Cisco seeks to transform customer experiences with Webex AI Agent

Cisco has unveiled new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered features in its contact centers, including Webex AI Agent, AI Agent Studio, and Cisco AI Assistant features for its Webex Contact Center product lines.

AI-based solutions use advanced technologies conversational intelligence and automation to improve customer interactions, streamline problem resolution, and improve overall customer satisfaction. This would enable business leaders to deliver faster, more effective and more empathetic interactions that improve customer trust and brand loyalty.

Seeking to address the need for immediate and efficient self-service, Webex AI Agent Self-Service Concierge is designed to enable agents to act quickly and handle customer inquiries with natural dialogue and conversational intelligence to eliminate wait times and provide faster resolutions.

The product was created after Cisco’s research revealed a link between customer satisfaction and effective self-service toolscurrent options do not meet their needs. For example, rebooking a flight or replacing a lost credit card typically requires assistance from a live agent, resulting in long lines and wait times, transfers multiple, frustrated customers and agent burnout. Customer-facing teams often face information overload and increasing workloads, leading to longer resolution times and lower customer satisfaction scores (CSAT). The study also found that customer experience leaders found that one in three agents lacked the customer context needed to deliver an ideal customer experience.

Webex AI Agent is expected to provide self-service options for scenarios like these, which Cisco says can lead to a 39% improvement in CSAT scores according to customer experience leaders. It also integrates “accountable” AI and automation into the Webex Customer Experience portfolio, transforming the customer experience by eliminating complexity and frustration.

“Customer experience can make or break a brand, and unlike other solutions on the market, the Webex AI Agent instantly solves customer problems and will fundamentally transform the experiences we have all been reluctantly using for too long,” said the executive vice president of Cisco. and product manager Jeetu Patel.

“At Cisco, we build AI solutions natively. We begin product design with the premise that AI will be at the heart of the product and an essential ingredient in how we reinvent the customer experience. We believe that in the coming years, a large majority of first calls will be handled by an AI agent who will be just as interactive, dynamic, engaging and friendly as a human agent.

Webex AI Agent includes a new design tool called ai agent studio designed to simplify and scale the contact center, intended to enable business users and IT administrators to easily train and deploy AI agents, providing them with scalability and usability “unparalleled”. .

AI Agent Studio allows contact centers to deploy a voice or digital AI agent in minutes and choose which AI models to use to respond to customer requests. The “AI gateway” is attributed to reducing calls in the contact center so agents can focus on more high-touch, relationship-based customer service.

When an agent is needed, contextual summaries facilitate seamless handoffs from an AI agent to the contact center agent. Background information is provided to keep the conversation going while eliminating the need for customers to repeat themselves. Recommendations appear directly on the contact center platform, providing agents with the information they need at their fingertips to reduce call times.

Webex AI Agent as well as AI Agent Studio will be generally available in Q1 2025 for cloud customers, with customer trials for on-premises customers in Q2 2025. Agent Wellness for Contact Center will also become generally available in first quarter 2025. AI capabilities enable proactive actions such as automatic breaks for agents, changes to agent schedules, and changing channels supported by agents to increase or decrease capacity as needed.