Contact centers, already no strangers to automation, have been some of the biggest wholesale adopters of the technology, with Gartner stating 85% of customer service leaders will explore or pilot customer-facing conversational AI in 2025.
Indeed, AI's use in contact centers has already been seminal. AI chatbots are now able to reduce agent demand by dealing with routine customer queries that would have previously had to be handled by an agent. It's a win for efficiency, but it's not without ramifications. This change in inquiry handling has created a domino effect for agents.
"The nature of the calls that now come through a voice channel to human agents is much more complex," Andreas Orebo Wenzel, VP of Engage AI at Jabra, said. "This has increased the demand on the calls and the agent."
These incoming calls now often require deeper technical knowledge, emotional sensitivity, or decision-making finesse in order to satisfy customers.
But just as companies have invested heavily in AI to reduce human interaction, it's now necessary to counterbalance this by deploying AI to assist the agents dealing with this new challenge.
Why AI Chatbots Make Human Jobs More Complex
With AI chatbots now solving more entry level issues, modern contact center agents are being asked to go more in-depth on each call to a weary customer who has already spent time trying to resolve their issue through the initial points of contact.
This creates a situation where they’re often expected to be the immediate solution to the issue, even if they’re just being introduced to the issue for the first time.
"Call center agents are expected to be able to handle tough questions right on the spot, even if they don't know what the next call is about," Orebo Wenzel emphasized.
On top of this cognitive pressure, agents often work in noisy or distracting environments — either from home or busy offices. This persistent background noise, even if subtle, contributes to fatigue.
"It can be very mentally draining," Orebo Wenzel explained, "especially when you're exposed to that through 6–8 hour shifts."
But the challenges don't stop there. Agents also have to juggle the associated administrative elements of the role — manual note-taking, CRM inputs, and multitasking — all while trying to sound composed and empathetic.
All these associated tasks and distractions make it increasingly difficult to efficiently resolve the customer's reason for calling. This, in turn, could lead to unsatisfactory and slower resolutions — and an unhappy customer.
Recognizing this, audio specialists Jabra have augmented their solutions to bring AI to assist contact center agents so they can save agent capacity for focusing on what really matters: the customer.
How Jabra's Engage AI Complete Turns the Tide
Engage AI Complete is a new premium tier of Jabra's Engage AI software designed specifically for call centers. Its solution is tailored for the next chapter that contact center operations are entering.
Rather than replacing agents, it augments them with real-time support, data-driven coaching, and environmental optimization. First, it does this through two-way noise reduction. While Jabra's headsets can cancel ambient noise on the agent's side, Engage AI takes it further.
"With our technology, we can reduce background noise on the customer end of the call," Orebo Wenzel said.
