Dive Brief:
- Discover and Mercedes-Benz are advancing their call center operations with generative AI tools powered by Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform, the companies announced Tuesday at the Google Cloud Next ‘24 conference in Las Vegas.
- Discover will use generative AI to improve call center agent productivity, employing document summarization and real-time search options to help agents resolve inquiries more quickly and efficiently.
- Mercedes-Benz will use Google Cloud AI to make its call center self-service chatbots more helpful and responsive. It will also enhance its ecommerce site with natural language search and the Mercedes-Benz Virtual Assistant.
Dive Insight:
The role of AI in the call center is expanding rapidly, and major vendors are vying to secure their share of the opportunities.
Amazon and Salesforce are among Google’s chief competitors in this space. Each added new tools to its product suite last month, with an emphasis on employee-facing solutions that can help call centers analyze data to better handle future inquiries.
This approach to generative AI can pay off, particularly when working with customers who prefer live agents over self-service. Discover and Google’s new tool began rolling out earlier this year and has helped agents reduce their procedure search time by up to 70%, the companies said.
Employee investments are a must even as self-service options improve, according to Mario Matulich, president and managing director of Customer Management Practice. AI tools for workers are one way to improve employee and customer experiences.
The other side of AI in the call center is self-service. This technology is still in its infancy, but some companies are reporting promising early results. Klarna claimed its customer service assistant can handle the work of 700 full-time agents.
Mercedes-Benz is likewise seeing success. The company rolled out conversational chatbots created with Google Cloud’s Dialogflow technology six months ago, and the automated agents have handled millions of calls since.
Mercedes-Benz’s chatbots can handle inquiries in 30 languages and focus on helping with basic tasks like getting information on a lease and making payments. The carmaker plans to roll out the conversational AI to more markets to let live agents spend more time on complicated requests.
Experts expect agents to take on more complex roles as chatbots and other forms of self-service handle more basic tasks.
