Igor Boshoer is cofounder and CTO of Clerk Chat, helping companies create epic customer experience with AI agents across voice & messaging.
Insanely high turnover, wait times that keep getting longer, stressed-out agents and frustrated customers: Welcome to the traditional contact center.
In 2023, a Microsoft study in the U.K. found that the average hold time for contact centers in some industries could be as high as 35 minutes. And the average turnover rate for call center staff hovers around 30%. But even that doesn’t highlight the real problem—we’re falling behind.
The support staff follows scripts. Protocols take priority over people. Context disappears between follow-ups.
This is a systems issue. Instead, we should rethink the design. Move the mundane, memory-driven tasks onto platforms that can scale. Let real humans do the work only humans can: Build trust, recognize nuances and bring connection back into customer care.
As cofounder and CTO of Clerk Chat, I’ve spent my career at the intersection of infrastructure, innovation and customer experience, from building global engineering teams at DocuSign and Lucasfilm to designing the systems behind real-time messaging and AI-driven workflows. I’ve seen firsthand how AI, when used right, can make contact centers radically more human.
This article explores how conversational AI is reshaping the contact center, not by replacing people but by redesigning the work itself.
The Evolution Of Customer Contact
It’s not that customer service has stood still. It’s kept lurching forward—in awkward leaps.
It began as voice-only, with agents tethered to phones and bound to office hours. Then came the “multichannel” era, which sounded promising until companies realized it meant juggling disconnected systems: email here, chat there and a social inbox in another tab.
The first wave of automation promised relief. IVRs (“Press 3 for …”) and scripted chatbots. They were efficient for the business and maddening for the customer. Customers would zero out phone menus, type “representative” into chat windows and brace for another long wait.
Today’s shift is different. Modern conversational AI doesn’t just respond, it remembers. It can keep context during a call, follow up over text and circle back days later. It knows when to handle the request and when to step aside for a human who can offer nuance and judgment.
This isn’t about replacing people. It’s about not forcing them to work like machines.
What AI Agents Can Handle Now
For years, “automation” in customer service meant a phone tree that looped you back to the start or a chatbot that could handle two questions before stalling. Anything unexpected went to a human, usually without any useful notes on what had already been said.
That’s changed. The newer wave of AI agents is built to take on real work and see it through. They can handle the kinds of tasks that eat up hours of an agent’s week, like shipping updates and booking or changing appointments.
The effect is simple but powerful: Agents aren’t bogged down in repetition, and customers aren’t stuck explaining themselves over and over.
Voice And Messaging: AI In Tandem
We all know voice still rules when the stakes are high. People pick up the phone because they want answers now. Messaging, on the other hand, owns the territory of convenience. It’s where customers go when they want to multitask, reply on their own time or avoid being put on hold altogether.
The problem? Most AI deployments pick a side. Most sit in a call flow or a chat window, but the divide doesn’t need to exist. AI agents can work both sides of the fence and carry on the conversation between them without dropping anything. For example, a customer might start on the phone and then hang up to catch a meeting. Later, they could pick up where they left off via SMS.
When voice and messaging AI work in tandem, it’s not a choice between speed and personalization. It’s automation working in the background, so the human parts of service feel more personal than ever.
Implementing Conversational AI Into Your Contact Center
Over the past few years, I’ve helped companies layer conversational AI into their existing systems, often while juggling legacy tools. Here are a few steps I’d recommend to anyone trying to make voice and messaging AI work together without completely overhauling everything:
1. Start with one channel—but don’t stop there. Most companies begin with web chat because it’s easier to test and train, but the mistake is thinking voice and messaging should be separate initiatives. Start with one, but build with both in mind.
2. Seriously consider the customer journey. Learn customer behavior. Where do they get frustrated? Where are you asking them to repeat themselves? Build your AI logic around those moments.
3. Don’t try to do everything in version one. Ship it, even in its simplest version. You don’t need to start with everything automated. Focus on a handful of high-volume, low-risk conversations, like FAQs.
4. Consider the handoff early. AI agents should know when to hand conversations to humans. But more importantly, that handoff should include full context and memory—otherwise, the customer will have to re-explain everything.
5. Expect hiccups. Conversational AI takes iteration. You’ll need to learn and adjust along the way. Ultimately, it will help you create better workflows.
When building a voice and messaging agentic system, design for the conversation. It doesn’t need to be perfect. You need something to work with that’s scalable and editable over time.
The Future Isn’t Less Human; It’s More Human By Design
The idea that AI makes service less personal misses the point. When it’s used well, it takes away the parts of the job that never felt human in the first place, such as answering the same question a dozen times a day or asking a customer to repeat their order number. None of that builds loyalty. It’s frustrating. AI can give agents more time for the calls that actually need a person—resolving something tricky, calming someone who’s upset or finding a fix that doesn’t exist in a script.
The future isn’t about less humanity. It’s about finally creating the space for more of it.
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