Cisco looks to transform customer experiences with Webex AI Agent

Cisco has unveiled new artificial intelligence (AI-)powered features in its contact centres, including the Webex AI Agent, AI Agent Studio and Cisco AI Assistant features for its Webex Contact Centre product lines.

The AI-based solutions are using advanced conversational intelligence and automation to enhance customer interactions, streamline issue resolution and improve overall customer satisfaction. This is said to enable business leaders to deliver faster, more effective and more empathetic interactions that improve customer trust and brand loyalty. 

Looking to address the need for immediate and effective self-service, the self-service concierge Webex AI Agent is designed to allow agents to take actions swiftly and handle customer inquiries with natural dialogue and conversational intelligence to eliminate wait times and provide faster resolutions.

The product was created after Cisco research found a link between customer satisfaction and effective self-service tools, with current options failing to meet their needs. For example, rebooking a flight or replacing a lost credit card typically require live agent support, leading to long queues and hold times, multiple transfers, frustrated customers and agent burnout. Customer-facing teams often struggle with information overload and growing workloads, leading to longer resolution times and decreased customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores. The research also observed that customer experience leaders found that one in three agents lack the customer context needed to deliver ideal customer experiences.

Webex AI Agent should provide self-service options for scenarios like these, which Cisco said can result in a 39% improvement in CSAT scores according to customer experience leaders. It also incorporates “responsible” AI and automation into the Webex Customer Experience portfolio, transforming the transform the experience for customers eliminating complexity and frustration.

“Customer experience can make or break a brand, and unlike other solutions on the market, the Webex AI Agent solves customer problems instantaneously and will fundamentally transform the experiences we have all reluctantly been using for far too long,” said Cisco executive vice-president and chief product officer Jeetu Patel.

“At Cisco, we’re building AI solutions natively. We start product design with the assumption that AI is going to be in the core fabric of the product and an essential ingredient in how we reimagine customer experiences. We believe that in the next few years, a large majority of first-time calls will be handled by an AI agent that will be just as interactive, dynamic, engaging and personable as a human agent.”

Webex AI Agent includes a new design tool called ai agent studio designed to simplify and scale the contact centre, said to make it easy for business users and IT administrators to train and deploy AI agents, providing them with “unmatched” scalability and user-friendliness.

The AI Agent Studio is attributed with allowing contact centres to deploy a voice or digital AI agent in minutes and choose which AI models are used to support customer inquiries. The so-called “AI front door” is attributed with reducing calls in the contact centre so that agents can focus on higher touch and relationship-based customer service.

When an agent is required, context summaries facilitate seamless handoffs from an AI agent to contact centre agent. Background information is provided to continue the conversation while eliminating the need for customers to repeat themselves. Recommendations appear directly within the contact centre platform, providing agents with the information they need right at their fingertips to reduce call times.  

Webex AI Agent along with the AI Agent Studio will be generally available in Q1 2025 for cloud customers, with customer trials for on-premise customers in Q2 2025. Also becoming generally available in Q1 2025 is Agent Wellness for the contact centre. This has AI features allow for proactive actions such as automatic breaks for agents, changes in agent schedules and shifting of which channels agents support to increase or decrease capacity based on need.