Eubrics explains real time agent assist supports an agent during a call, while AI roleplay builds skill before it, so they solve different problems. Eubrics sells AI sales roleplay software and live in-call guidance. Our web searches on October 26, 2026 found no study comparing the two in contact centers, so the right first buy depends on your problem.

By Nikita Jain,

Key takeaways

• As of October 26, 2026, NiCE’s page describes real time agent assist as help during a live interaction.

• As of October 26, 2026, Eubrics describes AI roleplay as practice before live calls.

• Our web searches on October 26, 2026 found no study comparing assist with practice in contact centers.

• One NBER study of a chat assistant found the largest gains for less experienced agents.

What is real time agent assist?

Is agent assist the same as training?

What is AI roleplay practice good at, and where does it fall short?

Should a contact center buy real time agent assist or simulation first?

How do assist and practice work together, and what is the risk of over-relying on prompts?

Frequently asked questions

Conclusion

Real time agent assist is software that helps an agent during a live customer interaction. As of October 26, 2026, NiCE’s guide page describes real-time agent guidance as AI-powered assistance delivered during an active interaction, where the system listens to or reads the conversation and surfaces information or actions. That is a vendor’s definition. On the same date, Level AI’s product page described in-call guidance, next-best actions, knowledge articles and suggested words during live calls and chats.

Eubrics is an AI sales roleplay and sales coaching platform for enterprise sales teams, in the words of its home page. On its AI Sales Roleplay Bots page, Eubrics describes AI sales roleplay as a training method where reps practice real conversations with AI bots that simulate customer personas, objections and scenarios.

How we checked: vendor claims are what each vendor’s own page says on October 26, 2026, the day we opened every source. We read Murthy et al. and Parasuraman and Manzey as abstracts, and the NBER working paper in part. Eubrics did no hands-on testing of any assist product, and the table is not a ranking. Our web searches that day for a study comparing assist with practice in contact centers returned SSRN, NBER, arXiv, ACM and INFORMS pages. We did not search each database directly, so we may have missed a study.

Assist and practice at a glance

No. Real time agent assist works inside a live call, while practice happens before one. NiCE and Level AI both describe assist in training or onboarding terms. As of October 26, 2026, NiCE’s guide page says guidance can reduce what new employees must memorize, and Level AI’s product page says its assist helps accelerate onboarding. Our reading: both kinds of tool can be sold as call center AI coaching, which can blur the line for buyers. Level AI’s page calls assist “also a coaching tool,” and Eubrics’ home page groups roleplay practice and real-time guidance under AI sales coaching.

Good at: knowledge lookups and compliance prompts. As of October 26, 2026, NiCE’s guide page lists knowledge recommendations, next-best actions and compliance prompts. Level AI’s product page lists next-best actions, knowledge articles and compliance flags with disclosure checklists. Symbl.ai’s page describes real time sales coaching: analyzing a sales call as it happens and coaching on objection handling.

What it cannot do: our reading is that assist gives no repeat attempts at a hard situation before a real customer is on the line. NiCE’s guide page makes a related point about its own category: live guidance can prevent errors, while coaching after the interaction develops durable skills. The NBER study found minimal impact for the most experienced agents and a possible small quality decline for the most skilled, and it covers one chat tool at one firm. The sources do not show whether assist builds judgment as well as practice does.

AI roleplay practice lets agents rehearse a conversation before a live customer is on the line. Eubrics’ product page describes practice against AI customers tailored to a team’s real ideal customers, objections and sales flows, with instant feedback. Eubrics sells both this practice and live in-call guidance, which its home page calls Real-Time Guidance.

What the research covers: Murthy et al. (Management Science, 2008) studied call centers at two Fortune 50 firms. We read the abstract only. It states that simulation training outperformed roleplay training on both accuracy and speed of processing customer calls, and that the edge grew as tasks got more complex. The abstract does not mention AI roleplay or assist, so it does not compare the two.

Where practice falls short (our reading): it does not help in the moment, it takes time away from live calls, and a practice call is not a live call.

It depends on the problem your contact center has. Whether you are weighing AI for call center agents as live help or as practice, neither tool has to come first. We found no published maturity model that says which to start with: the contact center AI maturity models our October 26, 2026 search returned describe AI adoption in general. Eubrics’ suggested framework, our reading, not a published standard:

• Early stage, many new hires who lack skill on core calls: start with practice, since assist gives no repeat attempts. Our reading.

• Established team, skilled agents who lose time on lookups or miss required disclosures: start with assist. The NBER study found minimal impact for the most experienced agents, so test first. Our reading.

• Mixed team with both problems: pilot each on one queue and compare. Our reading.

The strongest objection: if assist raises performance right away, why practice first? The NBER study did find productivity gains, largest for less experienced agents. But it did not compare assist with practice, so it cannot say whether practiced agents would have gained as much. A short pilot of both is the fair test.

They can work together by splitting the job. Our reading: practice builds the response before the call, and assist backs it up during the call with lookups and required disclosures.

The abstract of Parasuraman and Manzey (Human Factors, 2010), a review of studies on automation, says automation bias causes omission and commission errors when decision aids are imperfect, occurs in naive and expert participants, and cannot be prevented by training or instructions. Our reading: the NBER study’s possible quality decline among the most skilled agents is worth watching for over-reliance, though the text we read does not say that caused it.

The same limits apply to Eubrics’ own Real-Time Guidance, and the live Eubrics pages we opened do not state otherwise. Published evidence that would change our view: a controlled study of contact center agents comparing assist alone, practice alone and both.

What is real time agent assist?

Real time agent assist is software that helps an agent during a live customer interaction. As of October 26, 2026, the vendor pages of NiCE and Level AI describe it as guidance and next steps while the interaction is live. Both are vendor descriptions.

Is agent assist the same as training?

No. Assist works inside a live call, while practice happens before one. NiCE’s and Level AI’s pages both describe assist in training or onboarding terms. Our reading is that this wording can blur the line, but the two tools solve different problems.

Should a contact center buy agent assist or simulation first?

It depends on the problem. Our reading, not a published standard: start with practice when new hires lack skill, and with assist when skilled agents lose time on lookups or miss disclosures. We found no study comparing the two, so pilot both.

What can real time agent assist not do?

Our reading: assist gives no repeat attempts at a hard situation before a real customer is on the line. The sources we opened do not show whether assist builds judgment as well as practice does.

Can agents become too reliant on prompts?

Possibly. Parasuraman and Manzey’s abstract reports automation bias in naive and expert participants, and says training or instructions cannot prevent it. The same limits apply to Eubrics’ Real-Time Guidance.

How do agent assist and AI roleplay work together?

Our reading: practice builds the response before the call, and assist backs it up during the call with lookups and required disclosures. No study we found tests this combination.

Real time agent assist supports an agent during a call. AI roleplay practice builds skill before it. Eubrics sells both, and the same limits apply to Eubrics’ own Real-Time Guidance. In the sources we opened, assist helped less experienced agents in one study, and simulation training beat roleplay training in another; neither compares the two. So the right first buy depends on your contact center’s problem. If you want to see how Eubrics’ AI sales training software works with your own scenarios, Get a demo.