The prime key pain point whenever we contact customer service or support is the unavailability of agents who can connect immediately. Now, it is understandable that asking for 24/7 support may be too much to deliver for certain organizations due to extra costs. However, this is the perfect time for everyone to onboard AI voice agents or AI customer support agents!
This blog will, therefore, discuss how onboarding GenAI Voice Agents or Conversational AI Support Agents can be beneficial by exploring industry pain points and their solutions.
What is a GenAI Voice Agent?
A GenAI Voice Agent is a type of assistant that uses generative AI and other technologies to understand and engage in natural, human-like conversations and interactions.
The primary difference between a GenAI Voice Agent and other types of AI agents comes down to their core purpose and the way they deliver it.
For instance, a simple Generative AI agent functions one-dimensionally to orchestrate the interactions between a foundation model and external tools via crafted prompts.
Similarly, Conversational AI agents are also one-dimensional, wherein they only understand and respond to human language.
Hence, a GenAI Voice agent is primarily built to perform fundamental tasks like answering questions, providing support, and automating processes without needing key presses or pre-defined menus.
The typical workflow of a Gen AI Voice Agent is as follows:
- Understand User Speech Input
- Perform Speech Recognition
- Apply Natural Language Understanding
- Perform Processing (RAG-based) & Decision Making
- Response Generation
- Utilize Text-to-Speech
- Deliver Voice Output
Besides this concept, organizations can still custom-train a GenAI Voice Agent in many other pre-defined ways, much like NLP-LLM tools are trained to remove biases.
After onboarding a generative AI voice agent, the following listed features can be possibly included and experienced.
Overview of GenAI Voice Agent Features
- Speech Input & Speech Recognition
- Real-time Call Transcription
- Natural Language Understanding
- Contextual Operations Autonomy
- Persistent Memory
- Processing & Decision Making
- Suggestive Actions & Accessibility
- Conversational Summaries
- Omni Channel Routing
- Adaptive Learning
- Response Generation
- Text-to-Speech Voice Output
- Task Chaining
To learn more about each feature, feel free to contact the Ciphernutz team for a live demo!
Why Onboard AI Support Agents?
Sometimes, customers might just need some answers to their queries when they reach out to support teams. For all the other times - customers who dial support or service teams are genuinely tired of the issue or hassle they may be facing due to unknown reasons.
In all of these cases, the following remain to be common pain points of customers worldwide.
Lack of Issue Ownership & Resolution
- Over 65% of consumers cite long waiting times and having to contact multiple times as a key issue.
- More than 62% of customers affirm that representatives aren't the right person to solve the issue.
No 24/7 Support Channels
- Nearly half of the customers find customer service options aren't available 24/7.
- More than 47% of customers get stuck due to a lack of self-service support options with 24/7 accessibility.
Lack of Feedback Channel
- Many established businesses have stopped providing a way to add feedback.
- Preventing customers from dropping feedback can often hurt customer loyalty.
Impersonal Experiences
- Getting an unsatisfactory support experience due to communication being kept individualistic.
- Not identifying customer journey or loyalty during support or service calls.
Severe Disorderly Conduct
- Impolite tone or behavior of executive during a call or direct communication.
- Non-case-centric queries or responses by executives that hurt customer sentiments.
P.S. All of the mentioned statistics are from Vonage Global Customer Engagement Report.
Overview of GenAI Voice Agent Advantages
Enhance Customer Experiences
Generative AI Voice Agents function round-the-clock to offer instant answers to user queries. Using emotional cues and natural language, they make interactions genuine and learn to adapt to accents, languages, and conversational styles.
Read more: How AI Will Enhance Customer Experience
Streamline Operations
AI voice agents can consistently handle routine tasks (after back-end integration) like operations scheduling, maintaining status updates, order processing, responding to high call volumes, etc., with fewer errors.
Easy Scalability
The GenAI voice agents can handle critical surges in customer support and deploy assisted measures in a pre-defined process, enabling businesses to use MCP as required without closing off concerned channels.
Data Analysis
All of the customer data, including interactions, are analyzed to develop patterns and insights to refine strategies. Any newer complaints or issues can be automatically alerted to the business for making further data-driven decisions.
Global Accessibility
Serving customers with disabilities becomes more care-centric while assisting customers from diverse cultures remains easy with its native multilingual abilities.
Cost Saving
Large customer service teams and their rotating expenses are reduced while efficiency is increased, improving ROI and overall business profitability.
Are AI Voice Agents and AI Support Agents the same?
An AI Support Agent is not vastly different from a Generative AI Agent that is built specifically for providing customer service. Both can fundamentally offer 24/7 customer support and also resolve queries of in-house employees and management teams.
However, the handful of core differences that set them apart are as follows:
- AI Support Agent is limited to being responsive.
- GenAI Agent is more proactive in performing & managing multiple tasks.
- AI Support Agents lack human-like conversational abilities.
- Generative AI Voice Agents also possess contextual understanding.
- And so on.
Which Industries Can GenAI Voice Agents Assist and Serve?
Practically? Every industry can do well with the help of a GenAI Voice Agent, especially when it's also well-implemented. Still, here are a few examples for your reference:
- Healthcare: The AI voice agent can provide health information, schedule appointments, and understand health information to offer better patient care and reduce administrative burden.
- Telecommunications: Helping users troubleshoot technical issues and manage accounts enables delivering better and more seamless customer experiences.
- Banking & Finance: Voice AI Agents can answer user inquiries, authenticate transactions, and provide on-call assistance 24/7 for true round-the-clock banking.
- Retail: GenAI Voice agents can recommend products, handle returns, and manage processing & logistics while improving the customer experience.
- Emergency Services: AI Voice agents can allocate emergency teams and resources in real-time to make emergency support faster.
Built Next-Gen Custom AI Voice Agents & AI Support Agents
Creating your own AI Voice Agent can seem easy, but it's not without its own challenges.
For example, the following four types of challenges may require immediate attention. Without resolving or mitigating these challenges first, the customer support or service experience may not become on par as expected.
Speech-to-Text (STT) Challenges
- Real-time Transcription Accuracy.
- Niche-specific Vocabulary.
- Model Selection.
- Multi-language Support.
- Audio Quality.
LLM Processing Challenges
- Latency Issues.
- Model Selection Complexity.
- Prompt Engineering Differences.
- Context Management.
Text-to-Speech Challenges
- Voice Consistency.
- Natural Prosody.
End-to-End System Challenges
- Overall Latency Optimization (STT, LLM, TTS).
- Interruption Handling.
- Error Propagation.
- Resource Optimization.
These challenges can be mitigated with baseline essentials. You will need the following technologies at minimum to develop Custom AI Voice Agents for Customer Service & Support:
- ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition)
- NLP (Natural Language Processing)
- LLM (Large Language Model)
- Text-to-Speech (TTS) Synthesis
- Telephony Solution
- CRM System
Whether you use these technologies already or if you require their alternatives, getting a consultation from an experienced AI Development company is recommended.
Get Custom AI Voice Agents & AI Support Agents Development Services
Ciphernutz IT Services in Surat, India, is one of the leading IT companies that develops innovative AI solutions for businesses, organizations, and enterprises. Our teams are skilled experts in end-to-end AI development.
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