The short answer
Real-time agent assist listens to a live call and shows the agent what they need at that moment: a required disclosure, the answer to a customer's question, the next step in a process. It differs from speech analytics, which reviews calls afterwards, and from AI agents, which talk to customers themselves. When choosing one, check its speed, where call data goes, whether it works across every platform and client you serve, and how it is priced.
What agent assist does during a call
- Prompts for required steps. Shows a disclosure or verification step when it becomes due, and tracks whether it was given.
- Answers questions. When the customer asks about a fee, a policy or a coverage rule, it shows the approved answer from the knowledge base.
- Guides processes. Walks the agent through multi-step tasks such as a claim report or a payment arrangement.
- Flags risk. Spots a prohibited phrase, a vulnerable customer or a complaint so it can be handled or escalated.
- Drafts the wrap-up. Writes the summary and fills CRM fields at hang-up for the agent to confirm. See reducing after-call work.
Agent assist compared with related tools
| Tool | When it works | Who it helps | What it produces |
|---|---|---|---|
| Real-time agent assist | During the call | The agent, live | Prompts, answers and drafted wrap-ups |
| Speech or conversation analytics | After the call | QA, managers and analysts | Searchable transcripts and trends |
| Automated QA | After the call | QA and team leads | A score per call on a QA form, with evidence |
| Platform copilot | During and after the call | Agents on that one platform | Assistance inside one contact-centre platform |
| AI agent or voicebot | Instead of a person | The customer, directly | A fully automated conversation |
Many products combine several of these. What matters is which jobs you need done, and whether one tool can do them across every platform and client you run.
What to check before you buy
Speed, and restraint
A prompt that arrives after the moment has passed is a distraction. Ask how quickly prompts appear after the words are spoken, and what the tool does when it is unsure. Showing nothing is better than showing something wrong.
Where audio and transcripts go
Some tools send call audio to the vendor's cloud for transcription. Others transcribe on the agent's PC or inside your network. For regulated programmes, or clients who forbid call data leaving your environment, this decides the shortlist.
What is masked
Card numbers, bank details, ID numbers and health information should be masked before transcripts are saved, and ideally muted in recordings too. See card data and call recordings.
Fit with every platform and client
Outsourced centres often run several telephony platforms and CRMs, one per client. A copilot built into one platform only helps the programmes on that platform.
Whose script and QA form it follows
Guidance and scoring should follow each client's own script and QA form, not a generic template.
Hardware and installation
Check PC requirements, virtual desktop support and how IT deploys it. A tool that needs new hardware or telephony changes takes months to roll out, not days.
Pricing model
Per-minute pricing rises with call volume. Per-seat pricing stays flat as volume grows. Check who pays for speech recognition and AI model usage.
What happens when it fails
A call must never depend on the assist tool. Ask what happens when it crashes, loses the network or cannot reach a licence server.
Questions to ask in a demo
- Can you run a live call against our client's own QA form and script?
- Where is the audio transcribed, and where are recordings and transcripts kept?
- What is masked in transcripts, and what is muted in recordings?
- Do you train models on our calls?
- What does the agent see when the system is unsure?
- How do agents dismiss a prompt, snooze the panel or ask for help?
- How will we measure the pilot, and what are the success measures?
- What does it cost at our seat count, including speech and AI usage?
How to measure a pilot
There is good evidence that live help works. A study of 5,172 customer-support agents, published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 2025, found that an AI assistant raised issues resolved per hour by 15% on average, and by about 30% for less experienced and less skilled agents. Agents two months into the job with the assistant performed like agents of more than six months without it (Brynjolfsson, Li and Raymond, 2025).
Your own pilot still needs its own proof. Agree the success measures before it starts, and compare with a control group or a baseline period. Useful measures include:
- Disclosure and verification pass rates
- After-call work time, and note accuracy checked against recordings
- Time for new hires to reach target
- QA coverage and dispute rates
- Agent feedback, and whether agents keep the panel open
Where Orian fits
How Orian approaches agent assist
- One answer card at a time, with required disclosures first. If an answer is not ready and right in time, nothing is shown.
- Speech is turned into text on the agent's Windows PC. Everyday 4-core, 8 GB PCs are enough.
- Everything runs inside your network, so recordings and transcripts never leave it and Orian never sees a call.
- It works on top of the platforms you already use, with no telephony changes and no new hardware.
- A call never depends on Orian: it listens alongside the call, never in the audio path.
- Priced per agent, from $39 a month, with no per-minute fees.