Gartner predicts that conversational AI will save $80 billion in contact centre agent labour costs by 2026. Enterprise IT spending on conversational AI is expected to reach $1.99 billion by 2022.
“Gartner estimates that there are approximately 17 million contact centre agents worldwide today,” said Daniel O’Connell, VP analyst at Gartner.
“Many organizations are challenged by agent staff shortages. They also need to cut costs, which can represent up to 95% of contact centre costs.
Conversational AI makes agents more efficient and effective, while also improving the customer experience.”
Gartner projects that one in 10 agent interactions will be automated by 2026, an increase from an estimated 1.6% of interactions today that are automated using AI.
Conversational AI can automate all or part of a contact centre customer interaction through both voice and digital channels. This could be achieved through voicebots or chatbots.
This is expected to have transformational benefits to customer service and support organizations within two years.
Also read: Why Australian Enterprises are Investing in AI – The Key Drivers Behind Rising AI Investments
A recent Gartner survey of 182 CFOs and senior finance leaders showed that CFOs will also seek efficiency gains through increased automation.
CFO’s embracing Automation to cut costs and combat inflation
Complexity Could Limit Adoption of Conversational AI
Technical Complexity could limit adoption affecting the growth of the Conversational AI market size, notes Gartner.
“Implementing conversational AI requires expensive professional resources in areas such as data analytics, knowledge graphs and natural language understanding,” said O’Connell.
“Once built, the conversational AI capabilities must be continuously supported, updated and maintained, resulting in additional costs.”
Complex, large-scale conversational AI deployments can take multiple years.
Gartner estimates integration pricing at $1,000 to $1,500 per conversational AI agent, though some organizations cite costs of up to $2,000 per agent.
Therefore, the early adoption of conversational AI will be primarily led by organizations with 2,500 or more agents with budget for the requisite technical resources.
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