New research from Talkdesk indicates that amid surging inbound call volumes in 2023, AI is helping organisations improve speed to answer and maintain service levels.
The proprietary global data from its Global Contact Center Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Benchmarking report — gathered from across a wide range of industries, company sizes, and locations in 2023 — is designed to help contact centre leaders successfully navigate industry changes, especially the implications of generative AI (GenAI) on contact centre operations and CX delivery.
Among the KPI benchmarks’ insight into the performance and opportunities for success in contact centers, key findings include:
As call volumes increase, KPI indicators show AI offers a path to improved speed to answer and service levels.
- Total inbound calls increased 21% to 390 million in 2023 across Talkdesk customers. In a positive outlook for rising AI usage, speed to answer improved significantly – down 13% to an average of 8.7 seconds – and service level improved slightly to 75.61%.
- While recruitment and attrition were challenges in 2023, AI-powered self-service solutions helped handle a portion of the large volumes of calls despite labor shortages. These results indicate that AI is enabling organizations to engage with customers faster.
Human agents remain critical to the contact center.
- The role of the agent is still mission-critical. With inbound call volumes reaching over 390 million and the average talk time hovering around 2 minutes and 50 seconds, the data implies human agents will likely focus on handling more complex issues and customers who would rather have a human resolve their queries than AI.
Industry-specific contact center solutions correlate with higher service levels.
- While the average service level was maintained from 2022 to 2023 (75.4% in 2022 vs. 75.6% in 2023), some industries achieved higher service levels, including retail and consumer goods (RCG) at 78.5%. Organizations that deploy industry-tailored solutions, like Talkdesk Autopilot for Retail, Banking, and Healthcare, can accelerate contact center transformation with AI. The data implies industries can better address vertical-specific CX queries due to these tailored solutions.
Neville Letzerich, chief marketing officer at Talkdesk, said: “Contact center KPI benchmarking helps center managers determine best practices, critically evaluate their business, and implement changes to be more competitive. Correlations between AI adoption and traditional contact center KPI performance enables decision makers to intelligently invest in technology solutions that meet their goals and ensure they keep pace with industry standards on AI.”
Crendal Kear, senior vice president of Customer Success at Talkdesk, commented: “As contact center managers operate in a radically changing, increasingly competitive landscape, benchmarking KPI data is invaluable to understand how their center operations measure up. Our customers have different goals, but we believe that learning from the collective experience is important as it reveals opportunities to prioritize success that likely wouldn’t surface from internal reflection.”
