We’ve all been there, waiting on hold to book a table, only to finally get a person on the line and then have to fight through the noise of the restaurant as we struggle to book a table for date night.
And for those unfortunate enough to be fielding these calls, it can often feel like someone is talking to you from the far side of the moon.
And it isn’t just restaurants. Bad phone experiences impact every industry, from hospitality to healthcare.
Here’s the good news: PolyAI may have lifted this curse through its expertise in conversational AI and voice-based customer engagement.
Speaking to CX Today, Nikola Mrkšić, Co-Founder and CEO of PolyAI, explained:
“We’ve demonstrated that AI can efficiently handle the work of thousands of people for the world’s largest enterprises—and do it exceptionally well—enabling them to deliver lifelike and helpful experiences in every customer conversation.”
“Our high-quality conversational AI agents often sound indistinguishable from human representatives.”
Indeed, PolyAI’s agents are used today in thousands of live deployments, spanning approximately 45 languages and dozens of countries.
These conversational AI systems empower businesses to seamlessly manage conversations on a massive scale around the clock.
According to Mrkšić, his company’s voice agents currently do the work of about 1,000 full-time employees when it comes to their largest-scale enterprise deployments live today.
With advanced speech understanding, high-fidelity voice capabilities, and a refined, elegant interaction flow, PolyAI ensures a smooth and natural engagement between the caller and the enterprise they’re trying to reach.
Pushing the Envelope for Conversational Experiences
At its core, PolyAI specializes in AI-powered conversational agents designed to enhance customer service experiences.
Unlike many firms offering contact center technology that prioritizes chat-based automation, PolyAI first mastered voice solutions, helping businesses deliver natural conversations over the phone.
“While many claimed that voice calls would become a thing of the past,” said Mrkšić, “the fact is that when you absolutely need something resolved, you pick up the phone.”
For Mrkšić, this is true across the entire industryindustries. Regardless of which sector you’re operating in, it comes down to providing the best customer experience possible.
He added, “When you look at the landscape right now, what’s the last good experience you’ve had with an automated agent?”
“Companies that really care about your experience are using conversational AI not just to create efficiency, but also to treat you like a human being.”
“That’s where we come into play. That’s why we push the envelope so much in terms of being humanlike and achieving CSAT improvements.”
Empowering Human Representatives to Work as Proactive Problem-Solvers
It’s not just about metrics and automation; PolyAI’s work also highlights how human agents can be better utilized.
In modern contact centers, AI-driven automation is reshaping the way agents engage with customers.
By handling routine inquiries, such as account lookups, FAQs, and transactional requests, AI frees up human agents to focus on more complex, high-value interactions that demand emotional intelligence, critical thinking, and problem-solving.
This shift allows contact center professionals to address wider challenges, such as resolving intricate customer issues, improving loyalty and retention, and strategizing proactive outreach efforts.
Moreover, AI enhances workflow efficiency by streamlining data collection and providing real-time customer insights, enabling agents to make informed decisions faster.
It doesn’t replace human intuition but augments it, allowing agents to approach problems with deeper knowledge and personalized responses.
Integrating AI into the contact center ultimately transforms agents from reactive responders into proactive problem-solvers, elevating service quality while driving meaningful business outcomes, as Mrkšić explains:
“We were early movers in this space, and we’ve scaled systems now that can do the work of a thousand full-time employees, often in different languages and different use cases.”
You can hear PolyAI’s agents in action by checking out a demo here.