Featured image for How AI Contact Centers Turn Support Into a Superpower

How AI Contact Centers Turn Support Into a Superpower

In 2025, your customers expect instant, accurate answers on every channel—phone, chat, social, SMS—often at all hours. For most teams, that sounds impossible without burning out staff or ballooning costs. This is exactly the gap Mitel's new CX 2.0 platform is trying to close by weaving AI into every layer of customer experience.

This article is part of our AI & Technology series on using AI to work smarter, not harder. Instead of viewing customer support as a cost center, we'll look at how AI-powered contact center technology—like Mitel's new virtual agents, workflow automation, and hybrid cloud approach—can turn support into a productivity engine for the entire business.

You'll learn what these AI capabilities actually do, how they change day-to-day work for agents and managers, and how to start applying similar ideas in your own organization—even if you're not a Mitel customer.

1. What Mitel CX 2.0 Tells Us About the Future of Support

Mitel's CX 2.0 announcement is less about a single product and more about a direction: using AI and hybrid cloud to modernize how companies handle every interaction with customers.

At a high level, CX 2.0 focuses on three pillars:

AI capabilities that understand intent, summarize conversations, and recommend next actions
Virtual agents that resolve common issues and triage complex ones before they reach humans
Hybrid cloud options that let companies modernize without ripping out existing on-premise systems

Underneath the branding, CX 2.0 reflects a broader shift happening across AI, technology, work, and productivity:

Customer experience is no longer about having more people on phones—it's about orchestrating people, processes, and AI so customers get what they need with the least friction.

For leaders, this matters because:

Hiring more agents is expensive and slow.
Customer expectations keep rising.
AI is finally capable enough to handle real work, not just toy use cases.

Mitel's approach shows how established communication platforms are evolving to meet that reality—and offers a useful blueprint no matter which tools you use.

2. Inside the New AI Capabilities: From Calls to Insights

Most teams already record calls and capture chats, but they rarely use that data. AI in platforms like Mitel CX 2.0 is changing that by turning everyday interactions into structured insights.

Conversation intelligence and summarization

AI models can now:

Transcribe calls and chats in real time
Detect intent and sentiment (confusion, frustration, satisfaction)
Summarize interactions into concise notes and highlight key decisions

For a support agent, that can look like:

A live transcript that updates as the call continues
Key info—account details, promised discounts, troubleshooting steps—auto-summarized after the call
Suggested next steps or follow-up tasks pushed into your CRM or ticketing system

Productivity gain: If an agent spends 2–3 minutes documenting each interaction and handles 20 contacts a day, AI summarization alone can save 40–60 minutes per agent, per day. Multiply that across a team, and you create real capacity without extra headcount.

AI-assisted guidance in the moment

Beyond summaries, CX 2.0–style tools can provide real-time guidance during conversations:

Recommend knowledge base articles based on what the customer is saying
Flag compliance scripts or mandatory disclosures agents may have missed
Suggest upsell or cross-sell offers when a customer is ready

This is where AI and technology directly impact work quality and productivity:

New agents ramp faster because they're guided in real time.
Experienced agents resolve issues faster because they find the right answer on the first try.
Customers feel like they're talking to someone who actually knows their history and context.

For managers, AI analytics can surface:

Common reasons for contact (top intents)
Steps in journeys where customers get stuck
Agents or processes that consistently need support

That turns your contact center from a reactive support hub into a feedback engine for product, operations, and marketing.

3. Virtual Agents: Your 24/7 Digital Frontline

Virtual agents—sometimes called chatbots or voicebots—are central to Mitel CX 2.0 and to modern CX platforms. But these are not the scripted, frustrating bots of a few years ago.

What modern virtual agents actually do

Modern AI virtual agents can:

Understand natural language ("I need to change my flight for next week") instead of just button presses
Authenticate customers securely using account info or verification flows
Perform real actions: reset passwords, update bookings, process simple refunds, schedule appointments
Hand off to human agents gracefully when issues are complex or emotional

Think of them as AI-powered triage nurses for your support operation:

They handle routine, repetitive tasks 24/7.
They collect context and data before passing customers to humans.
They free agents to focus on problems that truly require empathy and judgment.

How virtual agents improve both CX and productivity

A well-implemented virtual agent can:

Deflect 20–40% of simple inquiries (order status, basic "how do I" questions)
Shorten queues during peak times
Reduce average handle time for human agents by pre-collecting information

Imagine this flow:

A customer opens chat asking about a late delivery.
The virtual agent authenticates them, pulls order details, and checks shipping updates.
If the delay is within policy, the virtual agent explains the situation and offers a small token of goodwill.
If the customer is unhappy or the case is complex, it escalates—with full context—to a human agent.

From the customer's point of view, they get instant answers or a faster route to the right human. From the business perspective, you've just automated a big chunk of low-complexity work while preserving (and often improving) satisfaction.

4. Why Hybrid Cloud CX Matters in the Real World

Many organizations are not in a position to rip out their existing on-premise phone systems or contact center infrastructure. That's where hybrid cloud—a core part of Mitel CX 2.0—comes in.

Bridging legacy systems with modern AI

Hybrid cloud CX allows companies to:

Keep critical voice infrastructure on-premise for control, compliance, or cost reasons
Layer cloud-based AI services—like virtual agents, analytics, and automation—on top
Move components to the cloud gradually, rather than all at once

This is crucial for:

Regulated industries that must maintain certain controls
Global enterprises with complex existing PBX and contact center deployments
Mid-sized organizations that want AI benefits without a full-scale migration project

Practical benefits of a hybrid approach

From a work and productivity perspective, hybrid cloud lets you:

Start with quick wins—AI analytics, call summarization, or chatbots—without touching core telephony
Reduce risk by piloting new CX workflows in a limited environment
Extend the life and value of existing investments while still modernizing

Hybrid cloud reflects a broader theme of this AI & Technology series: you don't need a "big bang" transformation to benefit from AI. Incremental change—when aligned with real workflows—often delivers faster ROI and less disruption.

5. Workflow Automation: The Quiet Multiplier of CX 2.0

AI gets the headlines, but workflow automation is where a lot of the real productivity gains live.

In an AI-enabled CX platform, workflows can:

Auto-create tickets when certain phrases or sentiments appear in a call or chat
Trigger follow-up emails or surveys after interactions
Route high-value or at-risk customers to specialized queues
Push key insights to sales, product, or success teams when issues repeat

Example: Turning one interaction into many smart actions

Consider a customer who calls about a recurring billing issue:

The AI transcribes and summarizes the call.
A workflow automatically:
- Updates the CRM record with the summary
- Flags the account for proactive outreach if the customer mentions "cancelling"
- Notifies the billing team if similar complaints spike
A retention specialist is automatically queued to follow up.

No one had to remember to "create a task" or "tell billing." The system connects the dots.

Where to start with CX automation

Even if you're not using Mitel, you can look for automation opportunities around:

Repetitive after-call work (notes, tags, follow-up emails)
Routing rules (who should see what, and when)
Escalation triggers (keywords, sentiment, account value)

The goal is to let humans do human work—listening, empathizing, solving complex problems—while the system handles the busywork.

6. How to Bring AI-Powered CX Into Your Own Organization

You don't need to fully adopt Mitel CX 2.0 to apply the principles behind it. Here's a practical roadmap to get started.

Step 1: Map your customer journeys

Identify:

The top 10 reasons customers contact you
Which channels they use (phone, chat, email, social)
Pain points for customers and agents (long waits, repetitive questions, manual data entry)

This gives you a clear view of where AI and automation can help productivity most.

Step 2: Choose high-impact, low-risk use cases

Good early candidates include:

AI call and chat summarization to reduce agent after-call work
Virtual agents for FAQs, order status, password resets, appointment scheduling
Basic workflow rules that create tickets, follow-up tasks, or alerts automatically

Focus on use cases where:

Errors are low risk (e.g., explaining order tracking, not altering legal agreements)
Data is relatively clean and structured
Success can be measured with clear metrics (handle time, deflection rate, CSAT)

Step 3: Start with a pilot and measure aggressively

Pick one team or one queue as your testbed. Track:

Average handle time before vs. after
First contact resolution
Agent satisfaction and burnout indicators
Customer satisfaction scores

Use feedback loops: refine prompts, training data, and workflows based on what agents and customers actually experience.

Step 4: Scale and integrate across the business

As your AI and automation layer matures:

Integrate with CRM, ticketing, and analytics platforms
Share insights from CX with product, marketing, and operations
Expand virtual agent coverage across more complex journeys

The long-term win is not just a faster contact center—it's a smarter organization that learns from every interaction and continuously improves how it serves customers.

Conclusion: AI CX as a Strategic Productivity Engine

Mitel CX 2.0 is a clear signal of where customer experience is heading: AI-powered platforms, virtual agents on the front lines, and hybrid cloud architectures that let businesses modernize at their own pace. When done right, this shift doesn't just cut costs—it transforms how work gets done.

For leaders focused on AI, technology, work, and productivity, the opportunity is straightforward: use AI to remove friction, automate the repetitive, and elevate human problem-solving. Whether through Mitel's tools or your own stack, the question is no longer if AI will reshape your customer experience, but how intentionally you'll design that transformation.

If your support operation disappeared for a day, what would your customers miss most—and how can AI help you deliver more of that, at scale, without burning out your team?