12 RFP Questions to Ask About AI in the Contact Center

by Kim Campbell in Artificial Intelligence, Blog, Contact Center RFP, Contact Center Technology, Customer Service Outsourcing, Kim Campbell

You’ve got your game face on. You’re prepared for the future of customer service. And you’re ready for your outsourced customer service RFP to hit the road and bring you some stellar options for a new contact center partner. But are you asking the right questions about artificial intelligence?

AI and customer care are growing deeply intertwined, with intelligent tech delivering powerful insights for hyper-personalized experiences. The right use of AI can drive costs out of your business and improve CX – so asking your potential strategic partners the right questions is critical.

We want to make it easy for you. Get a short list of the best questions to ask about AI in the contact center regarding:

• AI Capabilities & Processes
• Balancing AI & the Human Touch
• AI Integration & Migration
• Measuring AI Success
• AI Use Cases

Or, dive right into our full list of effective contact center RFP questions in our complimentary RFP template.

 AI Capabilities & Processes

Let’s start at the foundation. Potential contact center partners should be able to articulate their breadth of AI capabilities and the processes that unleash their value.

Don’t settle for contact centers that treat “AI” like a singular solution. In their answers to the following questions, your potential partners should address AI-powered tools—including chatbots, self-service, and machine learning—individually and as part of a holistic strategy.

1. Describe your current AI capabilities and services.
2. How long have you been delivering AI solutions as part of your contact center services?

Additionally, test the maturity of their AI solutions – how they have evolved those solutions over time, and how they are prepared for future updates.  You need a trusted partner who knows what they’re doing and aims to stay ahead of the curve, especially as agentic AI with more complex capabilities evolve.

3. How are you preparing for the future of AI in the contact center?

Balancing AI & the Human Touch

AI can be a powerful tool, but it is just one cog in the customer care engine. Consumers still overwhelmingly prefer human interactions, despite feeling increasingly comfortable with AI interactions, so technology shouldn’t replace live agent support.

Instead, AI should enhance the customer experience through seamless, elegant integration – allowing agents to focus on scenarios where human intelligence and decision-making add the most value. When things go sideways or empathy could strengthen brand relationships, your contact center partner’s employees should be empowered to take care of customers.

Dig deeper with questions like the following in your RFP:

4. Provide a sample playbook (or process flow) for escalating a customer service interaction from AI to live agents.
5. What KPIs/metrics do you track to measure the effectiveness of your escalations from AI to live agent? (Example: time to answer, critical alert wait time, transfer request accept rate, transferred chats cancelled in queue)

AI Integration & Migration

You might be excited by the concept of adding or enhancing AI solutions for your omnichannel offerings. However, the process can be equally intimidating for some businesses.

Integrating new AI tools into your existing infrastructure poses some challenges, not least of which are inefficiencies, downtime, and duplicated processes. Your contact center partner must be prepared to tackle every possible challenge and set you up for efficiency and success.

6. What IT resources can you provide to support the migration and integration of new AI tools into our customer service solution?
7. Provide an example of a successful implementation of an AI tool into an existing customer care solution. Include implementation timelines and resources required on both the client/contact center sides of the equation.
8. Describe the conversational intelligence implementation, ingestion, and insight timeline for a new client. How long will it take for a new client to benefit from the machine learning attributes of your system?

Measuring AI Success

AI for the sake of AI doesn’t automatically take your business to the next level of success. You need to ensure that your customer support solution is being measured holistically, particularly when you introduce AI as part of an efficiency initiative.

Call center metrics like AHT and FCR are basic enough. Find out how your potential vendor is also measuring customer experience and satisfaction – and how that is impacted by AI – with these questions:

9. What KPIs or other metrics do you use to assess the performance of your AI tools?
10. How do you measure the impact and effectiveness of your AI strategy?
11. What steps do you take outcomes of your AI strategy are falling short of expectations?

AI Use Cases

Let’s face it, you may not want to be the guinea pig when it comes to AI. Get some case studies from similar projects your potential vendor has worked on. If possible, even get some references from their existing client base. Ideally, their experience with AI is in a similar industry vertical or service type to your own.

12. What similar projects are you currently using AI technology for? Describe the project and your approach for implementing AI tools. What results have you seen?

Asking the Right Questions About AI in the Contact Center

At the end of the day, contact center AI is about enhancing the customer experience. Knowing that a potential contact center partner has AI options in their toolkit isn’t enough. Your RFP process can go deeper, asking pointed questions about their capabilities, processes, success measurements, and real-life examples.

Discover how our best-in-class contact center leverages AI for positive customer outcomes. Schedule a consultation with Blue Ocean.

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