Contact Center Transformation: Why You Cannot Afford to Ignore AI in Your Contact Center

In this episode of Exchanges, host Hannah Story joins guests Jonathan Yundt, Industry Director, Healthcare & Insurance at Hitachi Solutions, and Andrew Montgomery, Director, Business Applications at Microsoft, as they discuss the transformation occurring in the contact center.

In this episode, you’ll hear from Jonathan and Andrew as they discuss:

• The agentic experience and why it’s a buzzword for 2025 
• How Microsoft Copilot is empowering agents and benefiting customers 
• Why it’s important to make sure you don’t ignore AI in your contact center

global.hitachi-solutions.com

Transcript

Transcript

 Hannah Story   
 Hello everyone and welcome to the Exchanges with Hitachi Solutions podcast.
 My name is Hannah story, and I'll be your host for today's episode where we're going to dive into transformation occurring in the contact center. I'm excited to be here today with Jonathan Yundt from the Hitachi Solutions team and Andrew Montgomery from Microsoft. I'll pass it over to you guys to do a quick intro of yourselves. We'll start with Jonathan.

Jonathan Yundt   
Sure. Jonathan Yundt, Industry Director, focused on the healthcare and financial service industries. I work with our clients to envision their future and current processes in all things Microsoft. Thanks for having me, Hannah.

Andrew Montgomery
Thanks for having me as well. Andrew Montgomery, I lead the Business Applications team at Microsoft for our insurance vertical where my team aligns to customer needs focused on improving sales, marketing and customer experience with their end customers.

Hannah Story   
Thank you both again for being here today. Before we dive in, we're going to do a rapid-fire ice breaker just to let our listeners get to know a little bit about you guys. So, Andrew, I'll start with you as our guest of honor for today. What is your preference? Talk or text?

Andrew Montgomery
Text for sure. I just was thinking about this yesterday.
I got like three phone calls, one of which was my mom, and I feel bad saying this, but I was like, “just text me”.

Jonathan Yundt   
It's being recorded, Andrew. It's being recorded.

Andrew Montgomery
I know, I know. But she she'll never she'll never listen to this. So, text for sure.
 
Hannah Story   
Fair enough. Alright, window, seat or aisle?

Andrew Montgomery
Aisle. I drink a lot of water.

Jonathan Yundt   
That's where I'll be. Absolutely. Got to get up and move. Aisle for sure.

 Hannah Story   
Alright. So then in the spirit of travel, what is the place at the top of your bucket list?

Andrew Montgomery
For me, I would say Machu Picchu. I had some friends go there recently and it looked awesome. So that's, that's where I'd like to go next.

Hannah Story   
I had some friends who just did that a few months ago and it looks incredible. Added to my list too.

Jonathan Yundt   
I have three boys and so we're going through the kind of “crawl, walk, run” approach to travel. We're looking at where it's like the Disneyland of countries - we're looking at Costa Rica, Ireland and Japan are top three of where we want to hit.

Andrew Montgomery
Nice, yeah.

Hannah Story   
OK. That’s a good, good list.

Andrew Montgomery
Japan was the next one I was going to say.

Jonathan Yundt   
Trying to get Hitachi corporate to get me out there.

Andrew Montgomery
Yeah, yeah.

Jonathan Yundt   
Still working on that.

Hannah Story   
All right, Jonathan, I heard you say aisle, so we know where you're sitting on your flights to these to these countries. But for talk or text? Which one?

Jonathan Yundt   
It depends. I'm going to give you a consultant's response, but text usually. You know, if I need to catch up with you, it's like escalation. If you really need to talk to somebody or if it's that important, you call them. Otherwise, it's a text or an e-mail, right? And now that Apple has the ability for you to see, to transcribe the voicemail, you don't even need to listen to the voicemail.

Hannah Story   
This is true.
 
Jonathan Yundt   
It's so impersonal.

Andrew Montgomery
That's right.

Jonathan Yundt   
It really speaks to my introvert side, so yes.

Hannah Story   
That was awesome, but now I will get us into the conversation as to why we're here today. I know we've seen a lot of momentum in the market around contact center, the call center experience, the transformation happening in that space. But I think at the core of it is really, it’s customer service and the expectations we have as customers when we're calling in or we’re texting in or using a chat to engage with that agent.
 
I’ll start with you, Jonathan, I would like to get your perspective on the challenges that you're seeing with customers and the disconnects that are happening in those experiences.

Jonathan Yundt   
Yeah, and it's funny that you had that text or call question because you'd think generationally speaking what people would prefer - in Gen X and Millennials, Gen Z, they're going to prefer chat or SMS texting or even e-mail, but we have seen reports from analysts that are saying that, you know, leaders are expecting call volumes to increase by 20% in the coming years and that kind of tells you that while yes, you need to be able to support chat, you need to be able to support texting, voice is not going anywhere and at a certain point you reach a cliff and you need to be able to pick up the phone and talk to somebody. So, I think what we're seeing is that you need to be able to support regardless, it doesn't matter. You need to have that flexibility where someone can go from an e-mail to a chat to voice and back to an e-mail, right? So being able to engage regardless of channel. I might start off with a service question and then it might kind of pivot or morph into a sales opportunity.

I'm kind of doing a little segue to Andrew here, but I read a quote online the other day that said that servicing is selling and selling is servicing.

There is the line between the two [but] while they used to be so distinct, especially in in insurance and in financial services industry, those lines are blurred more and more.

So you need to be able to support multiple channels - the omnichannel approach and you need to be able to service and sell at the same time.

Andrew, what are your thoughts on those comments?

Andrew Montgomery
Yeah, I 100% agree, and you know with the rapid rate of technological advancement over the last decade, even five years, I mean we who would have thought we would have self-driving cars and what we have, it's just expected now, right? Customers expect a personalized experience.  

Everybody knows that you've got data out there that can be leveraged.

I talked about my mom earlier, even my mom knows and expects that you should 
be able to kind of communicate across different channels and like, she expects the same level of service that I expect, that my kids expect, and if you don't get that, then you're going to leave wanting. You're going to leave having a bad experience, and it makes me think about a joke I heard about somebody that was on a plane, didn't know that there was Wi-Fi, you know, like the first time Wi-Fi was available and they got on, they got Wi-Fi and then it stopped working. And then they got mad. And it was like 10 minutes ago they didn't even know they had Wi-Fi and now they're mad. They didn't have it. Well, you know, I was trying to do a chat the other day online and it was like they just couldn't get it right or I was asking my question and like they didn't get it right and I'm like, you know, I don't know, a couple years ago, I would have been patient with that, but now it's just frustrating because I know this bot should be able to figure out what I'm asking.

 Jonathan Yundt   
Table stakes.
 
Andrew Montgomery
It's not that difficult. It's table stakes, it really it really is critical, I think to get that right and if you don't, people are going to leave with a bad taste in their mouth.

Jonathan Yundt   
And if you think about it, especially if we focus on the insurance industry, a Bot or an individual that's chatting with somebody, there needs to be context. You need to know, hey, am I a policyholder? Am I a beneficiary? Am I an agent?

So there needs to be some sort of recognition and I think, what you are saying, the table stakes, just the basic functionality that a Bot or a virtual agent needs to be able to serve, that needs to be dialed in, that is for sure.
 
A, because it's a first line of defense, but then B, it can really leave the bad taste in a consumer's mouth. And the the second-half of that is that, you need to have that transfer - when you go from that Bot or the virtual agent to a live individual human interaction - that needs to be a clean transition as well otherwise, that really, will leave, the sour grapes taste in the mouth of the consumer.

So, I think there's two big points of potential friction in those engagements and those interactions.

Andrew Montgomery
Yeah. I agree. And do you know what we’re seeing? I mentioned earlier, I work with a lot of insurance companies, a lot of P&C, a lot of different verticals or sub verticals within insurance, and a lot of what we're seeing in the call center is that you know you have an agent, you have a call center agent whose primary role is customer care, customer service, but you have somebody who's got somebody on the phone and what a great opportunity for them to use something that they've either heard or maybe something that AI has picked up on and can surface up as a possible lead, a potential upsell cross sell opportunity. And so, I think it's also a great for Insurance companies and regulated industries in general, not just insurance, but financial services too to view this as a great opportunity to leverage. We've got a captive audience, we've got one of our valued customers on the phone, let's use this opportunity to provide value, offer them something else that they you know that's useful to them, and we don't have to transfer them. We don't have to give them a call back. We don't have to hope that the information gets transferred to their sales rep, now, it certainly could, right? And that's a key part of the whole story, to your point, Jonathan, is having that seamless transfer and we certainly can do that, you know by having triggers and automation sent off. But how great it would be if they could have that conversation in real time and not lose, potentially lose that lead real time as they have them on the phone.

Jonathan Yundt   
Yeah, an informed conversation, engaged and informed. 100% agree with you, Andrew, on your points. We see having that guidance and you know, knowing how sometimes there is some difficult conversations that need to be had especially if you think of someone is filing a claim that nine times out of ten, is not a pleasant or positive transaction that's happening. And so we see with our own call center solutions and accelerators that adding a little guidance, a little scripting, a little decision tree that helps them ease into that those tough conversations and knowing that hey, based on sentiment, you know the someone is starting to get a little upset or frustrated, here are some potential ways to offset that or to resolve that or address it. And we see it through Copilot. And we also see it through our accelerators and solutions for how to have those tough conversations and really, to turn that negative interaction into a +1.

Andrew Montgomery
Yeah, absolutely.

Hannah Story   
I think you both just kind of hinted at this in both of your responses, but I'd love to take just a minute or two to dive in into what we're seeing in the Copilot space, the AI space, and what does that really mean to the agent experience and how they're interacting with the person on the other end of that contact. And I know Microsoft recently had a bunch of exciting announcements, has made a lot of investment internally, so maybe Andrew, if you've got any insight you could share with us, would love to get your perspective.

Andrew Montgomery
Yeah. You hear this word, “agentic” now - feels like the maybe the new buzz word for probably 2025. We'll probably hear it a lot more than we care to, but the agentic experience refers to the integration of these AI agents within Microsoft 365 to enhance productivity and streamline the business processes. So, these agents are designed to assist users by automating mundane tasks, providing insights and facilitating. Essentially, more efficient workflows, more efficient ways to do things so you know, I think in  the, in the realm of call centers and we kind of touched upon this, some of those (processes) you think about providing real time assistance to agents by suggesting responses you know, Jonathan, you just talked about that, kind of triggering a suggested response based on sentiment that may have just come up or offering product information or identifying an upsell or cross sell opportunity based on the conversation that you're having or by keywords that have come up. Automating tasks, right? That's a big thing. It’s some of these basic processes, things that are not critical to the to the job, they're not super value add and these agents, you know, can help free up the human agent to focus on more complex value sales-oriented, customer-oriented things that would  increase efficiency, increase value and more high value type workloads.

Which, by the way, I think what was lost a lot in this, with this agentic experience, is the customer has a better experience, right? The goal is to is to create a, you know a better experience for them. But if you think about the call center agent or the employee, you’re really creating a better experience for them as well.

You're creating a retention tool because who doesn't want to come to work and work on more high value stuff?

Like nobody really wants to come and just do data entry or just do mundane stuff, they want to do stuff that's meaningful and so that's a lot of what Copilot and this agentic experience is intended to do, to help offload a lot of that routine, basic, rudimentary stuff and help get people focused on more value add stuff.

Jonathan Yundt   
Andrew, I couldn't agree more. I joked that it's called Copilot and not autopilot and I'm sure that's number one dad humor coming in and #2 everybody hears that, but absolutely hit the nail on the head. That employee experience and customer experience are two sides of the same coin. Right? One feeds the other.
 
 And so, Copilot is removing that that mundane task you think of - using that use case or that story, the example that we're using for a claim - you don't want to hear somebody typing. You don't want to hear fingers on the keyboard.  You want to hear that kind of empathy. “I'm so sorry to hear that, I hope everybody's OK, are you in a secure location?” You know those sorts of things. And you wanted the empathy, the presence, knowing that someone is listening and not just hearing what you're saying, right?
 
And so, Copilot, I think really, really does a great job of removing those barriers for engagement that an agent a CSR or someone in a call center has to do. We need to document the call, no doubt you have to document the call. You have to do wrap up. You have to do the required pieces of verification and validation of the caller.

But what if between Copilot and the contact center solution and Hitachi [Solutions]’s solutions - what if you can be more present? What if you can be more engaged?

What if you can have these things documented and wrapped up in and really open up the eyes and ears and the heartstrings of the of the customer service representative to really make that what again, that that negative potentially negative interaction into a more +1. That is where we really see the skies open up for opportunity for setting that expectation and really wowing the customer.

Andrew Montgomery
Yeah, absolutely.

Hannah Story   
Thank you so much for that, Jonathan. Maybe we sort of redirect slightly and coming back to some of the announcements, the investments that Microsoft is making, I know I heard through a few different stories [about] the massive amount of operational transformation that Microsoft has undergone by using some of these solutions internally. Andrew, I'd love to hear kind of what you're seeing and what your experience has been in that transformation.

Andrew Montgomery
Yeah, yes, absolutely. So, a few stats to tee things up from a from a Microsoft Call Center perspective first. We operate in about 218 countries. We support forty-seven languages for about 45,000 agents and then we handle about 73,000,000 calls per year and about 17,000,000 cases per year. 

So, you know, obviously a large call center handling everything from cases on Azure to Office, to Xbox to you name it. And it's been pretty remarkable - this kind of call center transformation and we have been able to save over $100 million in operational costs over a number of different areas.

Specifically, as it as it kind of relates to agents and Copilots, we we've seen a couple of key areas, one [being] the ability to resolve cases faster. So, we've seen anywhere from between 12 to 16% reduction in average handle time for chat cases. So just the ability to, you know, to handle those chats and get answers quickly and resolve those in a more, you know, expeditious fashion just based on the information that's at our fingertips. And then just being able to serve more customers. 

So we've actually been able to see about a 10% increase in cases and chats managed by support agents, so be able to handle 10% more customers coming in just because of those efficiencies. And then from an onboarding perspective, we've been able to see a 13% decrease in agents requiring peer assistance to resolve a case, so less people need help. Which means we can actually onboard more agents more quickly. So, we have a lot less people needing to kind of stand over shoulder [to] do training. It's just a lot easier and a lot quicker to get people up and running. And so lastly, we're seeing a reduction in the need for agent-to-agent transfer by the tune of about 34%, just by leveraging this technology and this machine learning.
 
So just really with everything,  again knowledge management, knowledge transfer, having prompts, we've reduced that need for agents to have to transfer to somebody else by 34%, which of course creates a much better experience for the end customer, so all of those sort of reductions and increases have led to not only those reductions in operational costs, [but] Increases in customer satisfaction as well. So, it's been a really great experience leveraging Copilots and agents in our in our call center.

Jonathan Yundt   
And that I mean that that hits all the marks that a Call Center Supervisor, Director, executive is concerned about Andrew. The the first call resolution, average handle time CSAT, we're seeing that with our customers too. And so it's kind of funny that that Microsoft was the beta for their own products because we're seeing, you know, we've got a number of clients that are in various stages of deploying this technology and these solutions and really we're seeing the rapid pace of release and development and enhancements that are coming.
 
Number one, it's like drinking from a fire hose, and number two, we're able to incorporate so much more of the wish list of our clients with these, with these new features and a lot of it for sure is the copilot. And in a regulated industry, we know there's concerns about how we make sure what we're saying is compliant and that we don't get ourselves in hot water and that's why again it's Copilot. It's not autopilot. It's just trying to make these suggestions [like] this might be a suggested response, a suggested resolution to an issue or a case that they're topic that they're trying to resolve and we're seeing our clients really, really leveraging.

It's looking at the operating procedures internally and in helping them drive to that resolution and again we were talking about that that documentation and the intent and the intake for why someone is calling or reaching out to us. 

And then #2, on the tail end of that is, "OK how do we help them more efficiently wrap up and document what they discuss and what next steps are?"

So, a lot of our clients, thanks to Microsoft and the call center agents and supervisors and directors and you know executives for taking that on because it's made our clients lives a lot easier.

Andrew Montgomery
Yeah, it's great.

Hannah Story   
Well, as we get towards the end of our time together today, I'm going to put you both on the spot for your key take away. If you were stuck in an elevator with a customer and you wanted to give them one, take away from what you're seeing, either in the contact center, transformation space, or [give] a piece of advice to them, [what would you say?] - I'll put you on the spot, Andrew.

Andrew Montgomery
Yeah. I guess I would say if you are, if you are somebody who is tasked with transforming service and you know customer experience in in regulated industries or frankly any industry I would say you, you cannot afford to ignore the advancements that AI is making in this space and I'd say it's absolutely revolutionizing both the experience that we provide our, our customers, but also the experience that we provide to our employees like I mentioned before, just in an increasingly competitive industry like insurance or financial services in general, you need every advantage so leveraging AI,  Agents,  Copilots, to kind of help increase efficiencies and automation and personalization, it’s kind of like what Jonathan said earlier, it’s table stakes at this point. So, it's something every company needs to be leveraging, or I would say that you probably risk becoming irrelevant, so that that would be my takeaway.

Jonathan Yundt   
I wholeheartedly agree there, Andrew, I was talking to an insurance executive the other day and he said, you know, our competitors are doing it and if we're not doing it, we just going to be a thing of the past.
 
So, don't be a dinosaur. Don't go the way of the Dodo Bird, as Andrew said. Adopt AI. Lean in. 

My takeaway is I'm going to piggyback a bit on Andrew's statement, I have two.
 
Number one, that AI that's going to remove the friction. So, you want to remove the friction for any engagement with any of your constituents, whether it's an agent, whether it's a policyholder, whether it's a claim, beneficiary, doesn't matter. Remove that friction and using AI can really help.
 

And then #2 is employee upskilling. We talk about AI, you got to have AI, got to use AI. OK, we have AI. How are we going to help our employees use it in a responsible manner? How are we going to help them use it so that it makes their day-to-day easier and better?
 
Those to me are two key takeaways as part of this conversation. I have conversations with clients day in, day out. So those are those are my two.

 Hannah Story   
 A bonus, I'll put a bonus in there for the listeners.

Andrew Montgomery
Yeah.

Jonathan Yundt   
Santa came early, Hannah.

Hannah Story 
Yeah, there we go.

Andrew and Jonathan, thank you so much for today's conversation. I also want to thank our listeners and if you'd like to subscribe to our podcast, you can do so on our website at global.hitachi-solutions.com. Thanks so much.

Jonathan Yundt   
Thanks all.

Andrew Montgomery
Thank you.