What is AI Texting for Call Centers and Should You Use It?

How AI Texting for Call Centers Simplifies and Scales SMS

As the standards for customer experience rise ever-higher, traditional call centers are under pressure. Customers expect proactive, convenient, and omnichannel experiences that value their time. 

In order to meet these expectations at scale, call centers must find balance between traditional models and AI-powered innovation. 

One way to do so is by offering texting. As consumers increasingly prefer the convenience and speed of texting over calling, call centers for sales, service, and support are beginning to offer SMS as a communication channel.

AI texting for call centers is an opportunity for call centers to harness AI in a way that serves both the customer and their internal teams to better meet customer expectations, faster. 

This article explains AI texting for call centers, how AI differs from basic call center SMS solutions, and considerations for SMS implementation at a call center.

TL;DR and video summary

AI texting enables call centers to offer SMS without adding pressure on agents. These solutions improve response time and CSAT, reduce call volume, and are highly scalable and cost-efficient. 

It works by engaging customers immediately, collecting relevant data and feeding it into your CRM or call center platform, and providing solutions. If needed, the AI can hand the conversation off to a live agent, who has access to all the contextual information.

Without AI solutions, agent-led texting can be time-consuming, stressful, and inconsistent because agents must juggle multiple SMS conversations and take calls. AI SMS solutions eliminate these concerns because AI follows up with every conversation without overloading human agents. 

There are a few types of AI solutions, with varying degrees of manual work involved; the most advanced being fully-managed solutions, which remove the complexities of SMS conversation management, do not require agents to text, and allow for live transfers at the right moments.

What is AI texting for call centers?

AI texting automates business SMS with AI that integrates with your CRM and provides two-way conversations. Compared to standard SMS capabilities, AI can respond without the need for human intervention. 

In the context of call centers, AI texting is advantageous because it can enable SMS as a channel without overloading your human agents with the complexities involved in texting. With standard SMS platforms, agents can text customers, but agents must manage multiple SMS conversations at once. This requires training, time, and bandwidth for your call center team.

Features of AI texting for call centers

AI texting, on the other hand, requires little effort from your call center team, providing features such as:

• Scaled, high-volume SMS conversations
• 24/7 coverage with instant response
• Conversation or call routing
• Answering simple inquiries or FAQs
• Lead qualification
• Personalization at scale
• Elimination of missed messages
• Reduced call volume

How does AI texting for call centers work?

Conversational AI for call centers works by responding to inbound messages, collecting relevant data, and providing solutions, which can be by handing off the conversation to a live agent.

For simple inquiries, the AI can fully manage the conversation without handoff. For more complex conversations, the AI can gather necessary data and feed it back into your CRM, so your human team is informed when the handoff happens.

For example:

• A healthcare customer texts about rescheduling an appointment. AI can handle this conversation from end-to-end, providing reschedule options and then rescheduling the appointment in the right system. 
• If a healthcare customer texts about a more complex question, like referral, the AI can take in relevant information and transfer the customer to an agent when they are ready.

AI texting for call centers functions by integrating with your CRM, call center platforms, and/or ticketing systems. They can be trained to respond with a custom script and qualify inquiries based on your call center needs.

Why AI texting is effective

Implementing AI texting for your call center has many benefits, including:

• Response time improvements: AI responds instantly at any scale.
• Customer satisfaction (CSAT) improvements: By texting and providing instant response, call centers can better meet customer preferences and expectations. Over 75% of consumers would rather text with a brand than speaking on the phone. (Email Audience)
• Reduced call volume and wait times: By adding SMS as a channel, call volume and wait times decrease, allowing agents to focus more on each call and improving customer experience.
• Better agent experience: AI removes the pressure for agents to respond to both customer texts and calls, juggle multiple conversations, and respond quickly. 
• Cost-efficiency: AI texting is more cost-effective than having agents manage text conversations because it scales at high volumes without adding headcount or training.

AI texting vs. agent texting

It is certainly possible for call centers to text without using AI, but agent-led texting can be time-consuming, stressful, and inconsistent in comparison to texting with AI solutions.

In a study published by Cornell University, SMS-based call centers had difficulty with conversation abandonment: 71% of abandoning customers did so silently. They found that this reduced agent efficiency by 3% and system capacity by 15%, and incurred $5,457 in annual costs per agent.

AI eliminates these types of concerns because AI follows up with every conversation and can even be set to follow up after certain periods of silence. In addition, AI SMS solutions track each and every conversation, giving full visibility into abandonment rates.

With agent-led SMS, customers do benefit from the human empathy, contextual nuance, and problem-solving that agents provide. 

However, the cons of agent-led SMS include:

• Limited agent bandwidth
• Human error such as missed messages
• Silent abandonment with lack of follow up
• Delayed replies due to agent bandwidth
• Agent burnout from handling multiple conversations, including calls and texts
• Possible inconsistencies in messaging
• SMS training requirements for scripting and compliance

On the other hand, AI texting can streamline call center operations with:

• Instant replies
• Scalability without adding work/burnout
• Replies and follow up for every single conversation
• Consistency in messaging
• Handoff or live transfer to human agents when needed

The best approach combines the strengths of both AI and agents for the best of both worlds. AI can handle initial engagement, simple inquiries, and information gathering, and hand off complex conversations to agents at the right time.

Human-in-the-loop, human oversight for AI conversations, can provide quality assurance for AI. Adding human oversight to AI texting solutions either through a managed service (Verse includes a human-in-the-loop service) or by having agents oversee conversations can ensure excellence in every conversation.

Types of call center SMS solutions

AI texting solutions for call centers offer varying degrees of automation and support, depending on how much of the conversation is handled by AI, how involved your team needs to be, and the complexity of your use cases. 

Basic SMS solutions

SMS platforms help agents send and manage SMS conversations with necessary functionalities like:

• Allowing agents to text from a shared number or interface
• Providing suggested replies or auto-templates
• Logging SMS messages into the CRM

These are the bare minimum technological requirement for call centers to offer SMS, but do not include AI. These platforms are limited because they:

• Still require agent time and attention
• Don’t scale well with high lead volumes
• Can lead to inconsistent replies or missed follow-ups

AI texting for agent assistance

Basic AI solutions provide some degree of automation, but still require agents to manage or monitor SMS conversations. Their capabilities often include:

• AI auto-replies and scheduled messages
• Agent takeover for chatbot conversations
• Answering basic FAQs
• Agent routing based on customer responses

These can work well for automating simple inquiries, but are not as advanced when it comes to AI responses. They still require significant agent oversight and manual follow-up. In addition, AI quality and customization are often limited, meaning that what the AI can do and say is limited.

Fully-managed AI texting

Managed solutions (like Verse) are the most advanced category: AI texting built to be hands-off, scaling lead engagement and qualification in high-volume, time-sensitive call centers.

These types of SMS solutions manage conversations on your behalf, so you don’t need agents juggling text conversations. Handoff to your team happens seamlessly at key moments, but until then, agents do not need to do anything to oversee text messages. 

Features include:

• End-to-end SMS conversation management
• Human-in-the-loop concierge service that supervises AI performance and steps in if necessary
• Integration to sync with your CRM and call center tech stack
• Live call transfer that passes conversations to your agents

These solutions work best for call centers that want to reduce agent workload, improve lead response, boost CSAT, and scale without headcount.

How to implement AI texting at a call center

AI texting is a great fit for call centers that:

• Experience long queues and wait times, especially during certain hours
• Miss calls or messages
• Struggle with agent retention and/or bandwidth
• Want to offer more self-service options
• Aim to reduce cost-per-contact

If you’re ready to start implementing an AI texting solution, the steps vary depending on the solution that you choose. 

For fully-managed solutions like Verse, implementation is effortless. Integration is handled by our professional services team, our scripting team gets to work on the conversation flow, and your call center will be texting in no time. You can get started with us right now.

For other solutions, steps tend to include:

• Evaluating goals for how texting will be used
• Setting up integrations with your CRM and call center platforms
• Defining scripts and conversation flows
• Training staff on human-in-the-loop protocols, compliance, and scripts
• Ensuring compliant opt-ins
• Planning handoff strategies
• Tracking conversations and ensuring none fall through the cracks

AI texting for call centers: Key takeaways