The Rise of Contact Center Automation in 12 Stats

By Harry Chang
March 28, 2022

The Numbers Behind Contact Center Automation’s Rapid Adoption

Digital transformation was already well underway in contact centers before the onset of the pandemic in early 2020.

But in the two years since, a lot has changed. The pandemic has lasted longer than anyone could have imagined. Its effects led to a “Great Resignation” of employees across every industry, distributed hard-to-manage workforces, and impossible-to-predict call volumes from demanding customers.

What’s come out of it is an unsurprising race to adopt automation among contact centers. Contact Center Automation can completely offload repetitive, tier-1 requests from customer service agents by fully resolving them over any channel, 24/7.

It’s a big reason why automation adoption is a chief priority of most contact centers. It’s cost effective, provides service on-par with or better than live agents, and can be deployed in weeks. Overall, it gives businesses a competitive edge in a market where brands must stand out to retain customers and earn loyal new ones.

Here’s a holistic look at why AI and Contact Center Automation solutions are seeing rapid adoption by contact centers in 2022:

1. 52% percent of companies accelerated their AI adoption plans because of the Covid crisis. 86% say that AI is becoming a “mainstream technology” at their company in 2021.

2. 72% of business leaders feel positive about the role that AI will play in the future.

3. Most executives (74%) not only anticipate AI will deliver more efficient business processes, but also help to create new business models (55%) and enable the creation of new products and services (54%).

4. Technologies call centers plan to use in the future are lead by AI (56%) and robotics and process automation (33%).

5. 76% of contact centers are planning to invest in artificial intelligence in the next two years.

6. “Call center employees worry that virtual assistants, chatbots, and AI will take over their jobs. That is a scenario that is not about to happen overnight, even if companies are already taking the automation route.”

7. Benefits of Big Data Analytics in Customer Service:

59.0% Reduction in operational costs
59.9% Increase in productivity
36.2% Better decision-making

8. “CX leaders who have become overwhelmed managing short-staffed contact centers have accelerated plans to implement AI since the pandemic began.”

9. Customer sentiment ratings increased 57.3% among companies using AI in their customer experience initiatives.

10. AI will increase contact center productivity by 35% in the US alone by 2040.

11. In 2021, 59.1% of all research participants planned to increase their AI spending by an average of 26.7%.

12. Organizations trying to reduce operational costs in the contact center have been implementing real-time voice transcription.