In 2025, AI in the contact center industry has found fast traction due to numerous opportunities to drive better customer and agent experiences.
For instance, chatbots answering basic FAQ questions have morphed into AI call center virtual agents managing routine inquiries - even offering callers all the relevant available options - much like their human counterparts.
But with so many AI solutions out there, how do you effectively integrate them in ways that fit your needs and infrastructure?
And how do you make sure you’re prepared for the logistical complexities that can arise from adding a resource-intensive new tool like AI?
The Role of CCAI
That’s where contact center AI (CCAI) integrations come in. CCAI is the use of intelligent technologies that help automate and enhance how contact centers operate. It relies on natural language processing, sentiment analysis, and machine learning to make every touchpoint more efficient for customers and agents.
AI in the contact center breaks down into three types, each solving distinct problems.
1. Agent optimization. CCAI boosts agent productivity by giving the full context of conversations upfront, including sentiment analysis. Tools such as agent assist also coach agents in real time and suggest next steps. Plus, CCAI spots performance trends that reveal where agents need more support.
...how do you effectively integrate [AI solutions] in ways that fit your needs...?
2. Conversational AI. Chatbots and virtual agents are conversational AI integrations that handle the less complicated requests, so that customers can get help without queuing for a human representative.
With conversational AI you can offload simple tasks, like resetting passwords, checking account balances, or troubleshooting tech issues. When requests get more complex, it routes customers to the appropriate teams.
3. Generative AI. This type of AI call center integration creates on-demand content: call transcripts, summaries, translations, and action items. It provides both human and virtual agents with valuable insights from sales and support calls, helping them personalize their replies and resolve issues faster.
So, how are these CCAI solutions impacting the industry? Gartner had forecasted that conversational AI integration alone could save contact centers $80 billion in agent labor costs by 2026.
Add in the revenue potential from generative AI detecting upselling and cross-selling opportunities during calls and the case for CCAI becomes even more compelling.
Let’s look at the two implementation options to make AI deliver on this promise.
BYO AI
New AI startups are launching constantly, and because of the fast-changing nature of the market, some contact centers opt for a flexible AI ecosystem that doesn’t lock them into a single vendor.
Bring your own (BYO) AI delivers exactly that flexibility. It lets contact centers integrate their preferred AI platforms and build everything to their specifications. This gives them far more control and customization compared to bundled CCAI solutions.
[BYO AI] decouples your infrastructure from vendor limitations...prebuilt AI integrations are a practical entry point...
Here, we are defining BYO AI as a carrier service that allows an AI vendor to build a custom integration, so that the contact center can choose their preferred AI vendor, and even swap out AI vendors at any time, while keeping their carrier of choice.
The key benefits are:
1. Decouples your infrastructure from vendor limitations. You’re not waiting around for a vendor to release additional features or hoping their product roadmap aligns with your timeline. Want to switch conversational AI integration platforms as your needs evolve? Bringing your own AI vendor to a carrier that allows it is your best bet.
2. Custom AI integrations can be fine-tuned to fit your use cases. You can feed brand guidelines, company processes, support transcripts, or other industry-specific data to your CCAI. This helps you design conversations that match your business needs and reflect how your agents normally communicate.
3. Ability to architect a more secure setup. You gain greater control over data security and governance by choosing AI call center vendors that support your compliance requirements. Oversight is especially important if you’re in a highly regulated industry or operating in multiple locations with varying data rules.
Prebuilt AI Integrations
Custom BYO AI integrations take time and resources. But not every enterprise has the capacity to take that on. Prebuilt AI integrations are a practical entry point for those that need CCAI solutions up and running without extensive customization.
The main benefits are:
1. Lower development time. Building AI from scratch usually keeps IT busy for weeks or months. But when you pick the prebuilt route, development teams handle the reduced workload, and they can set up AI in the contact center in a fraction of the time.
2. Faster deployment for standard use cases. Since the tech hurdles are minimal, you can launch common AI workflows in hours and test, measure, and optimize them quickly.
3. Less overhead than custom builds. You benefit from lower upfront costs and more predictable ongoing expenses that help you stay on budget.
Both BYO and prebuilt AI options have merit, but there’s still more to think through. Can your CCAI solution handle high traffic? How much bandwidth will your CCAI consume? And what happens if the power goes out or a data center fails?
CCAI Risk Preparedness
Integrating AI, whether BYO or prebuilt, in the contact center is one thing. Keeping it running under real-world conditions is a different ball game.
Reality check time!
CCAI is susceptible to new and evolving outages and interruptions. Did you know CCAI could put a strain on your infrastructure, too?
...your CCAI is not invincible...preparing beforehand is the smart play.
AI is a bandwidth hog that can put strain on your infrastructure. By 2030, AI workloads could account for roughly 70% of the demand, driving a near-tripling of global data center growth. The challenge? 71% say their data centers aren’t yet ready to meet current AI demands.
Being hosted in data centers, unsurprisingly, also means that CCAI is at risk from extreme weather events, such as floods, wildfires, and cyclones/hurricanes.
One study, “2025 Global Data Centre Physical Climate Risk and Adaptation Report” by XDI, predicts that 20%-64% of data centers in several key U.S., European, and Asian hubs could be exposed to climate change hazards by 2050. In the U.S., over 6% of the 3,382 data centers studied fall into the high-risk category.
Either way, your CCAI is not invincible. So, preparing beforehand is the smart play.
- Evaluate your vendor’s infrastructure resilience. Ask about their power capacity, data center locations, and their ability to reroute around outages, giving you multiple layers of resilience. Because if they are dependent on overloaded centers, especially in climate-vulnerable areas, your outage risk increases.
- Prioritize conversational AI integration with scalable bandwidth. Can the vendors manage heavy traffic with low latency? Do they have capacity buffers for usage spikes? Know how fast they can adjust when AI demand surges, with or without warning.
- Get details on disaster recovery. Check for data center redundancy and failover systems. Best practices like Active/Active network failover architecture protect you from single points of failure that can halt your whole AI operation. Power backups, efficient cooling, and fire protection also help your systems hold up through disruptions.
Make Informed Choices
BYO AI gives you more control over your contact center stack but requires more work. Prebuilt AI integrations get you to market with AI faster but narrow your options. Whether you build or buy, the AI call center foundation must be open enough to adapt and stable enough to survive shakeups.