By Gregg Antenen, Vistio Executive Director

It’s hard to overstate the impact that the latest wave of AI technology using large language models has had on the CX industry in just a few months, as seemingly every company races to explore the potential of AI and to incorporate it somehow into their processes and applications. The approach most contact centers and CX vendors are taking though, is to use AI to replace the human agents that have historically been the backbone of customer service. 

Here at Vistio amidst all the hype, we’re cognizant of the true strengths of AI but also of its limitations in removing the human from the CX equation, something that dozens of examples from both inside and outside of the CX industry have already demonstrated. With that in mind, we set out to create a practical tool that harnesses the power of AI but that also addresses its limitations while immediately addressing real-world needs. 

We set out to create a practical tool that harnesses the power of AI but that also addresses its limitations while immediately addressing real-world needs.

That initiative led us to creating ServiceSim, a cutting-edge tool that uses AI to augment humans’ abilities rather than replace them, leading to a safer, scalable, more user-friendly, and value-driven solution that builds on everything that AI is already great at, and uses it to dramatically improve training. 

The Vistio Perspective on AI 

We have to acknowledge that the hype surrounding AI and its diverse applications is justified. But we wanted to move beyond the buzz and identify a compelling use case that genuinely leveraged the strengths of AI while acknowledging its limitations. We asked ourselves what we could do with AI if, instead of using it to replace the agent, we used it to replace the customer. One of AI’s most prominent strengths, after all, lies in its conversational abilities and general understanding of the world, making it an excellent candidate for assisting agents in training. 

In acting as a customer, AI would be able to do what it does best, which is to write or converse like a human. What AI doesn’t do well—and what many people in the CX industry have been racing to get it to do—is understand each company’s unique processes and policies. 

An AI customer, on the other hand, wouldn’t require the time and resources needed to “teach” the AI company-specific processes, nor would it need to be exposed to any company-specific information. Effectively, an AI customer already knows and can replicate everything your typical customer knows. 

An AI customer wouldn’t require the time and resources needed to “teach” the AI company-specific processes, nor would it need to be exposed to any company-specific information.

At that point, we realized we could use AI to enhance learning and job performance in call centers by giving agents an on-demand practice partner that can simulate the customer side of interaction so agents can practice any type of customer interactions in a real-life situation with all of the variables of a typical human conversation. And ServiceSim was born. 

The Vistio Differentiation: Safe, Scalable, User-Friendly, and Immediate Return on Investment 

Vistio’s approach to building ServiceSim was guided by four critical factors: safety, scalability, user-friendliness, and delivering value 

• Safety: The driving idea behind ServiceSim was to provide agents a safe place to practice and hone their craft without the pressures of dealing with live customers. 
• Scalability: We wanted to make ServiceSim easy to roll out to entire training classes or across entire organizations. So it doesn’t require any integrations, nor does it require you to dedicate time and resources to “teaching” the tool everything about your company. 
• User-friendly: User-friendliness was another essential aspect because we’ve been building tools for agents for decades now and we know that if its not easy to use, agents will resist. 
• Value: We knew that to succeed in the market, this tool needed to offer immediate and tangible value to customers, driving positive outcomes and enhanced performance. 

Our approach to building ServiceSim is a testament to our commitment to delivering practical and valuable AI solutions that are designed to augment and enhance agents’ abilities rather than replace them. 

In an industry where AI is often seen as a complete replacement for human involvement, Vistio’s innovative approach demonstrates the potential for AI to enhance human performance and learning. By leveraging the strengths of large language models and adding proprietary capabilities, ServiceSim stands as a beacon of AI that is not only powerful but practical in real-world scenarios.