Gartner says generative artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the top three technologies that will transform customer service and support by 2028. I couldn’t agree more.

After all, AI enables contact centers to proactively manage agent performance, improve customer engagement, and gain deeper insights into the customer journey based on current and historical data. With AI, for instance, you can:

• Mathematically approximate both customer and agent behavior
• Intelligently predict the outcomes that most affect both consumers and sellers/service providers
• Compete more effectively and strategically
• Strengthen brand guardianship by enabling agents to deliver more immediate results and more seamless experiences

Indeed according to our State of the Contact Center 2023 report, over 2/3 of contact center managers believe AI’s greatest promise is making agents’ jobs easier and more productive. That’s why so many Calabrio customers have already embraced AI to optimize their business processes (e.g., scheduling, quality management, etc.), modernize their contact center analytics, and drive even greater operational efficiencies.

If your contact center isn’t one of those taking advantage yet, there’s something really important you need to know:

AI is nearly impossible without the cloud.

Said another way—if you haven’t already moved your contact center to the cloud, you’ll have to do that first. Then and only then can you start building out your AI-powered customer service operations. Here’s why:

REASON #1—More computing power.
As you can imagine, AI requires a LOT of compute resources—most companies with on-prem deployments can’t afford AI’s hardware requirements.

REASON #2—Continuous, automatic updates.
Your team members will want the latest, greatest AI-powered capabilities at their fingertips as soon as they become available—on-prem solutions only offer sometimes expensive and always time-consuming upgrades every 3-5 years at best.

REASON #3—Unlimited agility and scalability.
Once you dip your toe into AI, the ways in which you want to use it will quickly grow and expand—on-prem solutions can’t easily, infinitely scale to support use cases like the cloud can.

REASON #4—Perpetual innovation.
AI capabilities grow and evolve every day—on-prem solutions can’t keep up with AI’s speed of innovation like the cloud can.

Put simply, running AI in the cloud is faster, easier, and more cost-effective than trying to do it on prem.

It simply makes (business) sense.

Take the first step in your AI journey. Learn which cloud-based tech is right for your contact center—download our 23-piece buyer’s toolkit.