We’ve been speaking to a lot of CX teams lately. And one thing keeps coming up: manual call tagging and analysis is still taking up too much time.
Despite all the tools available today, many contact centres still rely on agents to manually tag customer calls, review transcripts, listen to recordings, and search for patterns in conversation data. It’s valuable work, but it’s also time-consuming, repetitive, and difficult to scale.
And as contact volumes rise and customer expectations grow, this way of working is becoming harder to maintain. In fact, according to McKinsey, 61% of CX leaders have already seen an increase in total call volumes, and 58% expect those volumes to climb even higher over the next 18 months.
So, what are teams doing to get that time back?
The hidden time drain in contact centres
Contact centres are handling more than ever. More calls. More queries. More pressure to get it right, quickly.
And after each interaction, there’s still more work: tagging the conversation, logging outcomes, and adding notes for future reference. For managers, it’s hours spent listening back to sample calls, digging through spreadsheets, or trying to make sense of inconsistent tags and transcripts.
It’s not just about lost time. Manual processes slow down everything, including coaching, service improvements, and even customer resolution times.
In fact, of those contact centres that do analyse interactions, 66% still rely on manual methods. It takes up to 45 seconds just to tag a single call, and more than 30% of those tags contain errors. For high-volume operations, that’s hundreds of hours each month going to admin. Agents spend more time doing manual tasks. Managers struggle to spot trends. And customers wait longer for answers.
How conversational AI is helping teams move faster
Rather than spending valuable hours each day reviewing calls manually, more and more contact centres are turning to conversational AI to lighten the load.
Solutions like Conversational Intelligence are designed to take on repetitive, time-consuming tasks and automate the admin that’s been holding teams back.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
- Calls are automatically transcribed and summarised, no need to listen back
- Key topics and themes are tagged using Natural Language Processing
- Customer sentiment is tracked and surfaced across interactions
- Coaching opportunities are flagged based on real agent-customer dialogues
By automating these tasks, conversational analytics tools help contact centres save time, speed up decision-making, and reduce reliance on manual processes, all while improving accuracy.
Real-world impact: How contact centres are reclaiming hundreds of hours monthly
Consider this example from a European telecom company that recently adopted Puzzel’s Conversational Intelligence solution:
Before automation, their customer service team categorised calls into topic groups, helping the team track trends, standardise responses, and improve knowledge sharing. But with 80 agents and a high daily volume of inquiries, doing this manually would take over 400 hours a month, time they didn’t have.
After implementing Conversational Intelligence, the team eliminated manual call tagging entirely. The solution provided automatic, accurate categorisation of calls, saving 400 hours monthly to focus more fully on customer interactions.
This isn’t an isolated success story. Contact centres across various industries are realising similar benefits, reducing manual work by hundreds of hours, enhancing service quality, and providing their teams with a clearer understanding of customer needs and frustrations.
Balancing AI efficiency with human connection
Reducing manual call tagging isn’t simply about freeing up time, but about redirecting resources towards tasks that genuinely add value for your customers, your team, and your business as a whole.
Automated conversational analysis not only provides significant time savings but also leads to greater accuracy, improved coaching, happier agents, and more satisfied customers.
With the right tools, your team can regain control of their schedules, focusing less on repetitive admin and more on meaningful customer interactions and strategic improvements.
By letting AI carry the load, your team can focus on what they do best: creating great customer experiences.
Want to see how it could work for you?
Whether you’re trying to reduce handling times, lighten the admin load, or simply give your team more time for what matters, automated conversation analysis can help.
Explore what’s possible with Puzzel's Conversational Intelligence, or grab our free resource below for a deeper dive into the tools behind smarter workflows. Download: The Definitive Guide to Unlocking Contact Centre Efficiency with Conversational Intelligence.
