Chris Kontes

Chris Kontes is the Co-Founder of Balto. Over the past nine years, he’s helped grow the company by leading teams across enterprise sales, marketing, recruiting, operations, and partnerships. From Balto’s start as the first agent assist technology to its evolution into a full contact center AI platform, Chris has been part of every stage of the journey—and has seen firsthand how much the company and the industry have changed along the way.

There are two primary forms of conversational AI in insurance: autonomous conversation AI, and agent assist conversation AI.

Industry-Specific Solutions

Conversational AI in Insurance: 16 Use Cases, Benefits, and Safe Implementation

Chris Kontes

There are three primary types of voice AI agents used in contact centers today: autonomous voice AI, real-time agent assist voice AI, and hybrid voice AI. They share both similarities and differences.

AI & Automation

Top 15 Voice AI Agent Use Cases for Contact Centers in 2026

Chris Kontes

A human-in-the-loop workflow includes a trigger, an AI decision or action, a pause if risk, uncertainty, or complexity is detected, human-in-the-loop review, resumed workflow, and model training based on human input.

AI & Automation

What Is Human-in-the-Loop Automation? A Practical Guide for Contact Centers

Chris Kontes

Voicebots and Conversational IVR have various similarities and differences, as portrayed in this Venn Diagram.

AI & Automation

Voicebot vs Conversational IVR: Key Differences, Use Cases, and Risks

Chris Kontes

A chatbot is a text-based conversational tool used on digital channels like web chat or messaging apps. A voicebot interacts through spoken language on phone calls or IVR systems.

AI & Automation

Chatbot vs Voicebot: Which Is Right for Your Contact Center?

Chris Kontes

Featured image comparing top voice AI agents in 2026 including Cognigy, PolyAI, Lindy, Retell AI, and Balto with a brief best for summary under each.

AI & Automation

Top 9 Voice AI Agent Companies: A Buyer’s Guide for Contact Centers

Chris Kontes

Checklist-style graphic showing 20 call center quality assurance metrics, including empathy score, compliance, first-call resolution, and after-call work accuracy.

Agent Performance & Coaching

20 Call Center Quality Assurance Metrics: The Complete QA Playbook

Chris Kontes

Comparison of the best contact center solutions for enterprise, highlighting NICE, Genesys, Five9, Balto, and Cresta with their primary enterprise use cases.

Contact Center Operations

8 Best Contact Center Solutions for Enterprise

Chris Kontes

Average handle time should be monitored alongside first call resolution, CSAT, and repeat contact rate as guardrail metrics.

Agent Performance & Coaching

How to Reduce Average Handle Time in a Call Center

Chris Kontes

Proven strategies on how to improve customer satisfaction scores in a call center are: empower agents to resolve issues on the first call; reduce wait times with smart routing and forecasting; personalize every interaction; implement better coaching; leverage real-time analytics; maintain consistencies across teams.

Customer Experience

How to Improve Customer Satisfaction in a Call Center

Chris Kontes

Sentiment analysis is the process of using AI to identify and interpret emotion in customer communication.

Customer Experience

How Can Sentiment Analysis be Used to Improve the Customer Experience?

Chris Kontes

The repeat call rate formula is RCR (%) = (Number of repeat calls ÷ Total number of calls) × 100

Customer Experience

How Does Reducing Repeat Calls Improve the Customer Experience?

Chris Kontes