Genesys Cloud - Main

Hi All,
This is my first post, so go easy on me 🙂
I attended the Genesys Xperience roadshow on Tuesday - fantastic event with some really interesting demos and discussions.
It got me thinking about some of the biggest pain points in the customer journey today:

Traditional IVRs - long menus, button pushing, and difficulty getting to the right place
Intent capture via bots - better, but can still feel frustrating when intent isn't correctly understood

After seeing the virtual agent capabilities, I started thinking about a slightly different approach.
What if we had a "virtual receptionist" model for inbound calls?
Instead of navigating menus or rigid bot flows, every customer is greeted by an AI-powered assistant that:

Understands intent in natural language
Routes the call to the correct team first time
Provides real-time queue updates (e.g. wait time or position) in a more conversational way
Offers callbacks proactively
Delivers things like GDPR messaging in a more natural, less "scripted" experience

The goal would be to make the interaction feel less like a system and more like a conversation.
From a customer experience perspective, this feels like a big step forward - more engaging, more intuitive, and less friction.
The challenge, of course, is cost and scalability.
In large contact centres, creating a virtual agent per concurrent call could become expensive quickly (AI tokens, processing, etc.).
So I'm wondering:
Could there be a more lightweight or optimised version of this?
For example, an AI layer focused purely on initial interaction, intent capture, and routing, before handing off - balancing experience vs cost.
Would be really interested to hear if:

Anyone is already doing something similar
Genesys has anything on the roadmap in this space
Or if others have explored this kind of approach

Thanks for reading - keen to hear thoughts!

Hi Tom,

Really interesting idea. I've been thinking along similar lines.

From my perspective, a use-case based approach works best when introducing AI, rather than trying to apply it to every inbound call straight away. That helps balance experience vs cost.

For example, one area we're exploring is using an AI agent at the front of the call specifically for identity verification, before handing off to an agent for things like password or MFA reset. That way:

• AI is used where it adds clear value
• It reduces handle time for agents
• And avoids running full AI conversations for every call

I think a similar pattern could apply to your "virtual receptionist" idea:

• Use AI for initial intent capture + routing
• Maybe combine it with queue updates / callback offer
• Then hand off early rather than keeping the AI engaged for the full interaction

This keeps the experience conversational, but also more lightweight and scalable.

From the demos I’ve seen so far, a lot of the examples seem focused on specific tasks, such as changing an address or booking/changing an appointment with verification . I’m not sure yet how far this can be stretched into a broader “virtual receptionist” model, but it’s definitely an interesting direction.

Would be interested to hear how others are approaching this.

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Phaneendra
Technical Solutions Consultant
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