There is no doubt that the contact center space is going through major disruption: and this isn’t just a matter of modernizing with a technology refresh.
That is only part of the story, but with so much technology change there is also disruption to the very foundation of what contact centers are all about.
Contact centers must now provide a better customer experience (CX) – not just basic customer service - and have an end-to-end understanding of the customer journey: usually in real time.
The Powerful Role of AI
AI has a big role to play for truly modernizing the contact center. No technology trend is more important now than AI: and every contact center is exploring ways to use it.
What makes AI different from other technology trends is its transformative nature, where it has the potential to impact every aspect of everything we do. No prior technology has had this pervasive capability.
Rather than running as a cost center apart from the organization, thanks to AI the contact center can become a strategic hub as a source of deep customer knowledge that every other aspect of the business will be interested in.
Yes, some applications will fail and be abandoned. But those that succeed could do so on a massive scale.
AI should not be deployed for incremental gains, like shortening hold times by a few seconds. That would be a waste of precious time and resources. For this is really about transforming customer service with personalized interactions, rich insights, and prescriptive actions that go beyond solving the problems at hand.
To be fair, many decision-makers - both for the contact center and otherwise, especially the C-suite - will view AI primarily through one of two lenses, and sometimes both.
One lens is cost savings, as this is the most direct way to build the business case for AI and deliver tangible benefits as proof points for what AI promises to deliver.
A second lens is automation, something that all businesses need more of. This can take many forms: and in the contact center, it’s both operational and customer-facing.
Automating manual tasks is another form of digital transformation, and it definitely has a role to play with CX, especially around providing better forms of self-service. Not only does this give customers more options - 24/7 - to resolve issues, but it also makes the agents’ workloads more manageable.
Becoming Data-Centric
Both lenses are key drivers for AI, but what contact center leaders should be focusing on is becoming more data-centric.
Data is the oxygen for everything in today’s digital world. All businesses are going through some form of digital transformation, and as things convert from analog to digital, they become data: bits and bytes that are the DNA for connecting technology to humans.
Today’s interactions are mostly digital - especially between customers and agents - creating exponentially more data than in legacy times. However, we didn’t have the right technologies to capture, process, and analyze all that data, so contact centers were limited for leveraging this to improve CX.
AI has a big role to play for truly modernizing the contact center. No technology trend is more important now than AI: and every contact center is exploring ways to use it.
Legacy on-premise technology captured as much data as it could in its time, but for contact centers, it was only a fraction of the bigger picture. The ability of servers to process data were limited by what was installed on them. In that context, it shouldn’t be surprising as to why customer service has been so ineffective for so long.
Customer interactions throw off massive amounts of data, but only AI can effectively and cost-effectively harness it: and drive outcomes that meet - or exceed - today’s customer expectations.
AI, hosted in the cloud on powerful networked data servers, can process vast amounts of data quickly and derive real-time actionable intelligence on a never-before-seen scale. It relies on high data volumes to “see” patterns to deliver accurate, powerful insights and results. It “learns” from every data input, like a customer interaction.
To make the contact center more strategic to the business, nothing should be more important for decision-makers. AI is the engine to become data-centric - there really is no better way forward - and if making CX better is your mandate, this needs to be your priority.
What’s Cloud Got to Do with It?
AI is not the only reason why contact centers should move their applications to the cloud. As their role keeps expanding, the more evident it becomes that legacy, premise-based solutions can no longer keep up, holding centers back.
Premise-based deployments simply don’t have the flexibility and adaptability to meet today’s needs, both operationally and for your customers. They can still address certain types of customer needs very effectively, but the value drivers for CX are largely beyond their capabilities.
This narrative very much aligns with the rationale for contact centers to migrate to the cloud, either in whole or in part with contact center-as-a-service (CCaaS) platforms.
Many contact centers are now well along that path: and there’s no going back once CCaaS gets them closer to how customers want to be treated. Holdouts certainly remain, and in regulated verticals like healthcare and finance, there are good reasons to limit cloud adoption.
Connecting the Dots
My intention here is not to convince you that AI is the only salvation for the contact center. Rather, I want to connect the dots between your needs, the cloud, and AI.
By now it should be clear that premises-based contact centers cannot get there from here with today’s customer expectations for excellent interactions resulting in great CXs, and why bigger and different thinking is needed.
Unless your contact center quickly adopts similar technologies, the gap between customer expectations and what your agents can deliver will never close, posing risk on many levels: customer satisfaction, retention, share of wallet, brand loyalty, etc.
Therefore, you need to close this divide between your customers and your contact center with data-driven cloud AI and CCaaS. Remember that many of your customers are pretty tech-savvy, and have already adopted technologies that are shaping their expectations for customer service.
Only with these capabilities can contact center agents be on a level playing field with customers, with deep interactions and insights that make customers feel valued, and agents feel empowered. That’s the transformational impact contact center leaders should be aspiring to.