AI To Cut Expenses Can Boost Sales Through Better Customer Service

Forbes

15-07-2025

Robots in a call center
A huge breakthrough in artificial intelligence came from a simple answer: 'I don't know.' Early AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT or Claude, would often hallucinate when they didn't know an answer, making up stuff. More recent versions have been willing to admit their own ignorance. According to the CEO of a call center automation company, admitting that one doesn't know an answer was a huge breakthrough.
Artificial intelligence has been helping call center employees provide better answers to customers. Now AI agents are handling calls themselves, with high satisfaction rates and only occasional human conversations. Though initiated as cost-savings initiatives, the ultimate result—when done right—will be greater customer satisfaction and improved sales.
Regal is one company offering AI agents that don't need humans in almost all cases. CEO Alex Levin told me in a video call about the 'I don't know' breakthrough. He said that enabled his company's AI agents to handle both outbound and inbound calls. Although humans are available as needed, most customers are happy to have their issues resolved regardless of whom they are speaking with.
Two key drivers help this business. One is that people will answer telephone calls from trusted names, even if the caller is robotic. For example, a doctor may refer a patient to a specialist. The clinic's AI scheduler calls the patient for a conversation about available days and times. The patient is happy to get a very prompt call, and the scheduler can ask the usual questions, such as which day of the week or time of day is best for the patient. This is cheaper for the health system than having a staff of people calling patients or receiving in-bound calls.
Another driver is the surge of call volume at various times. Medicare Advantage plans, for example, tend to have open enrollment periods with high volume of inbound calls. The insurance company's choices are to staff up for the surge period with temporary employees—poorly trained and lacking experience—or to maintain excessive staffing curing the slack months. AI, in contrast, scales up easily.
Creating the AI system that can handle complex conversations requires a good bit of set-up work. The system must connect to customer databases and know about the company's contracts, terms, procedures and regulations. The current technology can handle this, but getting all the pieces together takes significant work up front.
Regal is selling these services with a cost-savings pitch, but that may be trivial compared to the benefits of good customer service that technology can provide.
WFG National Title Company has found this to be the case. Company staff proposed a cost-savings measure. The company's escrow agents were fielding multiple calls, texts and emails by the participants in every transaction. Staff members envisioned an app that would enable the property buyers and sellers to see real-time information about the status of the closing. They would be able to see which documents were complete, which steps were delaying the process, and what they needed to do. (Disclosure: WFG is a client of mine, though I did not work on this project.)
The company's founder and executive chairman, Pat Stone, told me that he was mistaken in seeing the proposal as a cost reduction program. It certainly was a cost saver, but the big impact was improved customer service. The property buyers and sellers found that with the app, much of the stress and worry evaporated. The real estate agents spent less time answering their clients' questions—and many of those questions had required the real estate agent to call the title insurance agent. The real estate agents loved the app for two reasons. First, their clients were happier. Second, it reduced the number of trivial calls the real estate agents needed to answer. So the agents recommended WFG for escrow service.
When someone has a great customer experience from one company, they expect other experiences to meet that standard. That was the message I got from a video call with Justin Tucker, WFG's lead on its MyHome app. One customer compared his escrow experience before the app with FedEx's ability to let a customer track a package. This is a key concept: a company's customer experience can't just be as good as the competition; it should be at least as good as the best experience anywhere, by any company, that the customer has experienced.
Improved customer experience helped the company build market share. Though only 15 years old, WFG is now the country's sixth largest title company, with high market share in some of its key markets.
The common view that people want to talk to other people makes sense for friends and neighbors. But a person trying to buy insurance, schedule a medical appointment or prepare for a real estate closing wants accurate and complete information, with a quick response to questions and concerns. Good technology can provide this. If a company like Regal can deliver great experience through AI agents, the cost savings will be nice but the marketing value will prove far greater.