AI call
AI phone call features work hard in the background, giving your team more time to support customers and close deals.
Focus on conversations, not admin
Understand what customers are thinking
Connect with more leads and prospects
Artificial intelligence is having a profound impact on modern life—both personal and business. Even the good old-fashioned phone call hasn’t been immune. Today, smart businesses leverage AI call features to make interactions with customers and prospects over the phone more productive.
AI call features to boost productivity, wow your customers, and close more deals
RingCentral’s AI call features are part of every pricing plan, and they’ll make a huge difference to the way you do business.
The AI Assistant helps you save time by taking notes and summarizing calls and meetings, while the AI Assist tool pops up with advice to help reps and agents on tricky calls.
Predictive dialers put your team in touch with more leads, and conversation intelligence gives you a deeper understanding of customer needs.
Managers can use AI insights to provide personalized training and monitor calls. AI also lets managers know when they need to step in.
An AI calling app to revolutionize sales training, quality control and more
With AI call apps, your business will see gains in efficiency alongside improved experiences for customers, agents, and reps. AI-powered calling features make it easy to monitor interactions for call quality and training opportunities.
For example, InsuranceHub Leavitt Agency found that RingCentral’s AI calling software makes a big difference to its sales conversations. The firm was already using RingCentral, and the introduction of RingSense conversation intelligence provided the AI capabilities it needed.
Now, managers can listen to their teams’ customer interactions to evaluate reps’ performance and provide relevant training. They can look for specific calls with the keyword search feature and use deep insights to enhance customer service.
“When RingCentral introduced RingSense, it was a clear choice for us. Having conversation intelligence natively integrated into our existing phone system provides heightened security and ease of use and connectivity.”
Lee LeBaigue
Senior Vice President, InsuranceHub
What is AI calling?
You might be wondering: “What is AI calling?” So, we’ll just take a moment here to clear up the definition because it can mean a couple of different things.
When we talk about AI calling with RingCentral, we don’t mean artificial intelligence calls made by programmed robots. We’re talking about business calls made by human beings but enhanced by various AI-powered features.
Examples of these AI-powered features include an AI assistant taking notes while you make a phone call or an AI video call where the meeting is not only recorded, but transcribed in real time.
Sound good? Keep reading to discover more ways that you could benefit from using AI calling.
Why make and take calls with AI support
Now that we’ve cleared up the AI call meaning, let’s get an overview of the key advantages that AI call features—like the ones offered by RingCentral—can bring to your organization.
Allow your agents or colleagues to focus on the calls
Whether they’re in sales or support, agents and reps need to listen carefully during calls to understand what their customers or prospects need. It’s hard to do that when they’re trying to scribble notes at the same time.
That’s where AI tools, such as RingCentral’s AI Assistant, come in. They transcribe the calls automatically, eliminating the need for manual note-taking.
Make your calls and meetings more accessible
Calling with AI means you can make meetings and calls inclusive for everyone. With live transcription and closed captions, colleagues and customers with hearing impairments can still be part of the conversation.
RingCentral’s tools transcribe in several languages, too. Plus, you can send transcripts to those who couldn’t attend the meeting.
Quickly summarize and recap important conversations
AI assistants also save time by generating summaries of your calls and meetings so that you don’t have to review each conversation in its entirety.
After an AI voice call or video meeting, participants will receive a recap that will include highlights, key insights such as common keywords and topics, and a list of action items.
Connect reps with more leads and prospects
By using an AI-powered predictive dialer, sales reps can connect quickly with high-quality leads and spend more time talking to them.
Predictive dialers go through a list of contacts and use AI algorithms to screen out unanswered calls and busy signals. They only connect available agents when the lead or prospect answers the call.
Help agents and reps have more successful calls
AI can provide real-time guidance and assistance to reps and agents during inbound and outbound calls. If they need help with a customer service inquiry or sales call, intelligent tools give them instant answers and advice so the customer isn’t left waiting.
This reduces handle time and boosts sales, as well as lowering stress levels for employees.
Learn more from your calls
With AI-powered analytics, you can easily derive more accurate insights from your call data. Instead of spending time on manual reviews and analysis, you can let the AI tool flag up customer pain points and preferences, common questions, and opportunities. You can also identify agents and reps who need a little extra coaching.
All the AI call features your business needs
Let’s take a deep dive into the AI call features you’ll get with RingCentral.
AI call transcription
AI transcription turns spoken words into text during live calls and meetings. It’s not just a time-saver compared to manual note-taking, it also gives you an indisputable, searchable digital record of conversations for proving compliance and aiding dispute resolution.
Another key use case for AI call transcription is that it enables supervisors to monitor multiple interactions, either at a glance or in full detail.
By viewing live call transcripts and real-time summaries on a dashboard, they can spot when an agent or rep needs assistance—and they’ll already have the full context when they join the conversation.
On a similar theme, RingCentral also offers voicemail transcription. If someone leaves you a voice message while you’re away from your desk, it’ll be automatically converted into text and sent directly to your inbox.
Automatic notes, action items, and more
Automatic notes enable reps and agents to focus properly on each conversation, practicing active listening and coming up with proactive ways to help the customer. 84% of organizations say that RingCentral’s AI Call Notes improves call engagement.
That’s not the only benefit; automatic notes also provide a significant boost to productivity. There’s less time spent on admin tasks between calls, especially when AI automatically updates your CRM too—no manual entry required.
Because the notes are searchable, it’s easy to look back through them and find the key details you need. In fact, those key details will be highlighted for you in the post-call summary, along with decisions and action items so that reps and agents know what to prioritize.
AI also provides concise summaries of your video meetings, picking out keywords and generating dynamic highlight clips so that you don’t have to review the whole recording. You can choose to playback by speaker and have the meeting transcribed in English, Spanish, or German.
Predictive outbound dialing
Predictive outbound dialing is a type of auto-dialing technology, with the advantage of being powered by AI. It increases the calling rate by connecting reps to as many customers as possible, which is perfect for lead generation or a sales contact center.
A predictive dialer does this by dialing multiple phone numbers simultaneously (and accurately, unlike humans who occasionally press the wrong buttons). The AI algorithm makes sure that only answered calls are put through to reps, which happens automatically when they update their status to “Available.”
Predictive dialers also live up to their name by predicting average answer time and agent availability. It uses a “pacing algorithm” to modify the dialing rate, slowing it down or even stopping when the contact center is busy.
Predictive dialers can also collect call metrics, analyze unsuccessful calls, and alert agents when a customer needs a call back. While predictive dialing is primarily used for outbound calls, inbound contact centers can also leverage the technology for proactive customer service—for instance, making follow-up calls or providing information on a product upgrade.
Sentiment analysis, conversation intelligence, and real-time guidance
Something else that AI is really good at is conversation intelligence. It’s able to extract valuable insights from your conversations, helping you understand customer preferences and interests—which you can use to personalize interactions and boost sales.
RingCentral RingSense automatically analyzes the keywords used by customers and prospects. With this intel, you can find out which sources drive the best leads, identify and prioritize callers who are ready to buy, and flag up those who need an extra nudge or are at risk of churning.
The tool also analyzes sentiment on live calls, revealing whether the customer has a positive or negative attitude to the conversation. As well as reviewing calls after the event, supervisors can also watch out for interactions that aren’t going well and step in to help if needed.
Meanwhile, AI Assist listens in on every call and delivers real-time AI guidance. When an agent or rep doesn’t have the answer, AI Assist will instantly make recommendations using your existing knowledge base content, allowing them to respond swiftly. Agents can also chat with AI Assist directly.
This improves agent confidence and means they don’t have to scrabble around for answers while leaving customers on hold (or pass them on to another agent).
Lower handle times and higher first-contact resolution mean shorter call queues and a less stressful experience for everyone.
AI call FAQs
Nowadays, it seems that AI can do anything, from generating artwork to diagnosing medical conditions. So, it’s not surprising that it can also make phone calls.
Machines can be programmed to conduct human-like conversations via phone—similar to how AI chatbots work. Businesses might use them to automate outreach or follow-up calls.
However, with recent concerns about AI errors and biases, your business may not want to go down the route of fully autonomous AI calling. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is in the process of proposing new rules to regulate AI-generated calls and texts.
Plus, there will always be times when human contact is the best way to give a prospect or customer that personal touch. Basically, it’s better to use the features of an AI call app to support your human agents rather than replace them.
(Just so you know, RingCentral is dedicated to ensuring its AI tools are trustworthy, protecting customers and their data through privacy, security, and transparency).
Most AI-related products are designed for convenience, so it shouldn’t take long to set them up. With RingCentral, you can start using the desktop or mobile app in a matter of minutes—with professional implementation and 24/7 support if you need it.
Whether you’re setting up RingCentral RingEX unified communications or the RingCentral RingCX contact center solution, it’s easy to customize the software, including the AI features. Admins can toggle the AI Assistant on or off, either for individual users or the whole organization.
Individual users can also adjust their AI settings. For example, when you make a phone call in the app, you’ll see the Notes and Transcript panel. If you want to stop taking notes at any time, click Stop notes on the keypad. You can also turn on and manage closed captions and manually record calls or set up auto-recording.
Meanwhile, RingCentral lets you manage calling features with no help from IT— like adding phone numbers and devices, controlling user permissions, and setting up call paths.
Conversation intelligence is a smart tool that collects data and analyzes language, tone, and intent to help you improve your customer interactions. It uses AI, machine learning, and natural language processing (NLP) technologies.
When deployed in real time, it can deliver personalized coaching tips and actionable advice for reps and agents, based on individual performance metrics.
Conversation intelligence also helps you to understand customers’ needs and frustrations, highlighting trends like common objections or reasons for calling.
In both cases, it helps you to improve the outcomes of your business calls and prioritize customers who need more support. The tech can also help carry out deal scoring based on sentiment analysis and engagement, showing you which leads and prospects are most valuable.
RingCentral’s AI Assist gets smarter over time because you can train it on content from various data sources. The more data it absorbs, the better it gets at analyzing conversations and recognizing customer sentiment.
It might seem like AI-powered features would be super expensive, but they don’t have to be. With RingCentral, the AI Assistant is included at no extra cost in every RingCentral RingEX plan—and the contact center packages come with full AI capabilities, too.
RingCentral RingEX starts at just $20/user/month when paid annually. As well as unified communications (with unlimited domestic calling, HD video, business SMS, and team messaging), it includes AI transcriptions and summaries for calls and video meetings.
Upgrade to the Advanced plan ($25/user/month) to unlock real-time AI note-taking and call action items, plus internet fax capabilities and advanced call management. The Ultra plan ($35/user/month) adds customizable analytics and reporting, with the AI Assistant able to compose and translate messages.
Get started with AI call features today
Want to experience the many benefits of AI calling? Intelligent features come as standard with RingCentral, so check them out with a demo or a free trial.