Our partnership with InDebted is an example of AI working hand-in-hand with humans, a combination we will see more of in the future. Since their AI Agent joined the team, InDebted’s contact centre productivity grew by 30% and resolution rate by 12%.

Creating space for humans to focus their time and efforts where it’s most needed is one of the greatest values AI can bring to contact centres.

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InDebted is a fintech startup revolutionising debt collection by helping customers boost their financial fitness. Their product uses empathetic digital messaging and offers self-serve options which makes it easy for customers to resolve their accounts. Since its launch in 2016, InDebted has helped over 250,000 customers with a 98% customer satisfaction.

When COVID-19 hit, InDebted saw a spike in the need for debt repayment support. When reaching out to customers, the team realised they were spending most of their time guiding customers on tasks that were fully enabled through self-serve. InDebted was looking for a way to continue supporting customers to self-serve their enquiries and payments while creating the space for their call centre team to help with the trickier enquiries. They wanted a solution that was smarter than an Interactive Voice Response (IVR), could provide great customer experience and deliver on their call deflection goals.

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In Australia, 21,000 people die every year from smoking-related diseases. Quitline Victoria is looking to improve this statistic.

Quitline offers trained counsellors to help and support those who want to quit smoking. Studies show Quitline dramatically increases a person’s chances of stopping smoking. Quitline is a phone-based service and so engagement is an incredibly important metric. The more people that interact with Quitline, the more impact counsellors can have. That’s why Quitline was intrigued by our AI Agents ability to call people at scale with conversational AI.

Completion rates and re-engagement with the Quitline programme have increased since using AI Agent. With AI Agents, Quitline sees answer rates of 62%, completion rates of 18% and re-engagement rates of 10%. Here is the story of how Quitline is helping people quit smoking with us.

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South Western Sydney Local Health District (SWSLHD) is a major healthcare provider in New South Wales, Australia. It’s responsible for the health services of over one million people, operating seven hospitals and a number of other health facilities. The district is known for its diverse population and its commitment to providing high-quality, patient-centered care. SWSLHD plays a critical role in the community, addressing a wide range of health needs from primary care to complex surgical procedures.

SWSLHD’s adoption of an automated rostering system is a prime example of how technology can optimise human-centric operations. By streamlining staff management, the health district saw a significant reduction in administrative time and a substantial decrease in reliance on costly agency staff.

This shift allowed SWSLHD to reallocate resources and empower its clinical staff, ensuring they could focus their valuable time and expertise on what matters most: delivering high-quality patient care.

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Today, an always-on, 24/7 approach to inbound and outbound customer journeys is what contact centres must deliver, allowing customers to access information, ask questions or respond to communications whenever it suits them.

And automated customer support isn’t confined to phone calls. Customers want channel choice: the ability to engage and switch across SMS, email, live chat and chatbots, without friction or disruption.

When those expectations aren’t met, the impact is immediate. 42% of customers have switched providers following a poor experience handled in the contact centre, making availability and responsiveness a commercial priority rather than a “nice to have”.

This pressure lands in an already challenging environment for contact centre leaders:

• Cost per call is at a five-year high, averaging between £5.50-£6.50
• First-call sales close rates are down year-on-year, with a 25% reduction in 2025
• The volume of customer interactions continues to grow across multiple touchpoints
• Many leaders report higher agent workloads than the previous year

At the same time, simply increasing headcount is rarely a viable option. As it brings significant financial and operational implications.

As a result, contact centres are balancing on a tightrope: deliver high-quality, always-on customer experiences without increasing costs or overwhelming agents.

It’s a tall order. Traditional contact centre models struggle most. Whereas those that treat AI and automation as a necessity, not an experiment, are far better positioned to succeed.

Why traditional contact centres can’t support a 24/7 approach

Contact centres that rely heavily on manual processes are far more likely to miss the mark on consistent, high-quality customer experiences. Not through lack of effort, but instead through lack of capability.

Without automation or AI-enabled workflows, manual contact centres lack the visibility needed to shape effective contact strategies. Disconnected channels and siloed data across multiple systems make it difficult to understand what’s driving demand, where workflows break down, and where agent intervention adds the most value.

As a result, agents often spend a disproportionate amount of time handling repetitive, low-value enquiries instead of focusing on complex or high-impact conversations. This creates inefficiency and, over time, contributes to lower morale and higher fatigue.

Traditional 24/7 models attempt to solve availability problems with people alone. But scaling this way gets expensive fast. In a typical mid-market contact centre, automating just 50-55% of repetitive interactions with AI Agents can reduce monthly handling costs by £80k-£100k (for midsized contact centres), depending on volume and channel mix.

Without connected, automated systems in place, scaling availability scales cost and pressure, but leaves customer experience to chance.

Orchestrating a multi-channel customer journey

Customer support shouldn’t be confined to a single channel. In omnichannel contact centres, customers regularly move between different channels, including SMS, email, chat and chatbots - sometimes within the same interaction.

A customer might receive an SMS, reply with a question, switch to chat for clarification, and later call expecting the conversation to continue seamlessly. Managing this consistently is difficult in manual contact centres, where channels and context are often treated as separate streams.

AI Agents and AI Chatbots make this easier by connecting voice and digital channels into a single, coordinated experience, handling conversations, retaining context and supporting smooth handovers to human agents when needed.

This orchestration is what makes always-on, 24/7 support achievable at scale, and sets the foundation for supporting inbound and outbound journeys more effectively.

What “always-on 24/7” really means for inbound and outbound support

Inbound and outbound interactions are different. And so is the way that customers expect to access 24/7 customer support.

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When inbound and outbound journeys are properly orchestrated and integrate AI customer service solutions:

• Customers can ask questions after receiving outbound messages, without waiting for office hours
• Routine follow-ups are handled digitally, so they don’t automatically become inbound calls
• Conversations continue seamlessly across voice and digital channels, regardless of time zone
• Human agents are reserved for moments where judgement, empathy or complexity matter most

This is what distinguishes always-on availability from simple 24/7 coverage. So, how do contact centre leaders make it a reality?

This is where AI-powered contact centre software becomes essential. Not as a replacement for human agents, but as the execution layer that makes always-on 24/7 customer support possible.

The role of AI Agents in continuous customer support

MaxContact’s AI Agents play a central role in delivering an always-on, 24/7 approach to inbound and outbound customer support, particularly in voice-led contact centres where consistency, compliance and context matter.

Rather than acting as basic automation, AI Agents handle natural, human-like conversations across voice and digital channels. They understand intent, ask clarifying questions and complete tasks end-to-end, from authentication and verification through to troubleshooting, routing and account actions, all without customers waiting in a queue to speak to an agent.

This makes AI Agents especially effective outside core operating hours, when customers still expect fast, accurate responses but human availability is limited. Every interaction is handled consistently and compliantly, with the same rules, prompts and safeguards applied every time.

AI Agents are designed to operate as part of a human-AI hybrid model, not as a replacement for human agents. When a case needs to be escalated due to complexity, risk, sentiment or customer preference, it is, with full conversational context passed on, so customers never have to repeat themselves.

Used this way, AI Agents extend contact centre capacity. They absorb repetitive and time-sensitive demand, pre-qualify and verify customers, and ensure agents are connected to the right conversations at the right time.

The result is faster responses, reduced queue pressure and consistent 24/7 support, without increasing headcount. In cost terms, organisations typically see AI-handled interactions delivered at under £0.50 per contact, compared to £6+ when handled by a human agent.

The role AI Chatbots play in always-on customer support

AI Chatbots aren’t a separate capability from AI Agents. They’re one of the digital channels through which AI Agents operate.

MaxContact’s AI Agents provide the intelligence that understands intent, manages logic and then controls workflows. AI Chatbots maximise that capability across digital touchpoints. This means that the same AI-powered conversations and workflows run consistently across chat, messaging and other digital channels.

In practice, this means customers can get instant answers and can complete simple tasks, such as scheduling a call, or respond to outbound communications through the AI Chatbot, without needing to call or wait in a queue.

Behind the scenes, the AI Agent handles intent, applies rules, and manages the conversation in exactly the same way it would in a voice-led interaction.

This is what makes AI Chatbots so effective in an always-on model. They extend AI Agent capability into digital channels, so contact centres can resolve routine and time-sensitive queries instantly, at any time of day. All whilst maintaining quality and compliance.

How to use AI Chatbots in everyday contact centre situations

In always-on customer journeys, AI Chatbots are particularly effective for handling predictable, high-volume interactions such as:

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Reducing pressure without reducing service

The goal of always-on, 24/7 customer support isn’t to replace human agents or cut corners on service. It’s to remove unnecessary pressure on people, costs and operations while delivering high quality customer experience.

By handling repetitive, predictable and time-sensitive interactions, AI Agents and AI Chatbots absorb demand that would otherwise sit in voice queues or overwhelm frontline teams. Customers still get fast, accurate support, but agents aren’t tied up answering the same questions or repeating the same checks.

This shift allows human agents to focus on high-value conversations. The conversations that need judgement, empathy, reassurance or problem-solving. These moments are where human input makes the biggest difference to outcomes.

Crucially, service levels aren’t reduced. They’re improved. Customers get quicker responses, fewer handoffs and more consistent experiences, while agents work in a more sustainable, focused environment.

Always-on customer support needs the right operational foundations

AI Agents work as a standalone capability. They handle conversations and automate tasks without needing a full contact centre platform.

So, for organisations that don’t operate within a traditional contact centre, AI Agents still deliver immediate value by providing always-on customer support. They handle routine and time-sensitive interactions, and also ensure that customers get fast and consistent responses outside core operating hours.

On the other hand, for organisations that do operate with a contact centre platform in place, AI Agents and AI Chatbots can be easily integrated with core CCaaS capabilities such as:

• intelligent diallers
• real-time call routing
• call queue management
• and contact centre analytics
  

In a contact centre environment, AI Agents extend and enhance existing workflows, and help contact centres manage demand more intelligently by prioritising interactions, and continuously optimising performance across both inbound and outbound journeys.

With the ability to operate independently, or as part of a wider CCaaS set up, AI Agents give a wide variety of businesses the flexibility to scale availability and responsiveness without increasing headcount or incurring ongoing costs. Turning 24/7 customer support into a sustainable capability rather than an operational headache.

Deliver always-on support without always-on staffing

Customers now expect an always-on, 24/7 approach to inbound and outbound customer journeys. Meeting that expectation is reliant on operational foundations that encourage automated workflows, rather than expanding teams and ongoing costs.

By combining AI Agents, AI Chatbots and contact centre capabilities within a single, connected CCaaS platform, contact centres can deliver continuous, high-quality support that scales efficiently and sustainably.

In this model, 24/7 customer support isn’t a strain, it’s a strength that protects customer experience, teams and costs at the same time.

Deliver always-on customer support without increasing headcount.

Explore AI contact centre solution

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As an industry, we’re past debating whether or not AI should be utilised in contact centre workflows. Now, the biggest question is how to do so successfully. How can AI and automation deliver the greatest operational benefits without impacting customer experience?

To be successful, operations teams need to understand:

• How different forms of automation work day to day
• Which problems and scenarios do AI solutions solve
• How AI and automation fit into existing contact centre workflows
• How to implement AI while mitigating risk, complexity and poor customer experiences

Why contact centre leaders are rethinking automation

For many contact centres, the focus on AI and automation is a result of sustained operational pressure rather than chasing technology trends.

Over the last few years, customers’ expectations have changed, with most demanding 24/7 customer support options. As demand has continued to rise, so has agent workload, with over half of contact centre leaders admitting that workloads are a challenge. Add in higher call costs, and it’s clear that something needs to change operationally to take the strain.

AI and automation are capable of protecting service quality and reducing operational costs.

However, it will only work if automation is applied thoughtfully and strategically. And it’s critical that operations teams balance AI utilisation and human judgement. Without a clear grasp of the role AI solutions should play within customer journeys, it creates as many problems as it solves.

With that in mind, let’s look at how voicebots (AI Agents) and AI Chatbots work within the customer journey, both in isolation and as one.  

What’s the difference between a voicebot and a chatbot?

AI voice agents and AI chatbots are both specialised tools designed to address different friction points in the customer journey.

Both understand intent and deliver natural, human-like conversations that can handle enquiries end-to-end.

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One of the biggest concerns that contact centre leaders have around integrating AI solutions is that interactions feel robotic. Thoughts turn to clunky "press 1" IVR scripts, or chatbots that get stuck in "I don't understand" loops.

However, AI-powered solutions are built differently.

• AI Agents and AI Chatbots hold natural, context-aware conversations, whether it be realistic voice synthesis for phone calls or text for chat.
• Rather than relying on specific keywords or phrases, they are built to understand intent and semantics. They ask clarifying questions and complete tasks such as authentication and troubleshooting in real time.
• Industry-trained, AI constantly learns and adapts to the business, improving with every interaction. Responses aren't repetitive or "canned."
• Both voice and chat solutions are built for easy live agent escalation. If a conversation detects frustration or complexity, a handover is triggered. The full background and context are passed to a human agent.

Understanding automation maturity: Where should you start?

Not all contact centres need the same level of automation. The best approach depends on your operational maturity, technical infrastructure, and business priorities.

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How both solutions work in practice: 3 common use cases

The power of modern AI automation is that the same use case can be delivered via voice or chat, or orchestrated across both channels based on customer preference and context.

Use case 1: Payment issues

Challenge: Missed or failed payments need immediate action and often result in agent escalation.

Solution: AI Agents can proactively call customers to verify identity, explain the issue, and guide them through payment options, repayment plans, or promise-to-pay agreements. AI Chatbots handle the same workflow asynchronously for customers who prefer digital channels.

Outcome: End-to-end resolution without agent involvement, with automatic escalation if vulnerability is detected.

Industry example: Utilities companies use this for both scheduled payment reminders and failed direct debit notifications.

Use case 2: Account updates & routine queries

Challenge: Customers calling for opening hours, balance information, policy details, or basic account changes.

Solution: AI handles these interactions instantly across voice or chat, verifying identity, retrieving information, and updating backend systems as needed.

Outcome: Zero queue time for customers and a massive reduction in avoidable contact.

Industry example: Retail operations use this for delivery updates and returns processing; insurance uses it for policy reference capture.

Use case 3: FAQ deflection

Challenge: Repetitive "how do I..." questions consume agent time despite having simple answers.

Solution: AI Chatbots and Voice Agents answer instantly without escalation, allowing customers to self-serve 24/7.

Outcome: Significant inbound deflection, allowing agents to focus on complex issues.

Industry example: Telecom providers use this for connectivity troubleshooting and plan information.

Why most contact centres need both voice and chat automation

Your customers don't use one channel. They might start with a query on your website chat, then follow up with a phone call, before completing the task via an SMS link. But if your automation tools don't work together, your customers will find it more difficult to resolve their query.

The most effective contact centres use both AI Agents and AI Chatbots as part of a coordinated approach. This means:

• Customers get consistent service whether they call, chat, or message
• Context flows between channels, so customers don't have to repeat themselves
• You can start with one channel and add others as your needs grow
• Agents receive the full conversation history when they need to step in

That kind of flexibility only works when both solutions are designed to work together from the start.

What to consider when choosing AI automation

If you're exploring AI Voice Agents or AI Chatbots for your contact centre, here are a few questions to guide your thinking:

Where are you feeling the most pressure?

Look at your highest-volume, most repetitive interactions. Start there for quick wins.

What channels do your customers prefer?

If most contact comes through phone calls, then voice automation makes sense. If digital channels dominate, then start with chat. If it's mixed, you'll likely need both.

How mature is your operation?

If your contact centre operations aren't considered mature, then focus on basic tasks like FAQs and appointment confirmations. For more established or complex operations, consider intermediate or advanced workflows, like payment processing or retention flows.

Can your solution grow with you?

Make sure whatever you choose can scale to handle more complex use cases and additional channels in the future. That way, you won’t have to start again from scratch.

Explore how MaxContact’s AI solutions can transform your contact centre operations. Strike the right balance between reducing agent workload without increasing costs, and crucially, without compromising customer experience.

Explore AI Solutions

This partnership brings together two innovators focused on transforming customer experience and operational efficiency for contact centres and enterprise teams worldwide.

Invosys has built a reputation for delivering comprehensive technology solutions that enable SMB organisations to streamline communications, accelerate digital transformation, and enhance customer and workforce experiences. From unified communications and telephony to full-featured CCaaS platforms, Invosys Chorus solution helps businesses modernise how they connect, collaborate, and serve customers across channels.

MaxContact empowers contact centres and customer-facing teams with an AI-driven engagement platform designed to turn conversations into measurable business outcomes. With capabilities such as predictive dialling, omnichannel engagement, intelligent routing, and autonomous AI agents, MaxContact enables organisations to scale efficiently while enhancing revenue generation and customer satisfaction.

Through this partnership, Invosys will integrate MaxContact’s AI-driven contact centre capabilities into its portfolio, giving customers a simpler way to combine intelligent engagement with Invosys' secure cloud communications. Together, the two companies will support organisations looking to elevate sales performance, contact centre productivity and customer experience with reliable, cutting-edge technology.

“We’re thrilled to partner with MaxContact to bring even greater capabilities to our customers,” said Jane Anderson, CEO of Invosys. “By combining Invosys’ trusted Chorus communications platform with MaxContact’s AI-driven engagement technology, organisations will be able to deliver more personalised, efficient, and impactful interactions at every touchpoint.”

MaxContact’s leadership echoed the enthusiasm for the collaboration:

“This partnership with Invosys marks a significant step forward in how we help businesses transform their customer engagement,” said Ben Booth, CEO at MaxContact. “Together, we’re giving customers access to a seamless integration of powerful communications and AI-enabled contact centre solutions, helping teams work smarter, handle more conversations and deliver better outcomes for customers and the business.

The Invosys–MaxContact partnership reinforces both companies’ commitment to innovation, scalability and customer success. Organisations leveraging this combined technology stack can look forward to enhanced performance, deeper insights into customer interactions, and a stronger foundation for long-term CX improvement.

For more information about how Invosys and MaxContact are working together to deliver advanced contact centre solutions, contact our team. 

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