Real-Time Agent Assist Explained + 5 Industry Use Cases

When a customer has an urgent question or issue, every second counts. In fact, 90% of people expect immediate assistance when reaching out to a company and may easily take their business elsewhere if you don’t respond fast enough. But without the right tools, even the best support teams struggle to deliver fast, effective service.

That’s where real-time agent assist technology comes in.

Industry leaders like AmeriHealth Caritas, Carrefour, PepsiCo, and many more businesses leverage real-time agent assist features to empower their support teams, helping them provide service that’s:

• Faster
• More efficient
• More personalized

The result? Happier teams, satisfied customers, and smoother operations all around.

In this guide, we’ll explore:

• What real-time agent assist is
• How agent assist technology works
• The key 6 benefits of real-time agent assist tools
• Ways these solutions can transform the way you work based on your industry

What is real-time agent assist? 

Real-time agent assist is a technology that helps human customer service agents during live interactions—such as calls, chats, or video sessions—as well as provides features for post-call procedures and internal company processes.

It usually comes as a third-party system that integrates into your company’s backend processes. Your team can text and sometimes call an AI-powered assistant to consult in real time, or have it working on the side while interacting with customers.

Additionally, such systems provide convenient information search, post-call coaching, and interaction summaries to remove manual and repetitive tasks from your team’s plate.

In essence, real-time agent assist works by:

• Listening to conversations via speech-to-text for calls or text stream for chats
• Using natural language processing (NLP) and sentiment analysis to understand the customer’s intent, emotions, and context to help agents
• Immediately surfacing relevant knowledge base articles or FAQs, recommended responses or scripts, compliance reminders or upsell cues, and sentiment alerts

Finally, the human agent can review and use the suggestions in real time.
Due to its real-time, 24/7 assistance, this technology is gaining a lot of attention. The global real-time AI agent assist market is expected to grow from USD 4.4 billion in 2024 to around USD 124.6 billion by 2034.

So, if you’re wondering whether it’s worth it, the time to integrate these features is now—because your competitors are probably already investing in helping their teams work faster and be more productive.

What are the main real-time agent assist features?

Real-time agent assist offers a unique opportunity to give your team their own personal digital colleague that can help them whenever they have a question mid-call or chat with a customer, as well as when they need to find information about the company, policies, or other internal resources. 

From quality assurance to live chat and agent coaching, these are just a few features you can expect after integrating this technology into your processes. Let’s go over some of the key ones.

• Automated quality assurance: Top voice AI for agent assist in real time automatically monitors and scores customer interactions across calls, chats, emails, etc., for quality, compliance, and performance, without needing human reviewers. For example, the system can flag and let the agent know if they didn’t verify the customer’s identity or missed a required disclosure. It can also provide real-time QA scorecards to let your agents and supervisors know the quality of each interaction.
• Automated coaching: AI-powered agent assist analyzes agent performance in real time and, after calls or chats, provides personalized feedback and tips to improve skills. For example, it can suggest something like, “You spoke too fast during the last minute. Try slowing down to improve clarity.”
• Live chat: An AI-powered platform enables real-time text communication between customers and agents, with AI assisting both sides. For instance, while chatting, the AI can suggest instant replies or retrieve relevant FAQs for the agent.
• AI suggestions: The agent assist system listens to the conversation and provides real-time recommendations such as next best actions, replies, or resources. Say a customer asks about a refund; the AI instantly surfaces the company’s refund policy.
• Transcription: The speech-to-text technology behind most agent assist tools can transcribe live calls into readable text in real time, enabling search, analysis, and compliance tracking. In this case, supervisors can see a live transcript to assist agents during escalated calls.
• Call summarization: After a call, AI automatically creates a short summary of what was discussed, including key points, actions, and outcomes. An example could be a simple note after the call: “Customer reported a billing error. The agent escalated to finance. Follow-up scheduled for Friday.” It can also automatically transfer this information to a CRM system and attach it to a client’s record.
• Knowledge management: An AI-powered knowledge base delivers the most relevant answer or resource instantly when triggered by keywords or intent. For example, Capacity, an AI-powered internal and external support automation solution, offers Answer Engine® for internal teams, where they can search for information by giving it prompts and receiving only relevant details instead of links to documentation or FAQs.

Live customer sentiment: AI continuously analyzes tone, language, and emotion during interactions to gauge the customer’s mood—such as positive, neutral, negative, or frustrated. For example, if frustration increases, the system alerts the agent or supervisor in real time.

How does agent assist technology work?

Real-time agent assist is made possible by different AI-powered technologies and the synergy between them. Let’s go over the main technologies that make it possible to get information instantly, summarize conversations, and move data between systems.

AI understanding for listening and analyzing in real time

At the core of agent assist is AI that “listens to” and understands live customer interactions to:

• Identify intent, such as “I want to cancel my order”
• Detect emotion, such as “The customer sounds angry”
• Track context, including previous interactions, authentication details, and purchase information

Without it, suggestions would fall flat, as the system would have to rely on pre-developed scripts and prompts instead of “thinking” for itself.

Generative AI for creating real-time support and insights

Generative AI takes understanding a step further by creating content and guidance instantly, such as:

• Suggesting replies or summaries written in a human tone
• Retrieving real-time knowledge, like “Here’s the warranty info for Model X”
• Offering coaching, like “Try empathizing before offering a discount”

Generative AI models trained on your business data can mimic top-performing agent behavior, producing personalized, compliant, and empathetic responses.

Integrations for connecting data across systems

To experience the full power of agent assist, it must integrate with other systems you already use in your operations.

Agent assist can (and should) integrate with:

• CRM systems
• Knowledge bases and helpdesks
• Ticketing tools
• Telephony or CCaaS platforms

For example, if it summarizes a call, it can automatically transfer that information to your CRM platform. Or if an agent needs information about specific policies, agent assist can pull it directly from your omnichannel helpdesk.

Automation and workflow intelligence for reducing manual work

An advanced AI-powered agent assist system can automate repetitive tasks such as:

• Capturing call notes using speech-to-text
• Tagging conversations
• Summarizing outcomes
• Updating CRM fields

It can also use AI-driven routing to match customers with the best agent based on intent, skill, or sentiment. This way, agents can focus on relationship-building rather than administrative work.

Feedback loop and learning for continuous improvement

AI-powered technologies enable real-time agent assist systems not only to help, but also to learn from each interaction so they can provide better assistance over time.

Every interaction trains the AI further:

• Successful responses strengthen future suggestions
• Negative sentiment triggers retraining or new coaching rules
• Supervisors can fine-tune guidance templates

The system continuously learns, becoming smarter, faster, and more context-aware—without you having to manually upload information every time there’s an update or change.

What are the 6 benefits of real-time agent assist tools?

The benefits of agent assist range from improved agent efficiency to a better customer experience, as your team has all the necessary tools to provide top-notch service. Let’s go over some of the main benefits for your team and customers.

1. Consistent support

AI-powered real-time agent assist works like a brain behind the scenes. So, whether a customer contacts your team multiple times or speaks with different people, they still get the same experience and information because agents can access everything from a unified knowledge source. Every customer receives the same high-quality, accurate, and compliant response, no matter who they speak to.

To ensure consistent support:

• AI provides real-time answer suggestions and compliance reminders during calls and chats
• Knowledge bases and generative AI ensure agents always use approved, up-to-date information
• Automated QA continuously checks for adherence to standards and provides real-time QA scorecards

2. Effective team training

It can take anywhere from three to six weeks to teach a new hire the ropes of your business processes. Agents improve much faster with targeted, continuous coaching rather than relying solely on their initial training, learning videos, or documentation.

AI helps agents train faster and more efficiently by:

• Automated coaching to highlight performance trends and skill gaps
• Offering guidance while interacting with customers
• Providing real training examples, automatically tagged for coaching moments

3. Faster resolutions

When you give your employees the right tools, they solve issues more quickly, reducing handle time and customer frustration.

One study showed that developers using generative AI completed programming tasks 55.8% faster, demonstrating AI’s strong potential to boost productivity.

AI for customer support also reduces resolution time by:

• Giving suggestions and delivering instant information
• Making real-time transcription and summarization to keep agents focused on the conversation
• Integrating with CRM and ticketing systems to eliminate app-switching

4. Lower support costs

Many AI-powered automation platforms offer AI assistants to help lower support costs. For example, Poly.AI, an agentic AI platform, delivers conversational AI, voice automation, and internal support features designed to cut costs by optimizing your team’s work and customer experience. It’s a great option for small businesses that want to automate mundane and repetitive service tasks. If you’re interested in similar tools, we also invite you to check out apps like Poly.AI.

However, regardless of the platform, top voice AI for real-time agent assist can help cut costs in several ways:

• Operational efficiency improves, allowing teams to handle more interactions with fewer resources
• You need fewer staff members since AI features help your current team manage more inquiries
• Onboarding becomes faster, and new hires make fewer mistakes

As a result, you can expect fewer escalations, reduced overhead, and better ROI per agent. 

5. Lower agent attrition

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, call center quit rates are almost five times higher than in almost any other occupation. At the same time, 87% of call center workers report high or very high stress levels, and as many as 77% say they experience high or very high personal stress.

However, with the right tools to help your team do their jobs more efficiently, agents stay longer because they feel supported, capable, and less stressed.

For example:

• Real-time assistance reduces the anxiety of handling tough interactions
• Agents receive positive feedback loops through performance analytics and coaching
• Less repetitive work and better tools improve job satisfaction

And for your business, that means lower turnover, lower recruiting costs, and stronger institutional knowledge.

6. Better brand experiences

A common situation in support centers: a customer calls to ask about their order because they want to cancel it and get a refund. Your agent takes the case but needs time to find information about this particular order, confirm whether it can be canceled at that stage of shipping, and process the refund.

The customer grows increasingly frustrated while waiting and may even receive incorrect information. On the other hand, when your team has real-time assistance, they can access the right information within seconds. As a result, customers walk away feeling heard, helped, and valued every time they interact with your business.

What is an example of agent assist? 5 real-world industry cases

If you have a customer support team in your company, you can definitely benefit from using real-time agent assist technology. Teams in healthcare, finance, retail, and many other industries enjoy easier, faster, and more accurate assistance with the right tools. Let’s explore how different industries benefit from agent assist technology.

1. Healthcare

Real-time agent assist software in healthcare can help agents collect patient symptoms during live calls, find the best times for visits, and update patient records without any manual work.

A great example of a successful agent assist implementation is AmeriHealth Caritas, a U.S. healthcare insurance provider. They managed to reduce average handle time (AHT) by about 60 seconds and agent training time by 20%, using Uniphore’s real-time agent assist platform that connected and unified information. 

Real-time agent assist supports agents by surfacing context, guiding next best actions, and automating routine steps, even when you’re dealing with highly regulated industries like healthcare.

2. Financial services

Financial services like banking and mortgages require systems capable of ensuring top-notch security and compliance.

When implemented properly, real-time agent assist in financial services can help agents find customer information faster, check account details, and authenticate customers more quickly without repetitive steps.

For example, Paramount Residential Mortgage Group, Inc. (PRMG), a leading lender in the mortgage industry, integrated Capacity’s agent assist features into their internal employee support. Like many large corporations, PRMG struggled with excessive time spent on manual and repetitive tasks and scattered information.

Capacity’s digital assistant now provides loan and guideline information to employees without human involvement. As a result, about 90% of those questions are now answered by AI.

Complex products, high transaction volumes, and a constant need for speed and accuracy are no obstacle to an advanced AI agent assist platform.

3. Retail 

Retail is a great example of how agent assist helps agents handle hundreds of customer inquiries in a fast-paced environment without stress.

Customer support teams in retail can rely on AI-powered assistants to help customers get answers and solve problems on the spot. However, AI technology for internal processes can do much more than just suggest tips or coach agents.

For example, Carrefour, one of the world’s largest retail and supermarket groups, recently partnered with Microsoft and OpenAI to launch generative AI features for its non-retail purchasing division. 

These employees can use AI features to:

• Automatically generate structured, compliant RFP templates based on a few key inputs 
• Compare submissions, identify key differences, extract risks, and even suggest summary tables or negotiation points
• Generate standard correspondence, executive summaries, and approval memos

This shows how extensive the integration possibilities of agent assist features are.

4. Food and beverage

The food and beverage industry can successfully implement and utilize agent assist features to help their teams manage partner and customer-facing tasks. A great example of a successful agent assist implementation is PepsiCo, a food, beverage, and snack corporation behind Pepsi, Lay’s, Gatorade, and many more iconic brands you probably have in your pantry.

As an international multibillion-dollar corporation, PepsiCo faced a challenge: valuable information was stored in data silos around the world, and employees struggled to find it.

To help optimize their projects, PepsiCo turned to Capacity and deployed the Answer Engine®, a platform that connects their corporate knowledge into one accessible search engine for teams.

Rather than spending hours searching for specific files or information or guessing about the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, employees can simply ask for what they need. The Answer Engine® searches through millions of pages of content across both first- and third-party connections to find answers in seconds.

As a result, PepsiCo can now access millions of consumer insights and save more than 438 hours each month.

5. IT support 

Real-time agent assist acts as an AI co-pilot for IT support teams, providing instant access to relevant knowledge base articles, troubleshooting steps, and suggested responses during live interactions. When your team doesn’t have to spend their entire day answering simple FAQs, they can focus on resolving issues more accurately.

Beyond efficiency, agent assist boosts agent confidence and job satisfaction, leading to lower burnout and attrition. 

At IBM, for example, an internal agent assist system for IT teams pulls knowledge from multiple sources, such as app documentation, ticket systems, and training videos, and uses AI to deliver fast, relevant answers for IT teams.

Another great feature for IT teams is secure screen sharing and screen recording. Sometimes, an agent just can’t solve a problem during a call and needs to access a customer’s or colleague’s screen. What most people worry about in these cases is their privacy and security. That’s why Capacity created a feature called Cobrowse. It allows IT staff to safely access a screen and solve problems remotely—without risking privacy or security violations.

Support your agents in real time with AI-powered agent assist

It’s clear that real-time agent assist can transform how your team finds information, helps customers, and experiences their time with your business.

These benefits are just the beginning. 

The technology also provides:

• Consistent support
• Effective team training
• Faster resolutions
• Lower support costs
• Lower agent attrition
• Better brand experiences

If you want these and many more benefits for your team, you won’t want to miss Capacity and its real-time agent assist tools—created for large teams that need an extra hand managing their day-to-day tasks. If better utilization of your support team, improved customer experiences, and smoother information exchange between systems sound good, book a demo!

FAQs