The Benefits of Generative AI: Using Automated Call Transcription for Better Customer Service

Generative AI has found its place in many parts of contact centers, helping to provide better customer service in many workflows across countless industries. Using it to automate call transcriptions and improve the accuracy and usefulness of transcriptions, is a welcome evolution for many customer experience (CX) leaders. 

But what exactly are the benefits of generative AI (genAI), especially for call transcription? Read on as we discuss the opportunities from using AI-powered call transcription and what you could gain from implementing it in your contact center. 

The opportunities with call transcription today 

Call transcription — recording phone calls and putting the audio into written words — isn't a new process, but it is one ripe for a revolution. Transcriptions are used today for many parts of customer service, including compliance-mandated documentation, as well as using them to learn valuable information about your customers (and your business). 

The challenge with traditional call transcription, however, is that it usually takes several steps (and sometimes hours or days) to go from the initial source audio to the eventual written document. Sometimesthe audio even has to be downloaded and uploaded elsewhere, which dramatically increases the risk of security gaps and poses problems for centers with tight compliance requirements (e.g., keeping patient information private). 

The catalyst for change: generative AI 

Generative AI, however, has changed call transcription. Unlike previous data analysis methods, the benefit of generative AI is that it can take large amounts of unstructured data (such as audio or documents), analyze them, and generate useful information based on that data. Depending on the model used, the results could be tailored to fit your contact center's needs, from a short, bulleted list to compliance-ready notes and follow-up steps for your agents. 

Benefits of generative AI for customer service 

Every CX leader wants their agents to be as productive and effective as possible. Generative AI has the power to do just that — without burning out your agents. 

From raw recordings to rich, genAI-ready data 

Speech recognition technology has existed for over 60 years, with IBM's Shoebox debut in 1961. But with a vocabulary of just 16 words, it could hardly be considered transcription. Today, however, with large language models (LLMs) and AI, transcription has become far more accurate, with some properly trained models reaching a word error rate (WER) in the single digits. (A WER of 4% means that the transcribed text is 96% accurate.) 

Of course, highly accurate transcriptions mean you can gain insights from every call, turning quality management into a proactive effort versus a reactive one, or finding common customer issues. With all this data at your fingertips, understanding the health of your contact center is far easier. 

But it's important to note a small nuance: speech recognition in and of itself isn’t technically generative AI. Once a model takes the transcription and turns it into something else, such as a summaryor follow-up email, that’s when generative AI capabilities take over. Nevertheless, the LLMs and AI models that do the analysis are what fuel genAI in the first place. 

Empowering and augmenting customer service agents 

The true power of genAI is how it can empower your human agents throughout their day. While the number of calls an agent must handle varies wildly among industries, the common thread is that too much cognitive load in a day quickly burns out agents. And the more burnt out an agent is, the worse the customer experience gets. 

But a generative AI-powered assistant can augment your agents and help them with various activities. For instance, with real-time call transcription, genAI can summarize what's happening in the call, detail customer sentiment, and provide coaching opportunities (including suggested responses) in the moment. 

In fact, we found that average handle time (AHT) dropped by 27% with Five9 AI Agent Assist, helping agents deliver stellar customer experiences in less than three-quarters of the time. Agent assistants can also help with administrative work — lowering after-call work (ACW) by 40% — by performing tasks such as auto-filling customer details in the appropriate systems (CRMs, ERPs). 

Enhancing the customer experience 

Of course, all this boils down to providing amazing customer experiences. The majority of customers (83%) still prefer to connect to live agents. With generative AI, agents can reduce the nearly 40% of their time away from customers — looking up information, searching for answers, etc. — and focus on providing customers with the personalized attention each one of them deserves. 

With AI-powered agent assistance, we found that companies experienced a 16% jump in customer satisfaction, proving just how the benefits of generative AI in customer service can make real, measurable differences. 

Implementing generative AI and call transcription 

Taking advantage of genAI for call transcription starts by choosing the right platform. While automated call transcription is an easy first step into AI, it's very unlikely to be your last. Having an intelligent CX platform that will help you seamlessly add generative AI to your agents' existing workflows will be key to promoting adoption and buy-in throughout your AI transformation journey. 

The best platforms will help you optimize your contact center to make the most of genAI with continuous review, iteration, and refinement — especially as you deploy more of it. Remember, the more data you feed your AI models, the better your results. 

See just how much you could benefit from Five9's AI Agent Assist. Check out our ROI calculator here.