July 24, 2023

AI deployed to match, coach, develop gig workers with contact centers in refreshed approach to staffing conundrums, Agents Only Podcast

AI deployed: No supervisor. No Command and Control. Better Agent EX. Better CX.

“Find the best people, whenever you need them, wherever they are,” says Tyler Ashby, President at Agents Only Technologies. In this podcast, Tyler discusses a new approach to a long-term challenge: staffing the contact center. Historically, this is the world of the mismatching labor market, with contact centers struggling to be staffed at peak times and seasons, trying to keep costs under control in slower times, matching high customer expectations to available compensation, and the hard work of improving EX, employee experience. Tyler points out that the old career path, when front line contact center agents could rise through the rands to the executive suite, may no longer be available in many companies, meaning that a different approach is needed.

Agents Only combines gig workers, hybrid work, and AI to offer a new answer to an old problem. The AI is agent facing, in the same way the Uber and Lyft platforms face their gig workforce (or ride-sharing people). The AI matches you, as the agent, to a brand and then the AI becomes, coach, trainer, companion, and mentor. No boss. No command and control, which have sometimes been a source of friction with inbound and even longer-term workers. AI talks to the agent in a natural language conversation, and then helps the agent, call by call, rating the transaction and then helping the agent fine tune their approach.

The company has already been doing this for clients, and has processed $250,000,000 in transactions, as basically a proof of concept. Now the firm is going to market. “For large CTO’s this is a short road map to results with limited investment or risk,” says Tyler, who sees this as an easy opportunity for enterprise readers to experience a new way to handle contact center demands, with little fixed outlay. Meanwhile, this is an interesting AI and contact center play for the channel, a chance to offer an advanced, proven AI contact center solution, to customers who would otherwise not know they had such an option. Tyler also sees this a fitting a need for the CSP community.

Visit www.agentsonly.com