Dive Brief:
- Zendesk will acquire service automation provider Ultimate to bolster its AI-powered CX offerings, the company announced Wednesday. Ultimate’s AI agent is designed to handle up to 80% of support requests while providing analytics and reporting on handled cases.
- The deal reflects a trend of businesses routing a larger share of call center volume to AI services. Zendesk and Ultimate did not disclose the terms of the acquisition, which is expected to close later this month.
- However, live agents still have an essential role in contact center operations. The integration of Ultimate will enable customers to choose between “fully autonomous AI agents, workflow automation or human touch,” Zendesk said in a statement.
Dive Insight:
More companies are leaning into automation to assist with contact center operations, leading to call staff increasingly working alongside AI.
Earlier this month, payment provider Klarna stated that its AI-powered customer assistant handled the workload of 700 agents during its first month. Dell Technologies is working to add more self-service options and improve its virtual assistant using generative AI.
These companies are not alone. Nearly 9 in 10 contact center leaders expect AI to power more self-service options, according to a Customer Contact Week survey released last month.
However, human workers are still vital to call center operations. Like Zendesk, call center vendors AWS and Zoom are emphasizing AI assistants as complementary to live agents, not a replacement. Both people and chatbots have their place.
The scalability of AI-powered customer service makes it ideal for improving call center responsiveness, according to David Truog, VP and principal analyst at Forrester. He compared the potentially long wait times for a call with a live agent versus immediate access to self-service tools like chatbots.
Good customer service also involves being able to “repair” misunderstandings in communications, Truog said. These interactions involve a level of complexity that human agents can handle effectively, but is often too complex for automated tools.
The call center AI market is expected to surpass a 22% combined annual growth rate between 2022 and 2027, growing more than $2.7 billion in size, according to a market report released last week by Technavio.
