What is agent assist?
Agent assist is an artificial intelligence technology designed to help service agents manage live customer queries efficiently. It delivers real-time guidance by analysing conversations and offering accurate, contextual responses. As part of an AI-enabled contact centre, it combines generative AI, sentiment analysis, and knowledge base content to enhance customer satisfaction and streamline operations.
This system utilises AI models and large language models to comprehend customer intent and tone. By drawing on interaction history, CRM data, and knowledge documents, it provides response recommendations that facilitate faster and more natural communication. Powered by artificial intelligence technology, it simplifies complex customer issues and improves service quality across every contact centre platform.
How does agent-assist technology work?
Agent assist operates through a blend of speech recognition, machine learning, and contextual analysis. When a customer contacts the organisation, the AI engine listens, transcribes, and interprets the dialogue in real time. Based on this analysis, it recommends the next steps, links to knowledge base articles, or retrieves relevant customer information.
Here’s how the process works:
- Voice or text capture: The system records and processes conversations using call transcription tools.
- Intent recognition: It analyses tone and context through sentiment analysis.
- Knowledge retrieval: Information is drawn from connected CRM systems, case management platforms, and data store agents.
- Real-time guidance: AI Agent Assist delivers context-driven response recommendations, Smart Reply options, and adaptive cards using AI models such as Vertex AI, OpenAI GPT, and Google Gemini models.
- Continuous learning: The AI Trainer improves accuracy through feedback and transfer learning techniques.
This entire process takes place within seconds, allowing agents to maintain natural, uninterrupted communication. Integrated with an omni-channel system, agent assist provides consistent responses across calls, live chat conversations, emails, and social messages.
Why use Agent Assist?
Modern contact centres must balance efficiency with empathy. Agent assist enables this by using generative AI and real-time guidance to support service agents with immediate insights.
It helps reduce contact handle time, identify cross-sell opportunities, and maintain script adherence during live interactions. It also detects fraud attempts and churn risks using behavioural biometrics and sentiment cues. Improving agent morale and customer satisfaction scores helps organisations create meaningful, human-like conversations.
For sectors such as government and healthcare, housing, and retail, where privacy, compliance, and customer trust are essential, agent assist ensures every interaction remains secure and reliable. It supports language translation, multi-lingual support, and accessibility for users with different communication needs.
Examples of agent assist in action
Agent Assist supports various industries by resolving everyday communication challenges. Examples include:
- Customer service: Detects intent and retrieves refund policies or customer history to help agents respond promptly.
- Sales: Analyses customer trends and interaction styles to recommend relevant cross-sell opportunities and Smart Reply prompts.
- Technical support: Recognises issues such as Error 503 and suggests troubleshooting steps from internal documentation.
- Finance and secure payments: Guides agents on compliance rules and customer verification during transactions.
- Education and training: Provides instant access to course details and fee-related information using AI-Assisted Real-Time Support.
These examples demonstrate how agent assist improves accuracy, responsiveness, and empathy, improving both customer experience and agent efficiency.
How agent assist improves customer experiences
Delivering excellent customer experiences requires empathy, speed, and clarity. Agent assists bridges technology and human understanding through generative knowledge assistance and real-time transcription software.
Giving agents immediate access to accurate data reduces friction and allows them to focus on customers instead of manual searches. Integrated accessibility features, such as speech-to-text and text-to-speech, make communication more inclusive.
In business process outsourcers (BPOs), it helps maintain brand tone and compliance across large multilingual teams. For not-for-proft organisations, it allows limited staff to handle more customer tickets and support requests efficiently. Through real-time intelligence, agent assist empowers organisations to understand customer behaviour, improve satisfaction, and adapt faster to customer trends.
How to guide agents to have more successful conversations
Agent assist is not just a productivity tool; it’s a learning companion that coaches service agents during live interactions. Using features like the Agent Assist console, generative AI, and real-time guidance, it identifies tone and context to provide empathetic phrases and helpful knowledge base content.
When agents struggle with customer frustration, the system suggests adaptive responses while monitoring sentiment. It displays summaries or links to relevant support tickets or case management files in real time.
This approach helps agents develop problem-solving and communication skills without formal training. Integrated with workforce optimisation, managers can analyse performance, agent morale, and script adherence. With AI-powered agent support, predictive cues based on interaction history, customer metadata, and post-interaction summaries help anticipate customer queries before they’re asked.
Through Microsoft Teams integration, supervisors can collaborate instantly, share feedback, and support remote teams, making agent onboarding and remote work strategy more effective.
How to deliver better customer experiences
Delivering better customer experiences means aligning people, systems, and AI technology. Agent assist bridges that gap, improving the customer journey across every channel.
Key steps include:
- Integrating CRM data, knowledge base content, and customer history for deeper context.
- Using analytics to track customer satisfaction, satisfaction scores, and churn risks.
- Reducing cognitive load by showing only relevant insights to service agents.
- Allowing feedback loops so AI models and trainers can improve guidance.
- Connecting through omni-channel to deliver consistent engagement across live chat, calls, and email.
The result is a contact centre where customers feel heard and agents perform confidently, supported by a unified contact centre platform that delivers measurable improvements in experience and efficiency.
The future of agent assist
Agent assist is evolving into a smarter AI-driven ecosystem. Future solutions will blend predictive analytics, emotion detection, and automated knowledge retrieval to give agents deeper, real-time insights.
AI-powered tools will generate post-call tasks and summaries, helping teams spot churn risks quickly. The harmony between human empathy and machine intelligence will shape the next era of customer engagement.
Final thoughts
Agent assist represents a shift in how modern call centres operate. It blends automation with emotional intelligence, enabling organisations to deliver better results for both customers and agents.
By combining data, AI-assisted real-time support, and human understanding, every customer query becomes an opportunity for a better connection and trust. As generative AI and conversational models evolve, agent assist will remain at the heart of future-ready customer experiences.
Discover how intelligent support tools can improve your customer interactions.
Your Contact Centre, Your Way
This is about you. Your customers, your team, and the service you want to deliver. If you’re ready to take your contact centre from good to extraordinary, get in touch today.
