Does Voice-based AI Improve Call Center Operational Performance? Event Study in a Working Telecommunication Company.

Artificial intelligence (AI) agents are surpassing human agent performance in a growing number of fields. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence documenting the concrete effects of voice-based AI on company-level operational performance. In this study, we cooperated with a call center of working company to investigate the impact of voice-based AI on operational performance. We reached unexpected conclusions regarding the impact of voice-based AI on the operational performance of the call center. First, it appears that the voice-based AI system increases the average call length as the number of responses decreases per given unit time. Each phone call requires more human than AI-based resources to complete. Second, the AI system has no significant influence on daily incoming calls. Finally, there is a heterogeneous effect among different time blocks. Our findings may have important implications for operational management of call center. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]