A voice agent that handles most of the tier-1 queue without a human
1. Problem. A support organisation carried a heavy tier-1 queue of repetitive, well-understood questions. Hold times drove most of the dissatisfaction, the queue peaked exactly when staffing was hardest, and conventional IVR menus just pushed callers to press 0.
2. Solution. A real-time voice layer on GCP: streaming speech recognition, retrieval grounded in the client's knowledge base, and a policy layer deciding what the agent may resolve alone. The loop stays under 1 second at the caller's ear; low confidence or asking for a person triggers a warm transfer with the transcript.
The client's name and sector are under NDA. Every figure above comes from their live production queue and is published with their permission.
3. Impact
- 80%+
- Tier-1 calls handled autonomously
- <1s
- Response latency at the caller
- 45%
- Lower average handle time
- 24/7
- Coverage with no added headcount