The digital world isn’t slowing down, and neither are your customers. They expect fast, around-the-clock support in their language. For global businesses, meeting that demand can be costly. Hiring multilingual agents in every region adds up quickly. That’s why more companies are turning to real-time translation tools. They offer a more scalable, cost-effective way to deliver consistent, high-quality service across languages.

In this blog article, I will guide you through how we, at Perficient, are addressing this challenge by leveraging Twilio’s ConversationRelay and AI translation technology to deliver real-time voice translation for contact centers. The result is a quick, accurate, and natural conversation with an agent who can speak in the customer’s native language. Pretty impressive, isn’t it?

What Is Twilio ConversationRelay?

For real-time voice translation with Twilio ConversationRelay, developers can access live Media Streams between the customer and agent, and improve their conversation in real-time. Think of it as a smart audio bridge that enables you to plug in AI features such as text-to-speech, real-time translation, speech-to-text transcription, or an LLM. As a result, it provides a strong basis for creating dynamic, multilingual voice experiences in modern contact centers.

Now, let’s see how the backend of our real-time voice translation demo is put together.

Twilio ConversationRelay captures live audio when a customer speaks in their native language, for example, Spanish, using Programmable Voice. That stream is then routed through WebSockets to maintain a quick and responsive connection.

The procedure reverses itself when the agent responds in English, recording their voice, transcribing it, translating it back into the customer’s language, and then turning it back into speech.

It’s fascinating how AI makes it possible to have seamless, two-way, real-time conversation between speakers of different languages without the need for a human interpreter.

Why It Matters

Real-time voice translation is revolutionizing the way businesses communicate with customers by enabling support in the customer’s language without needing an agent who speaks it natively.

But it’s not just about translating words. This method helps support teams truly understand what customers are saying, including the tone and emotion behind their message. That results in fewer misunderstandings, quicker resolution times, and a smoother overall experience.

More importantly, it helps build trust and empathy in conversations that might otherwise feel distant or disconnected. With that, customer satisfaction isn’t just possible, it’s almost guaranteed.

Challenges And Considerations

Real-time voice translation is a game-changer, but making it work seamlessly in a live contact center is a whole different story.

One of the biggest hurdles is latency. Even a slight delay, just a few hundred milliseconds, can disrupt the natural flow of a conversation and make things feel awkward or disjointed.

Then there’s the issue of accuracy. In industries like healthcare or finance, where precise language and industry-specific terms matter, generic translation tools can easily miss the mark.

And let’s not forget about privacy and compliance. When you’re dealing with live audio and sensitive data, you have to play by the rules, whether it’s GDPR, HIPAA, or PCI DSS.

That’s why building a multilingual contact center solution isn’t just about plugging in a translation tool. It takes careful planning, the right tech stack, and thorough testing to get it right.

At Perficient, our Customer Care practice is actively focused on minimizing latency in real-time voice translation for cloud contact centers. Leveraging Twilio ConversationRelay, we are optimizing low-latency audio streaming and integrating optimal ASR and translation models tailored to a specific industry. We also embed secure, compliant workflows that protect sensitive data while preserving natural conversational flow.

See It in Action

We’ve put together a live demo that walks through the full experience, from capturing the customer’s voice to translating it in real-time and vice versa within a cloud contact center.

Curious to see it in action? Or wondering how something like this could level up your contact center? Let’s connect, and we’d love to show you what’s possible.

Dr. Pete Cornwell, Director of Contact Center, offers a fresh perspective on customer care and is sharing his wealth of knowledge at Customer Contact Week in Las Vegas. With over 35 years of experience spanning information systems, design, architecture, and consulting for industry leaders like Terazo and Blue Cross Blue Shield North Carolina, his expertise runs deep. Add to that a decade as a professor and chair of Engineering and Information Sciences at DeVry University, and it’s clear that Dr. Cornwell has plenty to say about the ever-evolving world of digital transformation.

Before heading west for the conference, I sat down with him to glean some insights he’ll be sharing with attendees and partners alike.

Take a Seat, Class is in Session

Our conversation was set to focus on AI and its applications in the contact center, but as I launched into my questions, Dr. Cornwell first asked me to examine a meme.

If you’re unfamiliar with the 1987 movie The Princess Bride, you’re not only missing out on a cherished piece of nostalgia, but you’ll also need a bit of background to understand his analogy. In the film, the protagonist delivers a famous line to a villain who repeatedly uses the word “inconceivable”, even when things are clearly very conceivable.

Pete followed up the meme by saying that if there’s any term that makes him grind his teeth more than Digital Transformation, it’s Agentic AI. It’s tossed around daily as a flashy, vague placeholder for everything from artificial intelligence and large language models (LLMs) to integrations and machine learning (ML)-driven workflows. This misuse is particularly troubling in the contact center space, where it has become a buzzword applied to almost anything.

Pete is intent on drawing a clear distinction between AI and Agentic AI from a customer contact perspective. Both are critical components of today’s AI-driven customer care, but Agentic AI is poised to unlock a wealth of future opportunities in this space.

“Simple” AI

While LLM-based models are incredibly complex, AI is often used for relatively simple applications in customer service, such as self-service, agent deflection, or assistance. Many companies begin their AI journey by deploying it to deflect calls from human agents, handling straightforward tasks like providing business hours, account balances, or credit card activation.

Additionally, voice and text-based chatbots can support intelligent routing, allowing customers to bypass frustrating IVR menus and connect directly through an Intelligent Virtual Agent (IVA). Yet, despite these capabilities, this is still not Agentic AI, these functions serve as filters between customers and human agents, managing deflection or routing rather than true autonomous decision-making.

The space continues to evolve as new AI-driven capabilities are added to CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) offerings each year. AI-powered agent prompting, coaching, and even translation are all part of what’s possible. While Pete admits his skills as a clairvoyant aren’t highly rated, he predicts that these capabilities will become commoditized within five years, standard features in the arsenal of any CCaaS vendor. He invites anyone to call him out if he’s wrong, he’ll be waiting.

What Is Agentic AI?

If you want a simple definition of what agentic means, it’s actually embedded in the term. Agentic AI is used to describe LLM-driven software that can execute sufficiently complex workflows that it could replace an agent. This typically means that like a human agent, agentic AI will need to make decisions in a highly variable data environment, sourced from both the customer and via integration.

From an implementation perspective, like its human equivalent we want to give each unique agent type a well-defined set of responsibilities to achieve advantages of understandability, maintainability, error management and observability. Similarly, many of the communication and business metrics we use to measure the performance of human agents can apply to their agentic counterparts. For example, a credit card company could conceivably use agentic AI for everything from general service enquiries to fraud reporting, and even customer satisfaction surveys.

What we can draw from this example is that we open the possibility for collaboration with agents coordinating activity to fulfill extensive tasks that would often require multiple human representatives and frustrating delays as the customer is transferred between departments.

Agentic AI in Action

Pete expanded on this concept using a lost credit card scenario, illustrating how Agentic AI can streamline customer service. This process involves four AI components:

1. A simple AI IVA chatbot that will provide voice-based routing for a customer. The following agentic components (“bots”) that will use natural language processing and output to speak to the customer.
2. General Customer Service – agentic AI designed to handle a range of customer service scenarios from simple balance inquiries, new card verification and of course then going on to lose it and requiring a replacement.
3. Fraud Handling – a bot designed to establish and open a fraud investigation.
4. Customer Survey – a bot that will craft an optional customer satisfaction survey based on the workflow delivered to the customer.

These agentic bots, coupled with the aforementioned IVA have the capability to provide a seamless flow of interaction with the customer. Consider the following voice flow:

1. An anxious customer calls the customer service number, after a prompt, the caller simply says “I’ve lost my card.” The Simple AI IVA routes the call to the General Customer Service Bot.
2. The General Customer Service bot first validates the customers identity and the missing card number [omitted to save trees and your time]. The customer reciprocates with the correct information.
3. The General Customer Service bot then asks the customer when they believe they lost the card. “Sometime last week, I don’t use it much and when I looked in my wallet I couldn’t find it” the customer answers.
4. There are recent transactions on the card, so the card account is passed to the Fraud Handling bot. Meanwhile the General Customer Service verifies the address on file with the customer and calls back-end services to print and dispatch a new card.
5. The Fraud Handling bot then asks the customer to verify a predetermined number of recent transactions from the account.
6. The customer replies “I’ve never been to Cancún” when presented with a specific transaction involving a Mexican resort and spa. The Fraud Handling bot opens a fraud case, again using a back-end integration.
7. The General Customer Service bot gives the customer a claim fraud case number and a delivery time for the card.
8. Finally, with assent from the customer (hopefully now less stressed) a Customer Survey bot draws a set of questions drawn banks associated with the bots they interacted with. The customer responds, the data is logged and the call ends.

Pete recalled a similar experience that required three different human agents, each with a long wait time between transfers. This AI-driven approach achieves the same outcome but with major advantages:

• No human were required for the workflow.
• The customer perceives interacting with a single entity throughout the call.
• Reduced wait times and minimized anxiety about disconnections.

To Recap

Agentic AI has the potential to completely replace an agent through the provision of complex workflows driven by complex inputs and integrations. Simple AI provides simple self-service for deflection purposes and supports a live agent and/or can provide natural language driven call routing.  Finally both have a critical role to play in building an AI-driven contact center self-service experience.

AI Isn’t the Future—It’s Already Here

Sales, service, and marketing teams face increasing pressure to do more with less, and artificial intelligence is expected to play a pivotal role in meeting that challenge. Yet despite the rapid adoption of generative AI (GenAI), many organizations are struggling to turn that excitement into real business value. According to Gartner’s 2024 Hype Cycle for Artificial Intelligence, the buzz around GenAI has created confusion for AI leaders, making it harder to identify the right use cases and increasing the risk of failure.  

To truly benefit from AI, organizations must broaden their perspective. GenAI may dominate headlines, but it’s only one piece of the innovation puzzle. Gartner highlights the need to explore a wider range of AI capabilities—those that can drive operational efficiency and create sustainable business impact.  

At Perficient, we believe what matters most now is practical implementation. Businesses aren’t asking if they should use AI—they’re asking how. How can they automate routine tasks? How can they streamline processes? And how can they empower their teams to focus on what really matters—high-value decisions? 

Why Salesforce is the Launchpad of Enterprise AI

For enterprise organizations, the most powerful AI outcomes often start with Salesforce. As the dominant CRM platform across industries, Salesforce is the central system for sales, service, marketing, and operations data. This makes it an ideal launchpad for AI. 

With rich, structured customer and operational data at its core, Salesforce offers a unique opportunity to embed intelligence directly into the tools and workflows teams already rely on. High-performing teams aren’t chasing flashy, disconnected GenAI pilots—they’re embedding automation and intelligence into Salesforce so their teams can work faster, smarter, and more strategically. Here’s how: 

• Sales reps spend more time building relationships instead of logging activities.
• Service agents resolve issues faster and more accurately, improving satisfaction.
• Marketers automate campaign execution and gain real-time performance insights. 

By putting AI to work inside Salesforce, these teams are creating scalable, sustainable gains in productivity and customer experience.

Enter Agentforce: The Key to Scalable AI Inside Salesforce

Agentforce is Salesforce’s newest innovation in AI-powered productivity—a platform that enables you to create secure, trusted AI agents directly within your CRM. These agents interact with users through natural language, automate common workflows, and continuously learn from your Salesforce data to deliver smarter outcomes over time.  

It brings the power of Data Cloud, LLMs, Trust Layer, Atlas Reasoning Engine, and automation to streamline sales, service, and marketing functions. Whether it’s generating follow-up tasks, summarizing service cases, or orchestrating campaign execution, Agentforce helps you move faster with fewer clicks and more confidence. But successful Agentforce implementation doesn’t happen by accident. 

Why Agentforce Implementation Requires a Purpose-Built Strategy

Agentforce offers tremendous potential—but only if it’s implemented with the right focus and approach. A successful Agentforce implementation starts with a clear understanding of where your business can benefit most from AI, followed by a roadmap to scale.

That’s exactly what Perficient delivers.

From Readiness to Results: A Guided Approach to Agentforce Implementation

As a trusted Salesforce consulting partner, Perficient helps organizations identify the highest value opportunities for Agentforce and turn them into action. 

• Agentforce Readiness Assessment: In just two-to-six hours, we assess your organization’s AI maturity and Salesforce environment to identify where Agentforce can make the biggest impact. You’ll receive a clear, prioritized roadmap of use cases tailored to your goals.
• Agentforce Workshop: This collaborative session aligns stakeholders and defines an MVP strategy for launching Agentforce. You’ll walk away with a detailed architecture diagram, delivery plan, and team resourcing recommendations.
• Agentforce Activation: With two streamlined accelerator packages, our Salesforce-certified teams help you implement AI agents in just two or six weeks. Using pre-defined use cases and your Salesforce data, we ensure a smooth and secure deployment that drives measurable outcomes. 

With Perficient, you’re not just adopting a new feature—you’re building a sustainable, AI-driven operating model inside Salesforce. 

Ready to Accelerate Your Agentforce Implementation?

If your team is being asked to “do more with AI” but lacks a clear starting point, Perficient can help. With our guidance on successful Agentforce implementation, you can streamline operations, boost productivity, and unlock new efficiencies—all within the tools your team already uses.

With the advancement of technology, machine learning and AI capabilities in the customer care space, customer expectations are evolving faster than ever before. Customers expect smoother, context-aware, personalized, and generally more effective and faster experiences across channels when contacting a support center. 

This calls for a need to revisit and redefine the success metrics for a Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) strategy. 

Let’s break this down into two categories. The first category includes key metrics that are still essential to be measured. The standards for these metrics though are raised and the way they are measured have evolved. The second category introduces new metrics that are emerging because of advanced CCaaS capabilities in a modern contact center landscape. 

Key Traditional Success Metrics Reimagined  

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) remains a cornerstone success metric. Every improvement a customer service center is looking to make, from improving operational efficiencies to enhancing agent and customer experience, will directly or indirectly impact the customer and is aimed at elevating that customer experiences. With automated personalized journeys being an important part of modern customer service, it is important to monitor real-time analytics on automated journeys in addition to live agent interactions. This helps better understand the customer experience and find opportunities to fine tune the friction points to improve customer satisfaction. Customer service is not only about resolving customer issues, but also about providing an effortless experience. 

First Contact Resolution is still a key success metric in the CCaaS space, but modern tools can revolutionize the extent a customer service center can go to improve this metric, so the standards for this metric have raised. Passing context effectively across channels, real-time monitoring, predictive analytics and insights, and proactive outreach can increase the likelihood of addressing customer needs on the first contact or even sometimes without the need for a live agent interaction. 

Customer Retention Rate metric has been revamped with the advancement of technology in customer service. Advanced predictive analytics can help track the customer experience throughout their journey and shed light on the underlying customer behavior patterns. This will enable proactive engagement strategies personalized to every customer. Real-time sentiment analysis can provide instant feedback to the customer service representatives and their supervisors to give them a chance to course correct immediately in order to shift the sentiment to a positive experience and retain customers. 

Emerging Success Metrics 

Agent Experience and Satisfaction has a direct impact on the operation of a contact center and hence the customer experience. Traditionally, this metric was not tracked broadly as an important metric to measure a successful contact center strategy. However, we know today that agent experience and satisfaction is a key metric for transforming contact centers from cost centers into revenue generating units. Contact centers can leverage modern tools in different areas from agent performance monitoring, training and identifying knowledge gaps to providing automated workflows and real-time agent assistance, to elevate the agent experience.

These strategies and tools help agents become more effective and productive while providing service. Satisfied agents are more motivated to help customers effectively. This can improve metrics like First Contact Resolution rate and Average Handle Time. Happy and productive agents are more likely to engage positively with customers to discuss potential cross-sell and upsell opportunities. Moreover, agent turnover and the cost associated with that will be lowered due to the reduced burden of onboarding and training new agents regularly and constantly being short of staff. 

Sentiment Analysis and Real-time Interaction Quality provides immediate insights to the contact center representatives about the customer’s emotions, the conversation tone, and the effectiveness of their interactions. This will help the contact center representatives to refine their interaction strategy on the spot to maintain a positive and effective engagement with the customer. These transforms contact centers into emotionally intelligent, customer-focused support centers. This makes a huge difference in a time where the quality of experience matters as much as the outcome. 

Predictive Analysis Accuracy represents an entirely new set of metrics for a modern contact center that leverages predictive analytics in its operation. It is crucial to measure this metric and evaluate the accuracy of the forecasts against customer behavior and demands as well as the agent workflow needs. Inaccurate predictions are not only ineffective but can also be harmful to contact center operations. They can lead to poor decision making, confusion, and disappointing customer experiences. Accuracy in the anticipation of customer needs can enable proactive outreach, positive and effective interactions, less friction points and reduced service contacts while facilitating effective automatic upsell and cross-sell initiatives. 

Technology Utilization Rate is an important metric to track in a modern and evolving customer care solution. While with the latest technological advancements a lot of intelligent automation and enhancements can be made within a CCaaS solution, a contact center strategy is required to identify the most impactful modern capabilities for every customer service operation. The strategy needs to incorporate tracking the success of the technology adoption through system usage data and adoption metrics. This ensures that technology is being leveraged effectively and is providing value to business. The technology utilization tracking can also reveal training and adoption gaps, ensuring that modern tools are not just implemented for the sake of innovation, but are actively contributing to improved efficiency within a contact center. 

Conclusion

The development of advanced native capabilities and integration of modern tools within CCaaS platforms are revolutionizing the customer care industry and reshaping customer expectations. Staying ahead of this shift is crucial. While utilizing these advancements to achieve operational efficiencies, it is equally important to redefine the success metrics that provide businesses with insights and feedback on a modern CCaaS strategic roadmap. Adopting a fresh approach to capturing traditional metrics like Customer Satisfaction Scores and First Contact Resolution, combined with measuring new metrics such as Real-time Interaction Quality and Predictive Analysis Accuracy will offer a comprehensive view of a contact center’s maturity and its progress towards a successful and effective modern CCaaS solution. 

We can measure these metrics by utilizing built-in monitoring and analytical tools of modern CCaaS platforms along with AI-powered services integrations for features like Sentiment and Real-time Quality Analysis. We can gather regular feedback and data from agents and automated tracking tools to monitor system usability and efficiency. All this data can be streamed and displayed on a unified custom analytics dashboard, providing a comprehensive view of contact center performance and effectiveness. 

Customer Contact Week is just around the corner! In preparation, I sat down with our Senior Solutions Architect, Miles Phillips, to dive deeper into the key pillars of Voice AI: Data, Design, and Deployment. Miles provides insights on how businesses can optimize their AI strategies to enhance customer interactions and drive real results.

Voice AI is no longer a futuristic concept, it’s quickly becoming a foundational technology in modern contact centers. Yet despite growing investments, too many initiatives fail to meet expectations. Whether it’s a clunky experience, low containment, or poor customer satisfaction, these symptoms often trace back to one of three neglected areas: Data, Design, or Deployment.

At Perficient, we’ve worked with clients across industries to help customers get AI right. What we’ve found is simple: Get these three pillars right, and you dramatically improve your chances of success. Miss one, and the entire effort can come apart.

Pillar 1: Data and the Foundation of Understanding

Your Voice AI solution is only as smart as the data it’s built on. Training without the right inputs leads to weak comprehension, misrouted calls, and customer frustration.

To build a strong foundation:

• Start with real call data. Analyze your top call drivers to find high-value automation opportunities.
• Ensure real-time access to backend systems. Your bot should be able to look up customer data, order status, or account balances on demand via APIs.
• Audit your data. Even the most advanced AI will fail if it gets incomplete, outdated or inconsistent data. Ensure your core platforms such as your CRM are kept up to date.
• Label your transcripts. Structured, well-labeled intent and entity data improves NLU training.

The ability to access accurate and relevant contextual data in real time is critical. Don’t launch without investing here first.

Pillar 2: Design That Creates Effective Conversations

Even with perfect data, poor design can ruin the experience. Voice is a high-friction channel where users are quick to bail if the experience feels robotic, confusing, or unhelpful.

To design with impact:

• Craft a clear persona and tone. Should your voice assistant be formal and efficient, or casual and friendly? Make it consistent.
• Simplify prompts. Use direct language. Avoid stacking multiple questions in one sentence.
• Design for interruptions and failure. Real users talk over prompts, change their minds, or get frustrated. Plan for it.
• Build graceful escalation paths. A smooth handoff to a live agent is often better than forcing automation at all costs.

Delivering a great conversation is more than just basic scripting. It requires intentional effort to build a positive user experience.  Don’t underestimate the importance or level of effort required.

Pillar 3: Deployment — Operate Like It’s a Product, Not a Project

A Voice AI solution that launches but doesn’t evolve is destined to fail. True success comes from treating your Voice AI like a living product that’s constantly tuned, tested, and improved.

To deploy for long-term impact:

• Plan for scalability and resilience. Can your system handle peak traffic? What happens when an API fails?
• Instrument your flows. Monitor key metrics like containment rate, dropout points, error frequency, and customer sentiment.
• Review and tune regularly. Use transcripts to spot confusing responses, retrain intents, and improve prompt wording.
• Establish a release process. Use version control, automated testing, and rollback plans to make changes safely.

Performance doesn’t come from launch day — it comes from operational discipline. Make iteration part of your rhythm.

Bringing It All Together

Voice AI success isn’t about picking the right platform — it’s about executing across the right pillars. Data informs Design. Design must be built with Deployment in mind. And Deployment generates data that fuels continuous improvement.

If you’re building Voice AI, ask yourself: Which of these pillars are we underinvesting in — and what would change if we got it right?

Need help? We help organizations plan, build, and operate effective Voice AI solutions. Let’s talk about where you are in your journey and what it would take to strengthen your foundation.

Considering migrating your contact center operations to the cloud? Transitioning from a legacy on-premise solution to a Cloud Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) platform offers significant advantages, including greater flexibility, scalability, improved customer experience, and potential cost savings. However, the success of this transition depends heavily on selecting the right vendor and ensuring alignment with your unique business requirements.  

Here are five essential questions to ask any CCaaS vendor as you plan your migration: 

1. How will your solution integrate with our existing systems?

Integration capabilities are key and may impact the effectiveness of your new cloud solution. Ensure that the proposed CCaaS platform easily integrates with or provides viable alternatives to your current CRM, workforce management solutions, business intelligence/reporting tools, and legacy applications. Smooth integrations are vital for maintaining operational efficiency and enhancing the customer and employee experience. 

2. What degree of customization and flexibility do you offer?

Every contact center has agent processes and customer interaction workflows. Verify that your CCaaS vendor allows customization of critical features like interactive voice response (IVR), agent dashboards, and reporting tools (to name just a few). Flexibility in customization ensures that the platform supports your business goals and enhances operational efficiency without disrupting established workflows. Assess included AI-enabled features such as IVAs, real-time agent coaching, customer sentiment analysis, etc. 

 3. Can you demonstrate robust security measures and regulatory compliance?

Data security and compliance with regulations like HIPAA, GDPR, or PCI are likely critical requirements for your organization. This can be especially true in industries that deal with sensitive customer or patient information. Confirm the vendor’s commitment to comprehensive security protocols, including the ability to redact or mask Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Ask your vendor for clearly defined compliance certifications and if they conduct regular security audits. 

 4. What are your strategies for business continuity and disaster recovery?

Uninterrupted service is critical for contact centers, and it’s essential to understand how the CCaaS vendor handles service disruptions, outages, and disaster scenarios. Ask about their redundancy measures, geographic data center distribution, automatic failover procedures, and guarantees outlined in their Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

 5. What level of training and support do you provide during and after implementation?

It is impossible to overstate the importance of good change management and enablement. Transitioning to a cloud environment involves adapting to new technologies and processes. Determine the availability of the vendor’s training programs, materials, and support channels.  

 By proactively addressing these five key areas, your organization can significantly streamline your migration process and ensure long-term success in your new cloud-based environment. Selecting the right vendor based on these criteria will facilitate a smooth transition and empower your team to deliver exceptional customer experiences efficiently and reliably. 

With a month to go before Contact Center Week, the largest CCW event to date in Las Vegas, we took a moment to sit down with Colleen Eager, a senior solutions architect to learn how to navigate this conference. She’s here to help you stay focused on what matters most, and understands that it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the volume of information, resources, technologies and vendors that will be present at the show. Here are three topic areas she shared to keep conversations focused on your business and to make the most of your CCW experience.  

Know Your Business Use Cases

When talking with peers and partners, it’s easy to get caught in the hype of new contact center technologies and skip the practical applications. To be a champion of your business, come prepared with an understanding of your most pressing 3 or 4 Use cases and ask how your peers and technology partners are handling pain points related to your business use cases. Here are examples of questions to ask in priority contact center areas. 

1. Customer Authentication “Our customers get frustrated when they have to repeat themselves when changing communication channels or even re-authenticate when escalated within the same channel. How would you address that?”
2. Agent Efficiency “Our agents have to swivel across multiple screens and systems to resolve customer inquiries, leading to long handle times and low NPS scores. Can you walk me through a consolidated agent interface? What AI capabilities are you using to proactively deliver the right information?”
3. Self-Service: “Our self-service capabilities are solid and widely used online, but adoption and functionality is way behind on mobile. What are you doing to help monitor and maintain customer interaction quality across all customer service communications channels?”
4. Operational Costs: “The cost to support customer services in all the languages of our customers is really weighing down the business. What are you doing in the area of real-time translation on voice and chat channels?” 

Know Your Data

The coolest new bells and whistles in the contact center come to life when they are powered by your accurate, clean, real-time data. Here are some questions to ask in areas where we often see our customers struggle. 

• Data Silos: “We’ve got great data, but it’s siloed across different parts of the business. What are you doing to breakdown data silos to unlock better visibility, monitoring and reporting?” 

• Leveraging Data: “What contact center data should we be monitoring to measure the performance of new AI Agent Assist capabilities? What kind of analysis are you doing that would give us a better understanding of how self-service capabilities are performing?” 

• Data Security: “We’re in a highly regulated industry, so there’s a lot of internal skepticism around moving to a CCaaS platform. What guardrails do you have in place that protect data, without limiting the newest AI capabilities?”  

Know your integrations

The true potential of the modern contact center is achieved when it’s tightly integrated with the full business eco-system.  To access the data that lives across your organization, your CCaaS platform must be seamlessly integrated to other platforms and data sources. Here are some critical integrations to keep top of mind. 

• CRM/CDP: “How are you integrating with customer data sources to drive truly personalized experiences?” 

• Workforce Management: “We have agents in the field working continuously. How do can we leverage predictive tools and proactively update customers on status and schedule changes?” 

• Commerce: “When customers can’t find what they are looking for, they abandon purchases. How can we leverage commerce and contact center integrations to identify customer frustration and proactively intervene?” 

No one knows your business better than you, and we are here to help you stay focused on what matters most. The Perficient team will be on site at CCW Las Vegas ready to help you navigate the wealth of information, translate complex technical information, and evaluate different technology solutions you might be considering. Reach out Colleen Eager to connect at the show, schedule 1:1 time with our Subject Matter Experts, and see live demos and compare solutions. 

We’re proud to share that Perficient has been honored with a Globee® Gold Award for Customer Excellence: Achievement in Customer Success Story, a global recognition celebrating organizations, teams, and individuals who consistently deliver exceptional customer experiences and drive innovation across industries. 

This award recognizes our significant success for a multinational manufacturing client.   Across functions and seniority levels, our contributions to organizations with digital transformation drives increased conversions, improves customer loyalty, and lowers costs for our clients. From customer service and sales to product development, marketing, finance, training, and operations—our commitment to customer satisfaction is embedded in every part of the business. 

Driving Results Through Innovation and Experience 

As a leading global digital consultancy, Perficient partners with the world’s largest enterprises and most recognized brands to deliver customer service solutions powered by AI, cloud, and data. With over 25 years of experience in customer service strategy and execution, our multidisciplinary teams—strategists, designers, technologists, and engineers—work in lockstep to deliver solutions that make a measurable impact. Our efforts have led to millions in annual cost savings and revenue growth for our clients. 

The Future of Customer Service 

Perficient is reshaping customer service with intelligent, scalable solutions that reduce complexity while improving satisfaction and loyalty. We specialize in: 

• Modern AI-powered tools like intelligent virtual assistants, conversational AI, and intent recognition 

• Omnichannel experiences across phone, email, social media, chat, and messaging apps 

• Intelligent search and knowledge bases that empower users to find answers independently 

• Proactive and predictive support that anticipates needs before customers reach out 

These innovations are helping brands deliver consistent, connected, and customer-centric experiences across every interaction. 

Our Award-Winning Customer Excellence 

Our recent work with a multinational manufacturing conglomerate seeking to modernize its global contact center infrastructure is one of the many reasons we received this award. With multiple disconnected systems, inconsistent customer experiences, and limited scalability, the client needed a transformative solution to support four business units operating across diverse global markets. 

Perficient stepped in as a strategic partner to lead a comprehensive cloud transformation, designing and deploying a future-ready contact center solution. We replaced legacy systems with a centralized, cloud-native platform that unified operations, standardized service processes, and provided greater agility to scale and innovate. The multi-year strategy resulted in $25M in traceable annual cost savings and $61M in projected revenue lift. The modernized contact center and chatbot shifted customers to self-service through proactive email and SMS updates, deflecting 975k inbound customer service calls and emails, translating to a 39% reduction. 

“Our multi-year strategy for cutting internal costs resulted in $25M in annual cost savings and $61M in projected revenue lift.” 

As a result of this collaboration, the client achieved a streamlined global contact center ecosystem that reduced operational complexity, increased system reliability, enhanced customer satisfaction, and improved scalability and cost efficiency. This transformation created a foundation for continuous innovation and long-term customer experience success. 

Learn more about our contact center function expertise. 

In a time of constantly evolving customer expectations, Perficient has established itself as a leader in delivering high-impact customer service solutions to the world’s leading brands. This dedication was recognized by the Business Intelligence Group’s 2025 Excellence in Customer Service Awards, where Perficient proudly claimed the title of Organization of the Year in the Internet and Technology category. 

A Commitment to Transforming Customer Experiences 

Perficient has been consistently collecting awards across categories, from industry awards like the eHealthcare Leadership Awards to partner awards like our Coveo Relevance: Accelerator Award. This year, Perficient is excited to be once again recognized, this time for the collaborative work around customer service and contact center we do with the world’s largest enterprises and favorite brands. By specializing in modernized customer service with AI-driven strategies, cloud solutions, and data insights, our experts bring innovation and impact from strategy to execution and beyond.  

When it comes to contact center and customer service solutions, our expertise spans omnichannel support, including phone, email, social media, chatbots, and messaging apps. We don’t just stop at providing tools—our experts craft tailored, proactive customer experiences that align with individual preferences. From reducing call volumes through AI-powered virtual assistants to streamlining operations, Perficient drives efficiency while elevating satisfaction. 

What truly differentiates Perficient is its people and partnerships. With thousands of skilled professionals worldwide and partnerships with leading technology companies like AWS, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Adobe, Perficient excels in implementing effective, enterprise solutions. Our industry-first approach ensures a deep understanding of our clients’ needs and customized strategies that drive real results. customized strategies that drive real results. 

Adopting AI to Overcome Contact Center Challenges  

In the last 12 months, Perficient has tackled industry challenges head-on. As businesses faced growing demands for seamless customer service amid logistical and operational hurdles, we’ve introduced innovative solutions to help clients overcome obstacles. These included AI-powered tools, site reliability engineering for eCommerce platforms, and enhanced customer outreach strategies to prevent lost sales due to out-of-stock scenarios. 

Additionally, Perficient guided enterprises through the complexities of adopting AI, helping brands scale solutions efficiently with streamlined deployment processes. 

Delivering Impactful Results 

The results we’ve been able to deliver for our partners speak for themselves. From deploying an AI chatbot for a global automaker, which increased site engagement by 76%, to handling 75% of patient calls for a nationwide urgent care provider, we’ve redefined what excellence in customer service looks like. 

Our work contributions and expert interviews have also garnered analyst recognition. Gartner and Forrester recently highlighted Perficient for its expertise in scalable AI deployment and its innovative use of GenAI in customer interactions. 

Driving the Future of Customer Service 

Winning the 2025 Excellence in Customer Service Award as Organization of the Year is a testament to Perficient’s transformative impact on how enterprises connect with customers. With a relentless focus on innovation, partnerships, and tailored solutions, we’ll continue to lead the way in reshaping customer service for the better. 

Perficient’s ethos inspires a future where businesses not only meet but exceed the expectations of their customers, one scalable, data-driven solution at a time.

Explore our contact center expertise and learn about other recent awards won.  

Migrating to a cloud-delivered Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solution can revolutionize how your organization delivers customer service. However, this transition requires careful planning and execution to avoid disruptions. Assuming you have selected a CCaaS platform that aligns with your organizational needs, the following best practices outline key considerations for a seamless migration.

A successful migration to CCaaS not only enhances operational efficiency and scalability but also ensures a significant improvement in service delivery, directly impacting customer satisfaction and retention. Organizations should consider the risks of not embracing modern cloud-based customer care solutions, which can

include diminished customer service capabilities and potential costs due to outdated or inflexible systems. Moreover, organizations that delay this shift risk falling behind competitors who can adapt more quickly to market demands and customer needs. Thus, embarking on a well-planned migration journey is imperative for companies aiming to optimize their customer care operations and secure a competitive advantage in their respective markets.

1. Physical Infrastructure Migration

Understanding your current environment is critical for a successful transition. Start with a thorough site review to document the infrastructure and identify unique user requirements. Engage with call center managers, team leaders, and power users to uncover specific needs and configured features such as whisper settings, omnichannel components, call management, etc.

Factors such as bandwidth and latency are paramount for seamless operations. Evaluate your facility’s connectivity for both on-site and remote users, ensuring it aligns with the CCaaS product requirements. Fortunately, modern CCaaS solutions such as Amazon Connect, Twilio Flex and Five9 supply agent connectivity tools to verify that workers have sufficient resources to provide good customer service over various channels.

Additionally, document call treatments and station-specific configurations like call coverage paths. Legacy components requiring continued functionality should be cataloged to prepare for integration.

2. Change Management Planning

Change management is essential to mitigate risks and maximize adoption. A staged cutover strategy is recommended over a single-event migration, allowing for gradual testing and adjustments.

Develop a robust testing strategy to validate the platform’s performance under real-world conditions. Complement this with an organizational enablement strategy to train users and ensure they are comfortable with the new system. Adoption by your business units and users is one of the most critical factors which will determine the success of your CCaaS migration.

3. Operational Considerations

Operational continuity is vital during migration. Start by understanding the reporting requirements for business managers to ensure no loss of visibility into critical metrics. Additionally, review monitoring processes to maintain visibility into system performance post-migration.

4. Integration Planning

Integrating legacy infrastructure with the new CCaaS platform can present significant challenges. Document existing components, including FXO/FXS interfaces, Workforce Management solutions, FAX systems, wallboards, and specialty dialers. Verify that integrations comply with any regulatory requirements, such as HIPAA or FINRA.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems often require specific integrations with local data sources or enterprise middleware. Assess these integrations to ensure call flows function as intended. For specialized applications, verify that they meet operational needs within the new environment.

5. Fault Tolerance and Disaster Recovery

Testing fault tolerance and disaster recovery capabilities are critical steps in any CCaaS migration. Develop and execute a failsafe testing plan to ensure resilience against both premise-level and carrier-level failures. It is important to align to your IT organization’s standards for recovery time objective (RTO) and business up-time expectations. Disaster recovery plans must reflect these measures and be tested to protect against potential downtime.

6. Scalability and Compliance

CCaaS solutions must scale with your business. Validate scalability by conducting load tests and documenting performance metrics. Compliance is equally important—ensure your migration adheres to industry standards like HIPAA, FedRAMP, or FINRA through thorough compliance testing and documentation.

Conclusion

A successful CCaaS migration hinges on meticulous planning, comprehensive testing, and strong change management. By following these best practices, you can minimize risks, ensure operational continuity, and set your organization up for long-term success with its new contact center platform. The result? An enhanced customer experience and a contact center infrastructure that grows with your business.

In today’s markets, generative AI is revolutionizing industries by streamlining content creation, enhancing customer engagement, and driving innovation. Businesses leverage this technology to gain a competitive edge, improve operational efficiency, and deliver personalized experiences. In customer service, generative AI enables chatbots and virtual agents to understand and respond to customer inquiries with high accuracy and relevance, enhancing service personalization, solving complex problems, and improving feedback analysis.

The emergence of generative AI (GenAI) has created novel revenue streams for systems integrators that provide services integrating GenAI capabilities into customer support platforms and workflows. To maintain a competitive edge, these service providers must proactively develop strategies to deliver GenAI-powered solutions to their clients.

The Competitive Landscape: GenAI System Integrators for Customer Support Services

Perficient is proud to be listed under Competitive Profiles in the Gartner Competitive Landscape: GenAI System Integrators for Customer Support Services report, published June 11, 2024. “This Competitive Landscape assesses eight different vendors playing a prominent GenAI SI role in customer service.” “Final selection captured a mix of SIs serving customers focused on different types of accounts. Gartner categorize these SIs as strategic SIs, global tech SIs and regional tech SIs. There is some overlap among these SIs, so it is common for SIs of different categories to compete against one another. All vendors selected leveraged a mix of hyperscaler GenAI vendors, usually complemented with one or more open-sourced vendors.”

Our GenAI and Customer Care Capabilities

According to Gartner, “GenAI opens new revenue opportunities for service providers offering system integration services that support customer support platforms and processes.”

As a global tech SI, we believe Perficient stands out for its approach to GenAI implementation in customer support. Some key points that we believe differentiate Perficient include:

1. Vertical Expertise: Perficient has notable strengths in manufacturing, healthcare, and retail sectors, which are leading the initial GenAI adoption for customer support. This aligns with Perficient’s well-established legacy SI business in these verticals.
2. Comprehensive CCaaS Support: Perficient supports multiple Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) platforms, with a focus on leading providers like Amazon Connect, Cisco, Genesis, and Five9.
3. Flexible Technology Approach: While prioritizing GenAI platforms from major hyperscalers (Amazon, Google, IBM, and Microsoft), Perficient also integrates specialized tools from vendors like Mistral, Databricks, Pinecone, and Writer when needed. This approach ensures clients receive the most effective and tailored GenAI solutions.
4. Scaling and Repeatability: As highlighted in the Gartner report, Global SIs like Perficient can support hundreds or even thousands of customers with the ability to scale for large enterprises. This allows for speed and efficiency that can be reapplied across similar industries or use cases.
5. Responsible AI Governance: When harnessed properly, AI has the potential to impact all aspects of business operations and customer experiences. Moving ideas from conception to production presents new readiness challenges such as use case selection with business cases, encouraging awareness and appropriate use, and ethical and fiscal risk management. Perficient’s PACE Framework is a holistic approach to designing tailored operational AI programs that empower business and technical stakeholders to innovate with confidence while mitigating risks and upholding ethical standards.

Our Contact Center Capabilities

Perficient provides comprehensive services for contact centers and customer interaction solutions. We strategize the optimal approach for handling customer interactions and develop operational plans for contact centers and related functions. We identify the best technology fit for a client’s needs, designing and implementing leading platforms like Twilio Flex and Amazon Connect to create top-notch customer engagement solutions. Our experts integrate these contact center systems with complementary platforms to deliver full-fledged solutions.

Perficient’s managed services ensure continuous support, so customer interactions occur uninterrupted. This allows businesses to nimbly adapt and make changes in response to market shifts and evolving customer needs. With Perficient’s services, organizations can provide seamless, agile customer experiences powered by cutting-edge contact center technologies.​

Learn More About Perficient’s CX Services

Whether your business is just starting its Generative AI journey or seeking to enhance its current efforts, partnering with the right service provider can make all the difference.

Gartner subscribers can find the report directly at Competitive Landscape: GenAI Systems Integrators for Customer Support Services.

Gartner, Competitive Landscape: GenAI Systems Integrators for Customer Support Services, 11 June 2024. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Where’s my order? What’s my tracking number? How do I order spare parts? When will the service technician arrive? These are all common questions lobbed into customer service centers. Your contact center is a living knowledge base where your agents not only cover common questions, but also provide expert-level answers to the complex questions your customers ask. The expertise your contact center agents developed answering these questions combined with your contact center teams’ ability to deliver empathetic and efficient customer experiences opens revenue generating opportunities for your business.

Here are 4 scenarios where your contact center provides opportunities to drive revenue.

Reinforce Efforts to Prevent Out-of-stock Situations

This 2023 study by the IHL Group indicates out-of-stock situations result in $1.2 Trillion in global lost sales for retailers. Whether your retail stores hold inventory to stock their shelves, or you’ve expanded their role to mini distribution centers with forward-deployed inventory to service your regional omni-channel customers, inventory shortages and out-of-stock situations occur unexpectedly. Every out-of-stock situation your agents prevent through proactive outreach to your store managers prevents lost sales and ensures customer satisfaction with their local store. Contact center agents and support staff often have direct access to corporate inventory, supply chain, and manufacturing line data via their ERP tools. If your contact center does not have outbound dialing or other outreach capabilities today, consider adding outbound capabilities as part of an overall plan to monitor store and distribution center inventory changes. Trigger fail safe tasks into new agent queues focused on inventory follow-up, so your agents reach out to store and distribution center managers and planners to verify stock on hand and arrange for replenishment.

Detect Customer Struggles and Offer Live Help

A recent survey of 1000 B2B buyers indicates 33% of those buyers experience online order errors. How does your company detect and resolve online B2B order issues to retain these customers?

Order validation algorithms using serverless technologies provide rapid, low cost detection solutions to identify unrecognized parts on customer orders, suggest similar replacement products using vector search queries and prompt your agents to offer the customer live in-line, in-context chat to ensure your buyer’s issue is resolved.

Whenever your customers dwell in an area of your website for a long period of time, when they fail to submit a web form correctly, when they abandon a chatbot conversation, or when they rapidly click between two to three pages within your site, your customer is struggling, and your agents can help. Modern Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solutions provide agent co-browse capabilities to let agents see the same view of your website or mobile app that your customer sees. Pair agent co-browse capability with mobile app and web site instrumentation to detect customer actions such as excessive page dwell time, rapid successive page bounces and multiple video skip forwards which indicate your customers are struggling to obtain the information they need or potentially make a purchase on one of your digital properties. Detect these struggle events using website and mobile app instrumentation then trigger your contact center into action. Agents engage the frustrated user using live chat and co-browsing to assess the situation, provide resolution and even offer an additional discount or upgrade to entice the customer to complete their purchase.

Monetize Your Knowledge Workers’ Combined Expertise

Consider the amount you’ve invested to build a skilled contact center workforce that provides rapid problem resolution, expert-level product guidance and concierge-level handling of logistics challenges. Now consider the subject matter experts (SME) such as application engineers and solution engineers within your company who often engage at a moment’s notice to diagnose and resolve customers’ technical challenges and their design issues. The combined expertise and experience of your senior contact center staff and your SMEs offer a unique premium service to your market. Many CCaaS platforms provide full API integration into software applications your employees already use so there’s no need for them to learn new tools to service clients who want your company’s consulting expertise. Instead, knowledge workers you designate receive in-app alerts to assist clients with architecture and design questions based on that knowledge worker’s expertise. To ensure you make the best use of your clients and your employees time, you can integrate your learning management system or employee skills database expertise rankings into your CCaaS routing algorithm ensuring new requests route to the best-skilled, available employee.

Provide Services to Your Dealers, Franchisees, and Stores

Your store managers, dealers, distributors and even franchisees all incur significant monthly overhead to support and operate their businesses. Services your contact center consistently delivers at scale may address some of their overhead needs and lower their overhead rate. For example, your agent forecasting and shift scheduling expertise and application knowledge helps dealers who must schedule salespeople, service technicians and warehouse staff. Instead of every dealer sourcing and learning a separate employee scheduling service they source and learn from your team. Your contact center staff’s expertise also offers the opportunity for consultative sales of add-on services such as extended warranties or pre-paid maintenance. Senior contact center agents facilitate delivery of these services. They know the intricacies of the plans, and they see how these plans benefit consumers when product issues arise. This enables your senior agents to easily build credibility and advise customers on their warranty or maintenance plan purchase. Using video contact center features, you can engage these senior agents with prospective buyers at your branches and dealerships to answer customer questions and address concerns that may be blocking a purchase.

Taking the next step

I hope the options presented in the blog post such as preventing out-of-stock situations at a local store, assisting struggling online customers to complete purchases and packaging your team’s knowledge into expert-level consulting services pique your interest and spark conversations about monetizing your contact center. Your contact center’s capabilities enable you to prevent lost revenue and drive new revenue for your business. Take the next step. Perform a capability analysis of your contact center then assess your company’s revenue challenges against those capabilities. You will likely identify several capabilities that directly address your revenue challenges. If you need help with that analysis or want to discuss alternatives, please reach out to me or contact Perficient.