The #1 source for research-backed contact center insights

Conversation Excellence Lab

The Conversation Excellence Lab is Balto’s hub for academic-level research. We create thought-leading content with the support of research teams and in-house data.

Subscribe to future Conversation Excellence Lab reports below:


Distinguishing Real From Hype: How Contact Centers Are Actually Using AI in 2023

The contact center of 2023 shows a marked difference from the contact center of years past. A growth in AI has changed operational priorities, technological advances, and the role of the agent. Where do we stand now? For contact centers, is artificial intelligence new and cutting-edge, or table stakes? What kind of ROI are contact centers actually seeing from AI tools?

2023 Contact Center Report: Improving Efficiency and Doing More With “Less”

Contact center leaders are tasked with creating as much value as possible with as few resources as possible, without sacrificing the customer or agent experience. How are they doing this? We talked to over 400 contact center managers, directors, and executives to discover how they’re planning to do more with less.

Is the Contact Center a Good Career? Tenured Agents Say Yes

Is the contact center a good place for agents to build a career? The contact center can seem like a transient job. We surveyed over 620 tenured agents to understand if they view the contact center as a strong career path, and the answer was a resounding yes.

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Thumbnail image for Balto's Conversation Excellence Lab Report "What Agents Want in 2022"

Contact Center Attrition: What Agents Want in 2022

Contact centers want to keep their employees happy and engaged, and Balto wants to help. We surveyed over 2,000 contact center employees and asked them to tell what they need to be fulfilled and successful in their roles.

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Help Us Build Better Conversations

1. We’re the number one research team in the contact center space. No other team matches our depth of information. The sheer amount of data we collect, combined with our in-house PhD power and key relationships with academic institutions, allows us to deliver data-backed, validated research to our audience.

2. All our reports are based on original research led by our team and data sourced from industry surveys, academic partnerships, and insights derived from Balto’s industry-leading platform, which has reached a milestone of 200M+ calls to date.

3. Our research focuses on a wide range of topics, including language, conversations, negotiation, and other interpersonal processes observed in customer/company communication channels.

4. Our work has been cited by several industry publications and experts, including Customer Contact Central, No Jitter, Myra Golden, Shep Hyken, and more.

The Conversation Excellence Lab works with:

  • Industry analysts
  • Academic researchers
  • Industry publications
  • Others, depending on the project

Whether you would like to co-lead a research project, co-author a report, or cite our findings, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us here.

We’re open to discussing any opportunities. Here are some of the projects we’ve worked on:

  • An industry survey of 2000 contact center agents about their motivations at work, and what they need in order to stay at their job.
  • The Balto Real-Time Index, a platform providing industry-level insights derived from 200m+ calls.
  • Sponsoring and guest judging a student pitch competition at a prestigious sales program.
  • Reports on the effects of manager intervention on call performance.
  • Providing free licenses of Balto software in a lab setting in order to conduct conversation research with university students.

You can always propose an idea to us by contacting us here.

If you would like to cite our findings, thank you! Please credit any findings to the Conversation Excellence Lab and link to the particular report.

Get in touch for more information about working with us by contacting us here.

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