Investment in conversational artificial intelligence (AI) deployments within contact centers will reduce agent labor costs by $80 billion by 2026, according to Gartner report.
Worldwide end-user spending on conversational AI solutions within contact centers is forecast to reach $1.99 billion in 2022, Gartner estimates. Gartner has revealed leading Conversational AI platforms that can support contact centers.
The contact center software market size is predicted to reach $165 billion by 2030 from $29.5 billion in 2021, according to another research.
There are approximately 17 million contact center agents worldwide. Many organizations are challenged by agent staff shortages and the need to curtail labor expenses, which can represent up to 95 percent of contact center costs. Conversational AI makes agents more efficient and effective, while also improving the customer experience, said Daniel O’Connell, VP analyst at Gartner.
Gartner projects that one in 10 agent interactions will be automated by 2026, an increase from an estimated 1.6 percent of interactions today that are automated using AI.
Deployment of conversational AI can automate all or part of a contact center customer interaction through both voice and digital channels, through voicebots or chatbots.
While automating a full interaction corresponds to significant cost savings, there is also value in partial containment, such as automating the identification of a customer’s name, policy number and reason for calling. “Capturing this information using AI could reduce up to a third of the interaction time that would typically be supported by a human agent,” said O’Connell.
Gartner estimates integration pricing at $1,000 to $1,500 per conversational AI agent, though some organizations cite costs of up to $2,000 per agent. Early adoption of conversational AI will be primarily led by organizations with 2,500 or more agents with budget for the requisite technical resources.
