Sydney's ITKnocks on contact centre AI and the slow death of the IVR

At Sydney's ITKnocks, Microsoft AI MVP Arafat Tehsin is betting that voice automation is about to undergo a renaissance in 2025.

The artificial intelligence most valuable professional, who joined growing Microsoft partner ITKnocks in February, believes that traditional interactive voice response (IVR) systems are finally on the way out.

"People have been trying to revamp or improve the contact centre experiences since the past five years – nobody wants to wait for 5-10 minutes and then just figure out that they have to press one or two," Tehsin said. 

Despite industry efforts to revolutionise customer service through AI advances, Tehsin acknowledges progress has been slower than anticipated.

He noted that his own predictions from 2017 have taken years to materialise.

"I remember writing and discussing this in 2017," he said.

"We have seen since then – like eight years – it has not yet transformed fully, but the vision has been there from organisations and they have been working very aggressively."

"It's a big change, that's why it will take time," he said.

Tehsin's personal frustration with current interactive voice response (IVR) systems was highlighted to him by a recent experience.

"Yesterday I struggled for 20 minutes to get compulsory third party insurance for my car rego sorted online."

"Fine, I'll give them a call," Tehsin said and talked about how the IVR asked him to press 1 for a certain option, 2 for another, and so forth.

"It would have been so much easier if I could have just picked up a call and said 'I'm here for the compulsory third party insurance' and been routed to the appropriate department."

ITKnocks is developing its own intellectual property, called Contact Pilot AI, to address these pain points, particularly for businesses that don't already have Microsoft's enterprise infrastructure in place.

"We are coming up with our own IP because Dynamics 365 Contact Centre or any other contact centres is not equipped with those capabilities," Tehsin said.

The company aims to showcase this technology within months, promising a system that doesn't eliminate human agents but rather empowers them by streamlining customer interactions.

"We are not eliminating humans from the loop, but empowering the human within the loop and bringing up that fast processing rather than waiting for 5 or 10 minutes," Tehsin said.

Jakob Webster, who joined ITKnocks in November after senior roles at Dentsu's Merkle and Versent, sees contact centre transformation as a major growth opportunity.

"The market seems to be heating up now," Webster said.

"It's clear that there's more and more customers looking to make the move into this Microsoft contact centre space," Webster added.

Webster observes that customers are increasingly confused by pricing models from other platforms, particularly around new AI products, making them more receptive to alternatives in the current price-sensitive environment.

ITKnocks sales director Aaron Cooper, who joined the company last July, notes that despite digital transformation efforts, phone communication remains crucial for businesses.

"About 49 per cent – roughly half – still use the phone as a vehicle to engage with service providers. But what about the other 50 per cent?" Cooper said.

"If organisations aren't leveraging all communication channels available to them that customers may want to engage with, like social, WhatsApp, SMS, or web chat...being able to have a human-like conversation without any human intervention is paying massive dividends in terms of customer experience," Cooper added.

Ambitious growth plans

Cooper has ambitious growth plans, stating that ITKnocks aims to become the next tier 1 Microsoft Solution Partner for Business Applications. 

Webster believes one of the biggest challenges for organisations implementing AI tools like Microsoft Copilot is effective user enablement.

Tehsin agreed that people need to be shown how to make good use of the new technology they've been given.

"Companies with hundreds and thousands of employees procured licenses from Microsoft but they were not getting real value out of it."

"There was not enough coaching provided to them," Tehsin added.

"The value is there, the tool is there...your copilot within your organisation also understands your data which ChatGPT does not," he said.

"It is more powerful – it's just about how do we really use it."

ITKnocks plans to formally launch Contact Pilot AI in the coming months, having used the 2024 calendar year-end holiday period to finalise development after being "so busy with projects" in late 2024.