SEPTEMBER 2023 RELEASES
September 2023 Releases
2025 Guide to Contact Center Automation: Trends and Tools
According to Salesforce, 67% of customers say their standards for a good customer experience are higher than ever.
In 2025, that means automation. That means personalization. It means your customers are having pleasant, useful, consistent experiences across channels, at exactly the time that’s most convenient for them.
That brings today’s topic to light: contact center automation.
Consider this the beginner-to-intermediate’s guide to contact center automation—we’ll highlight trends, common use cases, software, and implementation.
Whether you’re just looking to improve your outbound outreach, or overhaul your entire omnichannel CX function, here you’ll learn about the processes, tools, and considerations to make sure your automation efforts aren’t causing negative implications for your employees, or worse, your customers.
What Is Contact Center Automation?
Contact center automation is an increasingly common practice amongst CX teams to turn as many processes and workflows as possible into (fully) autonomous functions.
Depending on your automation needs, you’ll require a unique combination of tools and intakes to run—and scale—those processes smoothly.
Contact center vs. Call center
You might hear the terms “call center” and “contact center” used interchangeably. The primary difference? Contact centers are for omnichannel outreach (across calls, SMS, email, chat, etc.). Call centers are just that. Call centers.
Automation for contact centers is much more robust, but ultimately helps increase speed-to-lead, reach more prospects, provide consistent, enjoyable experiences for customers—leading to less missed revenue and more revenue generated.
What can be automated?
Points of automation are available when:
- You’re pulling or pushing data from/to your contact center tools
- You’re building customer journeys
- Agents are scheduling or taking action (whether inbound or outbound)
And that only scratches the surface. Each of these bullets contain many distinct possibilities for automation.
Chatbots
Most of us know what the general function of a chatbot looks like. Early adopters of AI, however, are using chatbot automation to handle more involved customer paths and queries.
Chatbots can be set up to proactively reach out to customers and prospects to send reminders, updates, or to begin asking qualifying questions.
Through the use of AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP), chatbots can be automated to intelligently route queries based on need and urgency—whether that’s directing someone to a self-service flow, sharing relevant information, or passing them off to a human agent (and prioritizing interactions based on urgency).
Chatbots can identify intent and sentiment. They’re also able to provide full context to human agents when passing off more complex conversations.
Interactive voice response (IVR) / Intelligent Virtual Agent (IVA)
IVR automation is similar to everything mentioned for chatbots (intelligent routing, lead qualification, hand-off to human agents), except interactions occur over the phone.
IVR systems may use pre-recorded scripts, which can limit interactions to a small set of programmed responses. AI-powered IVR systems use natural language processing to make interactions more dynamic (and human).
AI Agents
In the line of evolution following chatbots and IVA are AI agents—fully autonomous agents that interact with customers.
AI agents are able to answer preliminary questions for customers, qualify them, and connect them with human agents when needed—across calls, SMS, and chat.
AI agents can be used on an inbound or outbound basis.
While chatbots and IVR may rely heavier on canned responses and manual input from customers, AI agents can rely more heavily, if not entirely on spoken or written interaction to gain the information needed to route the customer correctly and give them exactly the experience they need. They can reach out at any frequency, and are available 24/7.
Workflow and Customer Journey Automation
Automating workflows and customer journeys simplifies routine activities like sending emails or updating a customer’s case history. It opens up a gamut of real-time levers for when and how your agents interact with prospects and customers.
- Automating and adjusting omnichannel customer journeys: Building out automated journeys of any length, that signal both AI and human agents to take specific actions at specific times. Adjustments can be made or triggered in real-time depending on actions taken by the customer.
- A/B testing: Testing different channels and iterations of outreach at every point, whether from AI Agents or human agents.
Benefits of Automating your Contact Center
- Agent productivity: Agents are able to spend more time on complex matters that require deliberate human attention.
- Personalization: As AI becomes more intelligent and interactive, it presents the opportunity to improve personalization—by optimizing every touch and better sharing real-time data across all touchpoints.
- Better connection rates: With always-on, personalized interactions across channels, you should see higher connection rates and more engaged customer interactions.
- More revenue: You’ll be able to miss less revenue opportunities (by connecting with more prospects and customers) and better convert when you do connect (by improving each interaction).
- Scalability: With the right systems in place and the implementation of AI Agents, the number of interactions your contact center is able to have won’t be beholden to how many human agents you have.
- Training: AI agents never have to stop making calls in order to be “trained.” Human agents not only cease action during training, but intake and apply it differently on an individual level. This costs time, and makes it harder to measure the impact of training.
- Testing: Automation makes testing easier and faster, while providing you with immediate—and more accurate—data on each test you run.
Emerging Trends in Contact Center Automation
Contact centers are evolving quickly alongside AI, LLMs, NLP, and the like.
AI and Machine Learning
Research suggests the global call center AI market is projected to have a $7.5 billion value by 2030.
AI, LLMs, and other machine learning technologies will only become more important, seeing as they serve as the brains for automated contact center operations and outreach.
Voice AI
Voice AI specifically is a trend to watch closely in 2025. AI agents are becoming more and more human, adopting the ability to have real, malleable conversations with people in real-time.
Voice is the next big step in agent automation.
Omnichannel Communication
Customers don’t just expect to communicate with your business from their preferred channel. They also expect these experiences to be consistent. As reliance on omnichannel communication continues, you’ll notice more solutions to automate the omnichannel experience.
For example, omnichannel routing simplifies the process of directing customers to the right agent. Customers interact via phone, email, SMS, or social media, and machine learning interprets the inquiry and routes it to the agent most qualified to assist.
Popular Use Cases
What are early adopters of contact center automation taking advantage of?
- Scheduling/booking appointments: Across channels, it’s much easier now to schedule appointments with prospects and customers, without the need of a human agent.
- Customer engagement: Customers and prospects can be found when it’s most convenient for them, whenever, wherever. They express interest, you connect.
- Lead qualification: Through NLPs and both voice and text interaction, leads can be qualified and prioritized based on specific defined criteria and sentiment.
- Patient engagement: Medical-related communications can be very time-sensitive. Healthcare companies use heavy automation to make sure their patients are taken care of at all times.
- A/B testing: Across industries, CX teams are expanding A/B testing capabilities given the growth of hands-off omnichannel training and testing.
Choosing the Right Contact Center Automation Software
Your choice of contact center automation software comes down to the specific capabilities you need, and to what extent you need to automate.
Consider the following questions:
- Do you need to automate across all channels (i.e. how do you weight text versus voice, and so on)?
- Are you looking to automate both inbound and outbound communications?
- Is the software scalable as you grow?
- Does it integrate with your existing contact center tools?
Contact Center Automation Software Options
Based on your use case, there are a range of outbound dialers and CCaaS tools you can turn to.
Outbound Dialers
For outbound automation only. Outbound dialers help auto-dial on behalf of your contact center team. The biggest benefit? Higher call volumes.
CCaaS Software
For a wide range of outreach types. CCaaS tools can help you automate full omnichannel contact centers—or any combo of channels within that.
CCaaS software tools are much more complex, but are much more robust in their functionality.
Striking the Right Balance Between Automated and Human Interaction
Conversations about contact center automation often revolve around chatbots and virtual assistants. According to some research, 80% of marketers say their business already uses chatbots as part of their customer experience strategy.
Contact center automation is still very much about humans, however. It will never replace humans. The key to using these technologies effectively is striking a balance between automated and human interactions.
You’ll get the most out of your contact center automation by personalizing experiences, adopting Voice AI early, and rapidly testing all touchpoints to drive continuous improvement, while maintaining a human touch on all communication.
Contact Center Automation with Regal.ai
As a more advanced version of a CCaaS tool, Regal ingests customer and prospect-event data in real-time from CRMs and other platforms for more advanced inbound and outbound automation.
Regal has industry-leading AI Agents for voice and text, and allows for robust omnichannel A/B testing. Request a demo today to learn more.
.png)
Latest Blog Posts
.avif)
AI Emotional Intelligence: How AI Voice Agents Can Keep Calm and Carry On
Learn more about how AI emotional intelligence allows artificially intelligent voice agents to create emotion-regulated interactions using empathy, while keeping their cool even in heated situations, ensuring calls stay on track and productive.
.avif)
6 Examples of How Giving Agents Insight into Each Buyer’s Journey Leads to More Delightful Contact Center Interactions
Discover 6 real-world examples for how high-consideration B2C companies are arming their agents with real-time customer data to drive more effective sales, support and retention interactions across industries.
5 Ways to Improve Agent Productivity by 5X and Boost Your Outbound Contact Center Performance
In this blog, we share tips to improve agent productivity for handling high volumes of calls, whether it's inbound support teams or outbound sales teams. The guiding principle is simple — focus your agents on tasks that absolutely requires their attention, and automate everything else.
.avif)
8 Strategies to Improve Call Answer Rates by 40%
Discover 8 proven strategies to improve call answer rates by 40%. Learn how personalized outreach, Branded Caller ID, and AI-driven solutions can transform your outbound contact center and boost engagement. Increase your call answer rates and drive more revenue today!
.avif)
What are the Best Use Cases for AI Voice Agents in Your Contact Center
As AI technology continues to evolve, the use cases for AI Voice Agents in contact centers will only increase. By answering these six key questions, you can identify where AI agents fit best today in your contact center and plan for future integrations.
Insurtech Insights Presentation: Using Regal to Drive Revenue Across the Policyholder Lifecycle
Our Co-Founder & CTO, Rebecca Greene, delivered a presentation at the recent Insurtech Insights NYC 2024 event about how insurance brands can meet the moment of global uncertainty and rebuild trust by turning untapped customer data into personalized, revenue driving conversations across the Policyholder lifecycle.
Beyond CCaaS: How to turn your Contact Center into a Revenue Center
Why are so many contact centers stuck being cost centers? Why do they keep looking for cost reductions instead of revenue increases? Bad data and technology decisions are at the core of this issue. We need "marketing automation" (aka unified customer profiles, event-driven systems and a/b testing) like Regal.io in the contact center to empower teams to start looking for incremental revenue instead.
The Next Step Forward in AI will come from Consumer Businesses
Consumer businesses are implementing AI-enabled customer experiences without any change in behavior on the part of consumers, which is leading AI to become common with more speed than past transitions like the internet and the smartphone. And it means that the next step in AI will not come from the LLM providers. The next big step forward in AI rests in the hands of consumer businesses.
B2C Sales Podcast Episode 7: Innovating on Patient Care with Cadence CTO, Eric Hauser
Explore Eric Hauser's remarkable career journey from GovTech to healthcare disruption at Cadence, highlighting the transformative power of innovation, collaboration, with a special focus on the pivotal role of Regal in driving patient engagement and outcomes.
B2C Sales Podcast Episode 6: The Future of Conversation AI with Balto CEO Marc Bernstein
Discover the transformative power of AI in conversations and how Regal's cutting-edge technology is reshaping call analysis and optimization for enhanced customer experiences with Balto's Marc Bernstein on our B2C Sales Podcast.
eBook: How 3 Industry Leaders, SoFi, Perry Health & AllState, Treat Millions of Customers like One in a Million
Discover how Regal.io's AI-powered personalized outreach solutions are revolutionizing outbound sales and customer experience across industries like healthcare, finance, and insurance in our latest eBook, "Modernizing Outbound Contact Centers: How to Treat Millions of Customers like One in a Million."
.jpeg)
Introducing Collaboration-Native Features to CCaaS
Combining collaboration functionality into CCaaS workflow tools invites more cross-functional users from a company to participate in designing the end-customer experience, leading to better omni-channel orchestration and customer outcomes. Learn more about Regal's collaboration features.
How Regal.io is Turning the $40B CX Industry on Its Head
Jon Heaps, former VP, Channel at Observe.ai, Talkdesk, and inContact interviews Alex Levin, Co-Founder & CEO of Regal.io, about the history of the contact center industry and some of the key challenges teams making outbound calls face as customers demand more online experiences.
Major Changes to SMS and Branded Caller ID Regulations will Improve Customer Experience
Are you using Branded Caller ID for outbound calls or SMS? New SMS and Branded Caller ID regulations rolled out in Q2 2023 that you MUST KNOW ABOUT. The new regulations require that every company register their SMS campaigns and Branded Caller ID campaigns before being allowed to send texts or brand calls.
Announcement: Regal Conversation Intelligence
Regal’s Conversation Intelligence drives higher conversion rates for B2C sales teams. We use both the traditional QA/coaching tools, and brand new conversational triggers that allow you to update customer profiles and send automated follow up messages based on what is said in a conversation.
What’s the difference between Caller ID, CNAM, and Branded Caller ID?
Caller ID, CNAM, and Branded Caller ID all help identify an incoming call and, therefore, increase call answer rates. Find out how they differ and how outbound phone sales teams can utilize each to reach prospects and customers effectively.
How Regal Helps Consumer Lenders Achieve Growth in Tough Times
Our Co-Founder & CTO, Rebecca Greene, spoke with journalist Tony Zerucha at the recent Fintech Nexus USA 2023 event about how consumer lenders are using personalized phone and SMS sales outreach to obtain growth despite high inflation and rising interest rates.
Q&A with Perry Health’s Scott Chesrown
Get behind-the-scenes insights about Perry Health’s 23% revenue increase with Regal.io. Perry Health’s Scott Chesrown sat down with Regal.io and discussed how they implemented outbound sales technology, integrated new capabilities into their process, and built on their early success.
Drive More Contact Center Revenue With These 6 Holiday Tips
It’s the holiday season and you’d like to hit your December revenue goals. Outbound B2C sales during the holidays can be a major performance driver – if you're prepared and you have the right tools in place. Use these seven tips to get your outbound B2C sales in shape for holiday success.
.avif)
.avif)
.avif)
Supercharge your customer engagement capabilities with the Regal <> Braze integration
Existing B2C sales, service, and retention teams can now leverage Braze’s cross-channel messaging capabilities with Regal’s outbound phone & SMS sales platform to personalize their outreach, drive better customer outcomes, and ultimately generate revenue for the business.
Meet Regal Call Branding™: Branded Caller ID that Reaches 400 Million Devices in the US from One Solution
We are excited to announce Regal Call Branding™ including Branded Caller ID. Available on all 400M wireless devices in the US (as well as most of Canada and the UK), Regal Call Branding™ puts you in control of what people see when you call their cell phone – including showing your brand and/or logo.
Treat your customers like royalty
Ready to see Regal in action?
Book a personalized demo.
Thank you! Click here if you are not redirected.
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
