Customer Contact Week, the world’s largest customer contact event series, took the stage again in the buzzing city of Las Vegas, this time at the iconic Caesar’s Forum Convention Center. The event featured vibrant discussions, compelling sessions, and future-gazing perspectives on the prevailing trends in the customer contact realm.
The core themes this year revolved around the ascendance of Generative AI, challenges in personalizing experiences, multi-vendor CCaaS stacks, and the increasing centrality of data and analytics.
1. Embracing CX Generative AI: The New Game-Changer
At the forefront of trends this year was the surge in the utilization of Generative AI in contact centers. This technology, capable of generating new, realistic human responses in real-time, provides opportunities for enhancing customer interactions, thereby improving the overall customer experience. Call summaries emerged as the most valuable use case, as they not only streamline the process of call documentation but also reduce the chances of human errors. The tech nology is available to buy now from a number of vendors and provides a clear return on investment for early adopters.
2. Personalization: The Uphill Battle
The struggle to deliver personalized customer experiences continues. The challenge lies in harmonizing the delicate balance between customization and intrusion. As AI capabilities surge, so does the complexity of maintaining a human touch in automated interactions, a puzzle that brands are keen to solve in their quest for unrivalled customer experiences.
3. Multivendor CCaaS Stacks: The New Norm
The multivendor approach to Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) became increasingly prominent, offering companies the flexibility to select best-in-class offerings from multiple providers. This new trend enables organizations to optimize their customer contact strategies to better align with their specific needs, thus facilitating improved customer service delivery. Read my recent story about Verint’s Open CCaaS.
4. Data & Analytics Take Center Stage
The event underlined that data and analytics are now more central to the customer experience stack than traditional performance channels. Driven by intelligent algorithms and machine learning, these tools offer deep insights into customer behaviours, preferences, and patterns, allowing businesses to make data-driven decisions that align with their customers expectations.
5. The Rise of the Virtual Agent
As virtual agent technology matures (a plethora of vendors were offering virtual agent tech at the expo this year), there’s a notable levelling up of contact centre voice and data channels. This shift, powered by advanced AI capabilities, allows for more efficient and effective customer interactions, ultimately driving superior customer experiences. Even BPOs such as Humach have no issue with replacing humans with virtual agents in response to customer demands.
6. The Rise of Async Interactions: A Chat-First World
As asynchronous customer interactions continue to gain momentum, voice conversations may soon become secondary. The emergence of a “chat-first” world signifies a shift in customer preferences toward digital and text-based communication channels, further accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
As we venture into this brave new world of AI-driven customer contact, there are challenges that loom on the horizon. Notable among these are issues around trust, security, and privacy as generative AI becomes increasingly sophisticated. The complexity of navigating these issues, including the disclosure when an AI is interacting with customers, will be a defining feature of the next era of customer contact.
Additionally, an intriguing thought to ponder is whether we humans will develop an “AI dialect”. Will we act or communicate differently if we know we’re speaking to an AI? This interplay between humans and AI will shape the future of customer interaction and is a development to watch closely.
Customer Contact Week 2023 has spotlighted the rapid evolution of the contact centre industry, powered by AI, data, and analytics. These trends, as they continue to evolve, will redefine the customer experience landscape, presenting both opportunities and challenges for businesses worldwide.
