Google launches an AI-based “Agent Assist for Chat” as live chat software grows in prominence.

Agent Assist is an extension of Contact Center AI and supports call center agents via text in addition to calls. Agent Assist is designed to work with Google’s DialogFlow CX’s artificial intelligence-based virtual agents that are used to serve routine queries.

Enabling agents to be more efficient through intelligent guidance

Agent Assist identifies customers' intent and provides agents with real-time recommendations (i.e., articles, responses, and FAQs) to support customer interactions to effectively resolve their queries.

The increase in the volume of queries in contact centers has left customer service with two options—either make customers wait a considerable amount of time to speak to an agent (at the cost of customer satisfaction) or hire more agents (which increases cost). Google has claimed that Agent Assist has managed to handle up to 28% more conversations for its enterprise customers, while also increasing customer satisfaction by 10%, enabling the agents to respond 15% faster.

G2’s live chat category shows over 100% growth in traffic in the last 17 months

With live chat software, businesses can establish real-time conversations with their website visitors. Live chat can give businesses a chance to handhold the visitors and overcome their objections, thereby reaching a buying decision. At G2, our live chat category consists of 380+ products, and below is a graphical representation of the percentage of traffic growth driven by our Live Chat category over the last 17 months. Traffic to this category in May is up 123% since January 2020.

Live Chat percentage change in traffic compared to January 2020

An increase in the traffic to the Live Chat Software category in the last 17 months signals that businesses are embracing the need to meet their customers' expectations of getting real-time assistance. This also indicates that companies are striving to have continuous communication with customers. Interaction with a human agent on a real-time basis can help build the credibility and brand image of a company.

With Google's Agent Assist, companies can empower these agents with real-time assistance to help improve the quality and efficiency of customer service interactions. Combining traditional information retrieval approaches with modern deep learning models can help ensure high accuracy and efficient run-time performance in deployed systems.