With AI capabilities, cloud telephony has evolved beyond simple call routing to enabling more personalized, intelligent conversations with your customers.
An AI-enabled cloud telephony solution is a cloud-based phone system that provides voice and messaging services without using on-premises hardware. It also allows you to automate routine tasks like call routing, customer support, and data analysis.
With AI-enabled cloud telephony, you no longer need manual intervention for every customer interaction. Its AI capabilities allow it to handle repetitive queries, route calls based on urgency, and even predict customer needs. This has a far-reaching impact on not only keeping your customers happy but also improving the overall efficiency of your operations.
Let’s look at how AI in cloud telephony, unlike traditional telephony systems, frees up your team for high-value tasks and personalizes customer experience.
Let’s look at some key features that make AI-enabled cloud telephony solutions a core part of modern businesses.
Source: Ozonetel
With an AI-enabled cloud telephony feature that tracks calls in real time, customer service agents can receive immediate feedback and guidance from their managers and supervisors. This allows your agents to deliver high-quality service and meet their performance standards.
Using the call whispering feature, managers can pass instructions to the agent during the call without the client’s knowledge. For example, a travel booking company’s supervisor listens to a live call where a customer is struggling to understand a complex itinerary. Using call whispering, the supervisor can suggest how the agent can simplify the itinerary. The customer remains unaware of this coaching but leaves happy with their booking.
AI-enabled cloud telelphony’s call analytics feature allows you to get detailed reports into important call center metrics such as call volume, length, wait times, etc. Adding to the feature is the real-time reporting capability which allows you to monitor performance, spot trends as they happen, and ultimately make data-driven decisions to improve your customer experience with call centers.
For example, analyzing peak call periods can help you plan your resources effectively, ensuring there are enough agents available when they are most required. This is a valuable function, especially for inbound contact centers that depend on analytics to understand their efficiency and service quality.
Interactive voice response (IVR) in AI-enabled cloud telephony systems makes it easy to route callers quickly to the correct department or extension using preset menu options. This means faster responses for your customers and fewer misdirected calls for your team. Other than routing calls, by adding self-service options, you create a personalized and efficient customer experience.
For example, imagine a healthcare provider using IVR menus to let patients quickly choose options such as “press 1 for billing queries,” “press 2 for scheduling appointments,” and so on. Patients can also access self-service options like checking lab results without needing to speak to a representative. This speeds up responses and reduces your agents’ workload.
Contrary to popular belief that call routing is only helpful for organizations with high call volumes, it is equally beneficial to all businesses that want to ensure that inbound business calls reach the right person or team.
Automatic call distribution (ACD) routes calls to agents based on various factors such as language, expertise, call duration, and availability. Now, add AI to the mix, and it can help handle an agent’s tasks in the background, keeping all processes running smoothly.
AI-enabled cloud telephony’s automated workflows help standardize processes across platforms. For instance, if a customer uses a self-service tool and then contacts your contact center, automation can help provide the much-needed background to your agent that is connected to the call.
Your entire process will flow more easily if you use automated tasks to track customer interactions instead of manually capturing data or trying to manage interaction on separate platforms. This not only saves time for your agents but also improves customer relations.
Unlike traditional tools, generative AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants use natural language processing (NLP) to hold conversations that genuinely feel more human. That’s not all. These agents can provide detailed information quickly, ensuring your agents save time and have a smooth conversation with their customers.
The AI-powered voice analytics feature in cloud telephony can pick up on sentiment and emotional context by analyzing tone, speed, and word choices. This allows your agent to tailor the conversation to what the customer is looking for. For example, if the system detects frustration or anger during the call, it can alert the agent to take a more calming and solution-oriented approach.
This feature can help your company understand areas for improvement, such as negotiation or de-escalation, allowing you to arrange targeted training for employees.
Cloud telephony integrates with your CRM system to create highly personalized interactions for your customers. This integration allows you to customize things like welcome messages, voicemails, and small pleasantries based on each customer’s preference.
Thanks to CRM connectivity, your agents can access a customer’s full history of interactions - whether from social media, live chat, email, or past phone calls - making it easier to solve problems quickly. The result? Shorter wait times, fewer interactions, and happier customers.
With the flexibility, efficiency, and scalability provided by AI-enabled cloud telephony systems, it is highly applicable across sectors. Let's take a look at how it is used in some industries.
In the retail and e-commerce sector, AI-enabled cloud telephony offers features like multi-level IVR, intelligent call routing, and click-to-call that help your customer support team answer customer queries efficiently. Imagine you’re running an online clothing store, and it’s the holiday season. Calls and inquiries are pouring in. With AI-enabled cloud telephony, features like intelligent call routing help you connect the customer to the right support agent.
In fact, with CRM software integrations, you can go a step further and connect the customer to an agent familiar with the customer’s purchase history.
The voice-to-email feature ensures that no customer query goes unanswered, even when your team is off the clock. Tools like this help retail customer service teams improve customer satisfaction and manage them with ease, even during a seasonal rush.
Think about a bank during a particularly volatile market period, let’s say, a sudden interest change, call traffic can spike, and handling them can be overwhelming. With AI-enabled cloud telephony, you can scale up or down as needed. Another example would be, during a stock market crash, a brokerage firm can add more agents to handle the huge number of calls from anxious clients.
Other than the ability to take calls on the go, real-time monitoring and sentiment analysis can help your agents identify stressed or unhappy customers and prioritize their concerns. AI also plays a role in detecting fraudulent activities through pattern analysis, which helps keep customer data safe and maintain their trust.
With AI-enabled cloud telephony systems, healthcare professionals can conduct virtual consultations with patients. This is very valuable for patients, particularly in rural or remote areas with accessibility issues. It also allows patients to leave voicemails with their doctor, who can access them when they are available again, ensuring continuous care.
With sentiment analysis, healthcare professionals can pick up emotional cues from patients during calls, guiding them to offer sympathetic and patient-centric care. Intelligent call routing also ensures critical care is delivered without delay and coordinates various health teams.
Reliable and flexible communication is important for real estate agents who often work in various locations. AI-enabled cloud telephony allows these agents to receive calls from any device connected to the internet, so they have connectivity no matter the location.
Intelligent call routing directs client calls to the right agent based on their expertise and availability. This reduces the chances of missed opportunities and improves client experience, which is necessary in a competitive market.
Let’s say a university is handling thousands of calls from prospective students during admissions season. AI-enabled cloud telephony systems with IVR optimization can quickly direct students to the right department—whether they need help with applications, financial aid, or technical issues. For routine queries, for example, if a student calls after hours with a question about their online course, AI tools like chatbots and virtual assistants can handle the query or log it for follow-up.
Sentiment analysis during calls can also help educators understand if a student is feeling disengaged, allowing them to provide tailored support. This personalized approach not only helps with student satisfaction but also better learning outcomes.
AI-enable cloud telephony offers numerous benefits, but it is not without its hurdles.
Source: Ozonetel
Using AI in cloud telephony can raise concerns about data privacy, potential breaches, and meeting regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). For example, think about a healthcare organization storing sensitive patient data. Without proper safeguards, that data could be at risk.
Solution: You must implement proper encryption, secure authentication methods, and adhere to data compliance standards. Along with this, regular audits and risk assessments can help you identify vulnerabilities.
Cloud telephony relies heavily on a stable Internet connection, making it quite vulnerable to downtime. A service outage or slow connection can lead to dropped calls and frustrated customers. Imagine an e-commerce business during Black Friday - losing calls during peak sales hours could mean significant revenue loss.
Solution: You should choose a reliable cloud telephony provider that offers excellent backup options. Also, review their service-level agreements (SLAs) carefully to understand the guarantees around uptime and response times.
AI isn’t perfect - it can show biases if it hasn’t been trained on diverse data. For instance, a sentiment analysis tool might misinterpret a customer’s tone based on limited cultural nuances, leading to unfair treatment.
Solution: When you train AI systems, use data from a wide range of demographics and scenarios to minimize bias. Regularly check the model to catch and correct any unfair patterns early. Also, you should adopt ethical AI frameworks that prioritize fairness and transparency.
AI systems can sometimes create tricky ethical situations if not handled thoughtfully. For example, imagine a chatbot helping customers but never disclosing it’s not a human. This lack of transparency could frustrate users or even erode trust in the company.
Solution: Be upfront about when AI is in use - it’s a simple step that builds trust. Set up clear guidelines for how AI should operate, and bring in diverse teams (like ethicists, data scientists, and industry experts) to review your systems. This way, you ensure your AI aligns with both customer expectations and ethical values.
Integrating AI with outdated telephony systems can feel like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. For example, a small business with an older phone system might struggle to add AI-driven features like sentiment analysis or intelligent call routing.
Solution: You can use API-based integrations to bridge the gap between old and new systems. Cloud-based AI platforms with pre-built connectors can simplify the process, ensuring a smoother transition.
AI in cloud telephony isn’t just solving today’s challenges—it’s also shaping the future. Here are some trends and innovations making waves:
Call center predictive analytics is advanced analytics that combines current and historical data to provide predictions about what may occur in the future.
The process begins with gathering massive amounts of call center data from a variety of channels and sources, such as call records, KPIs, call center software, etc. The analytics software applies predictive algorithms to analyze data to find trends and patterns that are likely to repeat in the future.
These insights can help you estimate and predict various aspects of call center operations, such as customer engagement, staffing requirements, sales, and so on.
Agent assist provides real-time coaching, information, and next-best-action recommendations to help agents improve customer interactions and raise first-call resolution rates.
It is powered by a complex blend of AI virtual assistants and machine learning to provide in-dashboard agent support. Customers also benefit from shorter call times and more precise solutions, as agents don't need to manually search for information or put callers on hold to consult other resources.
While a knowledge base is generally used to answer customer inquiries and give support, it also helps with marketing content, sales presentation explanations, and lead conversions.
A web-based knowledge base enables users to find the information they need through any channel. It also allows call agents to swiftly locate the best answers to consumer questions regardless of where they are working or what device they are using.
Speech-to-text recognition is a basic software that converts audio recordings to text. It refers to the software's capacity to recognize a group of spoken-language words and structure them for readability.
In contact center software, speech recognition technology transforms incoming customer calls into text. This allows callers to interact with the system rather than simply tapping buttons on a guided IVR.
Whether you are running a large-sized global customer support team or a localized small team of contact agents, it is very hard to overlook the benefits of having AI in your cloud telephony investment.
The future of contact centers has transformed from human-like chatbot experiences to AI-assisted IVRs and virtual assistants that run on generative AI technology Using AI-enabled cloud telephony is not just about keeping up but leading the way in modern communication.
AI-powered cloud telephony is just the beginning. Discover how to build a future-ready cloud contact center.
Edited by Shanti S Nair
Unlocking the door to business growth hinges on customer satisfaction. We are not just saying...
by Sahil Ahuja
How does your contact center handle new starter training and onboarding?
by Kaye Chapman
Commerce requires people to communicate with each other. A contact center keeps everybody...
by Tom Mangan
