Before we hop on to the future of the contact center let’s get a glimpse of how the journey. Being the most advanced slice of enterprise communications, the contact center industry has been the early adopter of technologies like conversational AI, sentiment analysis, and advanced analytics.
As the industry can have big financial impacts especially in terms of cost savings for businesses, it is quick to adopt new technologies. Since the early days where the primary role of the first call center that emerged was to handle inbound and outbound telephone calls, the contact center industry has evolved.
Moreover, with new channels including emails, emerging social media; the contact center has transformed from just being a telephony solution to becoming a centralized administration hub for all inbound and outbound communications.
The way AI has been revolutionizing, do we know what the contact center of the future will look like?
Well after musing over for a while, the following trends are worth considering. Let’s take a look at some of the evolving towards the future of the contact center industry.
Rise of Omnichannel
Earlier viewed as a reactive solution, contact centers are now considered to be a strategic customer engagement tool where stronger relationships can be fostered with customers.
As CX emerges to be a key differentiator for businesses, they have started to support a broad new range of digital interactions including social media, live chat, etc. This is because these days the customers are not just using a call to interact but have started adopting various channels to communicate.
It is astonishing that businesses don’t even realize that their customers are talking about them or to them on social media. And for those who are aware, have started using omnichannel experiences in the contact centers. The Covid-19 pandemic has also created intense challenges today and the archaic systems cannot handle the rapidly evolving demands of customers today. Omnichannel is and will play a vital role in the future of the contact center industry.
This adoption in technology to connect with the customer using their preferred strategy provides additional convenience for the customer and a strong differentiator for the business.
Infusion of AI and Automation
Call centers have been leveraging advanced technologies such as first-gen call routing systems for decades. Whether it was call routing systems or IVR that connected customers directly with agents, customers did not seem to be pleased.
However, AI has changed this. AI allows agents to automate some parts of the customer conversation, giving them the ability to spend more time assisting customers on complex queries.
Conversational AI especially chatbots is one such use case
A global big four services firm utilized Samespace Conversational AI to deploy an effective solution to inform employees about COVID-related workplace rules, HR policies, mental health, and employee benefits.
The positive response was immediate and the team witnessed an increase in employee engagement and awareness, more than 2,000 users in the first few weeks, and a decrease in time spent answering repetitive inquiries.
On considering the mundane tasks, the bots can easily replace tasks such as getting customer information, navigating customers to the right area, allowing agents the space to provide better support.
Also, considering that bots become intelligent with every conversation, there is a possibility that bots might just completely replace customer agents in a contact center, shares Victor Antonio on the how future of contact center would be like(Author and Business Consultant).
Likewise, long before the pandemic, companies were struggling to operate effectively and deliver experiences and speedy resolutions. One specific area that hardly got attention was the after-call work and call dispositions.
Ask yourself!
How many times have you waited to connect to an agent over the phone? I’m sure many times. Long customer wait times are a common reason for frustration and did you know that the main reason for such long waiting times is due to data entry?
After-call work takes an average of two minutes. AI and automation especially CSA (Conversational Service Automation) can reduce this after-call work, shorten the average handle time and call waiting duration, while, at the same time, increasing agent productivity and efficiency. We are talking about the present situation here, however, these metrics will keep improving in the future of the contact center.
This happens by bridging the gap between humans and machines as well as back- and front-office operations throughout a customer’s conversation using robotic process automation (RPA), and workflow automation.
Shift Towards Cloud Contact Center
The first wave of CCaas (Contact center as a service) began in the early 2000s where many companies saw the huge opportunity to take a traditional call center software and host it over the internet or the “cloud”. With the maturity of these cloud platforms, many companies have started moving towards the cloud to gain agility, scale, and cost benefits, increasing the revenue for these companies.
However, while the number of on-premises contact center solutions has drastically dropped, a fraction of customers are still afraid to change and risk their customer experience. And this is where CCaas comes in to break down the silos and offer customers an exceptional experience.
Even more, this shift towards migrating onto the cloud is opening the world of remote opportunities, giving agents the flexibility to work anywhere, which means that contact centers may not be office-based anymore. In the future of contact center easy coaching and monitoring tools, supervisors can also work from mobile locations and monitor agents.
Predictive Behavior Routing
Can you imagine a routing method that first takes the personality profiles of the customer as they call in? Then matches them with agents of similar profiles who are available to take a call?
Imagine the satisfaction of a customer who would be connected to a like-minded individual. Game-changing, isn’t it? Conversational AI can help you do that.
The future of contact centers will have AI-powered systems for providing customer support. Achieving quality in customer service will be a cakewalk for support agents.
Voice Authentication in Future of Contact Center
Tired of answering standard security questions?
Well, voice authentication is just the thing you need. While some financial institutions have already adopted this technology, you can expect a boost in the near future.
Voice Authentication enhances your customer’s experience by ensuring that they won’t have to go through the verification process with every call because the system will verify their voice for the agent.
How? AI-based voice recognition evaluates a person’s biometric voice signature based on previous inputs. AI analyzes their voice patterns like speed, tone, and pitch.
Results? Decreased costs, convenience, and happy customers.
Redefining CX with IoT
An interesting technology that CX could probably adopt in the future is IoT. IoT brings interconnectivity of devices and enables the possibility of preemptive customer service.
Think about, calling out to your speaker to log an issue, and it initiates support via the faulty product, basically helping it fix itself. The problem is fixed before you even realize it.
By removing the need of the customer to proactively approach the agent, the adoption of IoT will help companies take the CX game a step further. My friend that’s the future of the contact center we are looking forward to offering you.
Future of Contact Center Has High Fidelity On-net Calls
The idea of real-time audio calls over the internet is not new, most of us use it for personal communication with apps like FaceTime. But contact centers have not been able to take advantage of this game-changing technology due to legacy systems and they still rely on traditional phone networks for business communication.
These on-net calls use a highly efficient Wideband audio codec that produces richer and natural sound. The codec is also optimized for transmission over the Internet, it can smartly handle unstable internet connections without compromising the call quality.
Samespace Contact Center solution is Internet native, hence it has all the modern tools right out of the box including Samespace HiFi — The high fidelity web call. Samespace HiFi is revolutionizing the contact center industry by not just providing an HD audio sound quality to customers but also by eliminating the need to verify caller identity through built-in authentication.
Finally, by providing a direct line for customers or prospects to connect with the agent; free of cost, expect companies to adopt this technology in a blink of an eye and modernize their communication.
To Sum up
In this rapidly changing world, call centers have evolved from simply answering customer phone calls, to a multitude of different customer contact channels. Such as web calls, live chat and video chat, omnichannel customer support. With technology becoming a dominant part and changes coming in so quickly, companies will have to react quickly.
If you’re looking to equip your team with the latest contact center technology such as Conversational AI, sentimental analysis, web calls, and more, discover what Samespace can do for you today.