But to what end? After all, cutting-edge technology equates to nothing if your intent isn’t right. You can’t innovate for innovation’s sake.
After all, poorly implemented or designed technology could hinder your ability to deliver the end goal: exceptional customer service. It’s noticeable when something’s off — according to data from customer service platform Zendesk, 70% of consumers believe a clear gap exists between companies that leverage AI effectively in customer service and those that don’t.
Instead, the technological solutions should serve to complement your offering, allowing your organization to be more engaged and provide better service. It requires having the dedication to make customer service part of your culture across the organization, with a focus on providing better information and incentives for employees. Doing it correctly is transformative.
And that’s exactly what we’re seeing at Cenlar.
Technology Augments What’s Possible
In 2024, we launched an exciting initiative at Cenlar called CARE that injects empathy throughout our customer service journey.
We’ve trained our agents to make their interactions with homeowners personal and conversational and empowered top performers to work with their colleagues, so that we’re always identifying ways we can improve. It’s created a buzz and culture in our contact centers beyond what we’ve seen before.
To keep the momentum going, we’re filling in technology around people to augment what’s possible. We’ve done this by listening to agent feedback and delivering our team a suite of new tools that allow them to focus on providing the very best customer service.
The Live Chat function on our homeowner website has been a huge success since we launched it in 2020, with an 85% homeowner satisfaction rating and an average of 150,000 interactions every month. In 2023, we enhanced it further by installing a genAI solution into the Live Chat function that transcribes each chat and summarizes key points from the conversation. This text then can be reviewed, edited and pasted into our system by agents, improving efficiency and providing a consistent, comprehensive record of all chat interactions. This innovation earned Cenlar a spot on Housingwire’s Tech100 for new genAI solutions.
Later this spring, we’re launching similar call transcription and summary tools that will infuse AI into every phone call, giving us both a productivity lift and greater compliance rigor. Anyone who’s had to make multiple calls to customer service or endure forwarding to multiple agents — seemingly starting from Square One each time — will understand how impactful this will be for both our agents and for homeowners. It will not only improve efficiency but will ensure our team can focus on providing personalized and thoughtful responses to homeowners.
We will be able to build on this and further leverage AI to assist agents on calls. Later this year, our AI will have the capability to give the agent real-time hints, suggestions and coaching. It will nudge an agent when it senses the agent may have raised their voice or talked over the homeowner. It will have alerting capabilities that recognize when a supervisor should get involved with a call, getting homeowners closer to a resolution more quickly. It also will analyze calls to create a sentiment score, allowing us to get more data about how we are performing.
Toward the end of 2025, we will be launching one of the most dynamic features of our new toolkit, Agent Assist technology. The search function of this tool leverages AI to read our internal procedures in real-time. Instead of searching for a term and then needing to scroll through hundreds of results to find the correct answer, the agent can type a question into the AI tool and instantaneously get a concise answer, along with a link to the correct procedure.
This will not only save time but will also improve accuracy as well as the flow of the conversation.
And we’re on track to unveil a virtual agent in our IVR, app and homeowner website in 2026 that will allow homeowners more freedom to self-serve, as well as the ability to get help faster should they want to speak with someone.
All this technology fundamentally changes the way our contact centers work. The agent search and in-call coaching tools in particular are cutting-edge technology that revolutionizes the agent and homeowner experience. They put Cenlar at the forefront of not just our industry but ahead of any business that conducts customer service.
We’ve invested in this technology thanks to our agents, who have consistently asked for better tools to assist them. These tools deliver, offering a combination of services that free up our agents to “be a human.”
No longer multitasking to remember everything they’re required to say and do, agents can focus solely on what they’d like to be doing — connecting with the homeowner on the other end of the line.
