranty, Agent Assist will listen along with the agent and quickly pull up any relevant warranty details and give them to the agent to cut the time it would have taken said agent to do that manually.

Automating Workflows and Smart Suggestions

Agent Assist is not just suggesting answers, it is guiding agents through their evolving workflows, ensuring they hit the mark every interaction. This is achieved through promoting agents with compliance scripts for highly regulated industries (think finance and healthcare). This happens when it suggests appropriate upsell and cross-sell opportunities based on customer purchase history. Over time, Agent Assist gets a grasp of common issues and potential bottlenecks, providing agents with a proactive and customer-centric approach that improves long-term relationships.

Continuous Learning and Optimization

One of the most powerful elements of Agent Assist is how it truly improves over time as you provide more data and patterns for recognition. Agent Assist is a proactive and continuously improving tool that even highlights unresolved customer concerns from previous interactions to help assert continuity and show customers that you care about their case.

Over time, you can expect Agent Assist to learn the most effective responses to specific and repetitive customer inquiries, patterns in customer behavior that signal trends, and even how to tailor recommendations on an individual basis per agent.

Key Benefits of Agent Assist Technology

79% of agents believe having an AI co-pilot enhances their ability to tackle customer inquiries.[*]

Agent Assist technology provides many advantages for customer service agents, sales representatives, and tech support teams. Here are a few examples:

Faster Response Times and Improved Efficiency

Agent Assist significantly cuts down on your agents’ average handling time (AHT). A recent study showed that AI Agent Assist cuts down AHT by roughly 66%.[*] This is achieved by making tedious tasks like navigating knowledge bases or manually searching for answers a thing of the past. Instead, agents get AI-generated suggestions and the information they need instantly during live interactions.

Improved Accuracy and Consistency

By giving agents response suggestions and retrieving knowledge instantly, Agent Assist ensures customers get accurate and complete information. For industries with strict compliance requirements (like finance, insurance, and healthcare), miscommunication leads to regulatory issues. Particularly in the finance sector, 68% of firms say integrating AI in risk and compliance is a necessity.[*]

Reduced Agent Workloads and Burnout

63% of call center agents experience high burnout rates.[*] Customer service agents deal with high call volumes, complicated and emotional customer inquiries, and repetitive tasks which all contribute to burnout. Agent Assist is here to help shoulder the burden by automating routine processes, providing smarter workflows, and taking care of manual knowledge retrieval tasks. By co-piloting agents and reducing the overall load, agents can refocus their efforts on higher-value tasks and handle customers in more meaningful and empathetic ways.

Improved Customer Experience and Personalization

Agent Assist gives agents the chance to personalize customer interactions more effectively. 71% of customers expect personalization in their interactions with a business, and 76% of them will switch providers if dissatisfied.[*] Agent Assist will retrieve past customer interactions, analyze purchase history and previous preferences to give agents tailored responses and anticipate customer needs ahead of time. This personalized approach encourages better customer relationships leading to higher satisfaction and loyalty rates.

Cost Savings and Better ROI

Agent Assist reduces overall agent training time and greatly reduces the errors your agents could be making during interactions which in the long run leads to significant cost savings. Faster resolutions means lower operational costs, while increased customer satisfaction leads to stronger retention rates and chances for upselling and crossselling. A case study found that Agent Assist in just two months reduced agent errors by as much as 80%, cut AHT by up to 20%, and even slashed agent onboarding time by half.[*]

Best Use Cases for Agent Assist Technology

Agent Assist is a versatile tool that supports a wide gamut of industries and different customer service situations. Here’s a look into some of the most valuable applications:

Customer Support and Troubleshooting

In customer support and tech support, Agent Assist proves instant troubleshooting guidance. For instance, if a customer reports a connection issue with their internet service, Agent Assist will provide a structured diagnostic sequence to aid the agent through the steps of restoring service. On top of that, if a past interaction reveals a recurring issue, Agent Assist can provide a more advanced solution or help escalate the case.

Sales and Upselling in Contact Centers

Agent Assist identifies upselling and cross-selling opportunities by taking in customer purchase history, behavior, and preferences. For example, say a customer is calling about a potential smartphone upgrade, Agent Assist can search for and suggest any relevant accessories or promotions based on the customer's current device and their past buying patterns. It can also alert agents of limited time offers that fit the customer’s interests, increasing the chances of a successful upsell.

Healthcare and Insurance

In highly regulated industries like insurance and healthcare, Agent Assist ensures accuracy and compliance as it guides agents through the more complex customer interactions. Agent Assist can instantly retrieve policy details and provide clear and compliant explanations when a patient calls to check coverage on medical procedures. Agent Assist streamlines interactions for insurance claims processing by providing next step guidance based on claim status or type. Agent Assist works to reduce the chances of errors while making a seamless experience for the customer.

Banking and Financial Services

Financial institutions count on Agent Assist to enhance security and ensure compliance while providing personalized services. Agents must adhere to strict verification protocols when handling sensitive banking transactions and information, Agent Assist aids agents with step-by-step authentication procedure before discussing account details. If a customer asks about mortgage refinancing options, Agent Assist can pull up the latest interest rates, suggest scheduling a consultation with a loan specialist, and highlight personalized loan options with minimal delay.

Retail and E-Commerce

Retailers and e-commerce businesses leverage Agent Assist to give agents instant access to inventory status, personalized recommendations, and order details. In cases where customers want to initiate a product return or exchange, Agent Assist will smoothen the process by pulling up the return policy and guiding the support agent through the steps of the return. This technology not only reduces the agent’s workload but also gives the customer a consistent and frustration-free experience.

Top Agent Assist Providers

FAQs