CIOs aren’t spending enough time diving into one of the biggest ROI opportunities in the AI era. Yes, this is an article about customer experience, where CIOs and genAI Digital Trailblazers can find revenue opportunities, cost savings, and improved customer satisfaction through a series of AI innovations.

I know many CIOs who’ve overseen customer-facing web/mobile applications, launched ecommerce capabilities, and pioneered B2B data products. But there’s one aspect of customer experiences that’s often overlooked by CIOs – the customer contact center, or call center.

Focus on people, interactions, and metrics

There’s plenty of infrastructure in contact centers to keep IT teams busy: redundant networks, VoIP phones, standardized desktops, headsets, and additional considerations to support a hybrid contact center. 

As important as the infrastructure is, CIOs should step above the stack and speak with the contact center agents and their management.

Ask about key issues facing customers, the research required to address challenges facing customers, and the repetitive calls for customer help on common issues. Then sit with the managers and ask about the issues they face with staffing the call center and keeping call center agents motivated without burning out.

Most importantly, check out the call center’s KPIs and analytics, especially those that can lead to growth hacks. If they lack real-time data and analytics that enable action, you have an even greater opportunity to deliver business value!

Many ROI examples on using AI in CX

At Verint’s Engage 26 conference, leaders shared several examples of how to gain ROI with AI in customer contact centers. ROI opportunities were highlighted during the keynotes, displayed on boards throughout the conference space, and featured on many pages of the Verint website.

Here are some ROI opportunities that caught my attention about customer success using Verint’s AI capabilities:

• A telco realized $79M in benefits from the Verint Coaching Bot, reducing Average Handling Time (AHT) by 30 seconds.
• An equipment distributor saved $12.5M by using Verint Quality Bot to scale evaluations to 97% and increasing supervisor capacity by 80%.
• A bank saw $10M in call center agent capacity savings by contaning 80% of interactions with Verint Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA).
• A leading global services company identified $6.5M in additional revenue opportunities by using Genie Bot to identify strategies for boosting sales win rates and enhancing customer retention.

What metrics are leaders targeting?

In addition to financial impacts, CIOs should ask call center leaders which KPIs they are aiming to improve.

Contact center management has a rich library of strategies, best practices, and KPIs. Leaders don’t have to adopt all AI capabilities at once; instead, they can choose one that aligns with their objectives. Here are some examples:

• A travel company achieved 95% containment and a 30% increase in revenue per booking using Verint’s IVA.
• A bank saw its compliance score increase by 15% by rolling out Verint bots.
• A services company saw a 19% reduction in call center agent absenteeism.

What are the bots driving these CX impacts?

Verint has AI bots to increase contact center agent capacity, improve workflows, and deliver insights to managers. They offer AI bots in several categories, including:

• Contact center agent copilot bots for knowledge automation, coaching, and accelerating call wrap-up.
• Knowledge automation bots for knowledge management and content creation.
• Fraud, risk assessment, and AI trust bots that help contact center agents balance customer experience and risk management objectives.
• Industry-specific agents in financial services, healthcare, travel, retail, and the public sector.

Managers can connect these bots to more complex agentic workflows using Agent Factory. Its core capability enables the orchestration of Verint’s bots to complete workflows, connect human agents where needed, and support the transition to agentic AI. Other capabilities include prompt governance and integration with CX Automation.

During Engage 26, executives walked through a timely example tied to the FIFA World Cup. Imagine a hotel chain being overwhelmed with calls to cancel, modify, or add reservations as the knockout-round game times and locations are announced. Contact centers can use Agent Factory to review cancellation policies, check room availability, and process stay changes with simple prompts and acknowledgments. 

Why CIOs should review Verint’s AI capabilities

I’ve spoken to many CIOs who are updating their AI strategy and governance as AI capabilities mature, AI costs rise, and chaotic AI POCs fail to translate into business value. Addressing these challenges requires documenting vision statements for AI initiatives and prioritizing those with clear financial benefits and KPI improvements.

AI initiatives tied to the contact center have both revenue and cost objectives. It has a rich set of KPIs that contact centers regularly review to identify areas for improvement. For CIOs looking for ROI opportunities that impact customer experience, I’d recommend starting with the contact center’s low-hanging fruit and reviewing ways to partner with Verint. In addition to being an open platform, Verint has decades of experience delivering CX capabilities with financial outcomes.

Watch the recap on AI agent orchestration

In this episode of the Driving Digital Standup, I break down how AI agent orchestration moves CX from experiment to production, and where the actual ROI shows up.