The Contact Center world is no stranger to embracing innovations that will positively affect efficiency, effectiveness, and the bottom line. This is particularly true when it comes to improvements coming from adopting advances in technology. The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud technologies presents exciting possibilities for contact center operations.
For example, it’s an exciting time for software. With cloud technologies software as a service (SaaS) is a big growth opportunity right now. The SaaS model has revolutionized how the software industry operates and is redefining how companies are buying, building and using applications today to run their businesses. This certainly includes contact centers. Keep in mind that contact centers are everywhere, we just may not know it. They often go under a different name, customer service, help desk, inbound/outbound sales, etc. but that’s all contact center. People want a way to engage with the company in the way they prefer to communicate, so. This means that the possibilities for SaaS to impact contact center operations is endless.
Also, the growth of big data gathering, analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) is dramatically changing the landscape. Although the most expensive piece of a contact center is the human employees, AI is being used not to replace agents but to improve the overall customer experience. Technology like natural language processing and machine learning is speeding up processes that used to be time-consuming to both customers and agents and expensive to perform manually.
When you think about AI, it’s being played out across the world and it fits perfectly with the direction contact centers are heading to better support their customers, and the use of that groundbreaking, new technology is an exciting part about the industry right now.
Both AI and cloud technology can also drive how data and information gathering is being used today and in the near future for contact centers.
When contact centers record a call, they are acquiring an extensive amount of data and customer information. For example, natural language processing allows systems to understand more words and also phrases to better route calls to the best possible agent. When data is paired with social media, for example, contact centers can better prepare for the volume of calls and the types of calls they should anticipate coming in.
The mining and usage of data speeds up and improves the customer experience in many ways. Ideally, before contact center agents even speak with a customer they have information like who that customer is, their status with the company, how many times they’ve called in the past and what those experiences have been like and whether or not that customer is pleased or on the verge of frustration.
Contact centers are moving towards situations where AI and chatbot technology can take care of a customer’s needs without them ever having to talk to an agent. That kind of efficiency and customer experiences result in customer satisfaction and cost savings by freeing up agents to work with your premium customers or problem situations.
Presently, the shifting of contact centers from a world of on-premise systems to cloud based technology is at a slower pace than you would expect. The cloud is roughly 15% penetrated in the contact center space now. But over the next four or five years, it is anticipated that it will grow to roughly 50% or more rapidly. This dramatic shift to cloud-based technology is a perfect time for visionary contact center leaders to get in on that piece of innovation and take advantage of it. The cloud is acting as a disruptor in the contact center industry, and like other industry disruptors have shown, big changes are coming. Those who adopt cloud based applications in their contact center ecosystem now will be so much farther ahead of the curve. While their competitors who don’t will be playing catch-up for quite awhile.
What About Providers?….
Contact center providers that really understand and embrace omnichannel and are building their platforms around this concept are going to be ahead of the game long term. Customers are driving the need to have different ways, of their choosing, to get in touch with companies and have their needs met. The companies developing technology and platforms that answer this driving customer ask will outperform those who do not.
The companies that are riding on a platform that is very open to APIs and plugging in will also have an advantage over platforms that are difficult to integrate with or worse, those that don’t support integrations at all.
Platforms that provide a seamless integration of contact center, omnichannel, workforce management and hosted UC, and can do it better than others, will probably win the day in the contact center space.
Now what?
This may all sound a bit overwhelming to you at first. But fret not as you don’t have to navigate the possibilities of AI and cloud technology for your contact center operations all by yourself. There is a resource available that will take you by the hand and guide you through any transition every step of the way, whether its for a COTS or a custom design solution. What’s more, that resource is absolutely no cost to you. All you have to do is ask at the link below…..easy as 1, 2, 3.
