According to a recent study by Ozonetel, an omnichannel customer experience platform provider, AI-led automation has transformed contact centre performance and customer engagement. The study found that there was a 41% reduction in abandonment rates in 2023 compared to 2022. Agents were able to answer calls 10% faster on average, and customers were 15% more likely to answer calls from a business in 2023.
The report highlighted five key areas of improvement:
- Decreased Abandon Rates: After years of decline, abandon rates significantly improved in 2023. Only 20% of calls were disconnected by callers when in a queue compared to 34% in 2022. Many contact centres implemented intelligent automation and call routing to improve agent availability and reduce abandon rates. This reflects an evolving customer experience landscape where voice interactions are made by customers only in cases of urgency, as there are many other channels available for contacting businesses.
- Intelligent Automation: Pickup time, the average time a contact centre agent takes to answer inbound calls, has reduced to 6.9 seconds in 2023 from 7.7 seconds in 2022. More companies have implemented ‘webrtc’ calling and an auto-answer feature, which has led to improvement in pickup times. Calls now automatically get connected to available agents without any downtime.
- AI-Enabled Conversational Intelligence: The average talk time, which is the time an agent spends talking to a caller, reduced to 2.64 minutes in 2023 compared to 3.7 minutes in 2022. This improvement is driven by features such as smart agent assistance and deep customer relationship management integrations. Smart suggestions and secure access to relevant customer data help agents resolve queries faster.
- Automated Call Dispositions: Wrap time, the time used by the agent following the end of a call to complete administrative tasks, reduced to 43.6 seconds from 47.4 seconds in 2022. With AI providing automated call transcripts and insights, businesses are automating after-call work, leading to an increase in agent efficiency and availability.
- Improved Connection Rates: Average contact rates, which indicate how many calls were answered by contacts, increased to 45% in 2023 from 39% in 2022. Higher contact rates indicate that customers are receptive to calls from their dedicated relationship managers or service providers. More companies are deploying verified business IDs using Truecaller Integrations or WhatsApp Business Accounts to improve connection rates.
The study suggests that AI will continue to enhance contact centre performance in the future. It will free up agents for high-value conversations and equip them with the right knowledge to deepen customer relationships and drive business growth.