Cochlear integrates AI into global support centers to improve service
Cochlear, an Australian company known for its implantable hearing solutions, started utilizing AI to increase efficiency in its global contact center operations in 14 countries. The company switched to a cloud-based call center solution, Amazon Connect, about two and a half years ago.
Cochlear’s contact center operations are customer support, device servicing, insurance queries, sales, and clinical care. The voice channel is still the most important one for a company like Cochlear, which serves hearing-impaired users. With AI enhancements, the company is automating evaluation of calls and agents, thus, compliance issues, quality metrics, and more can be brought to the surface with the help of the company.
Before the AI implementation, supervisors could hear and review only a limited number of recordings per agent per month, maybe five scorecards per person. After turning on AI-powered transcription and evaluation, Cochlear realized this number was increased substantially. Monthly evaluations in October 2025 were increased from approximately 1,000 to 22,000. This volume allows them to not only detect patterns but also to identify performance gaps among agents, and sharpen training.
At present, AI tools perform two different kinds of evaluations. Rule-based automation looks for specific words or phrases in a conversation that are related to compliance (e.g., language mandated by regulations or profanity). Generative-AI evaluation recognizes the tone, empathy, and soft skills of the speaker, thus providing a more advanced evaluation with rationale and commenting on the quality of the call.
Cochlear is also considering AI for forecasting, capacity planning, and scheduling. As they already have two years of call data in Amazon Connect, they are sure machine learning will be able to forecast call volumes, roster agents more effectively and generally facilitate workforce management.
Cochlear is planning to have AI agents handle calls directly in the future, and they might use an article knowledge base to respond automatically. They conducted a pilot program for their IT help desk and received encouraging results. They would need to do more work, especially on integration with their service management tool, before a production rollout.
By utilizing AI in their worldwide support operations, Cochlear intends to not only speed up the response time but also maintain better consistency and offer improved service, which is of utmost importance to their customers who depend on hearing-assistance devices.
