CCaaS promised so much. The ability to innovate quickly, engage with customers in new ways, and add game-changing AI with just a few clicks.
Yet, how much has the typical contact center experience changed in the past ten years?
Still, “press one for this, press two for that” IVRs confuse and disappoint customers.
Almost always, customers have to repeat themselves because customer context fails to follow them.
Then, they must wait on hold as agents shift between disparate systems, struggling to locate the necessary information to help them.
All the while, operational costs have increased. After all, the cloud typically adds to long-term contact center expenditure.
Of course, it’s supposed to make up for that by adding additional value. Yet, from the outside looking in, not all that much has changed.
Cloud-Native CCaaS Will Disrupt the Market
Cloud-native contact center vendors are turning this dreary tale around.
“From the first versions of CCaaS, we didn’t really have something that was cloud-native. We had monolithic stacks of software in the cloud,” says Zeus Kerravala, Principal Analyst at ZK Research.
“A lot of those vendors now are having to rebuild their product to be cloud-native… once they’re cloud-native, it’s very easy to drop in new services.”
As a result, they can innovate quickly. Consider Sprinklr as an example. The vendor launched almost 150 new platform features and enhancements during its last release wave.
With this speed, such vendors can build solutions that tempt businesses away from their heavily customized on-premise offerings.
Until now, this has proven tricky. Indeed, only 29.5 percent of companies globally have switched to CCaaS, according to 2023 Metrigy research.
Yet, the growth of cloud-native contact center solutions, paired with the increasing sophistication of AI, will provide more businesses with powerful tools to change service experiences.
Cloud-Native CCaaS and AI: A Powerful Combination
AI is the future. The recent interest in ChatGPT underlines this, and cloud-native CCaaS vendors are continuously championing the narrative.
Why? Because pairing the cloud and AI provides businesses with new opportunities to leverage data for enhanced automation, intelligence, and CX management.
However, many contact centers still harness point solutions within their vendor’s portfolio. Meanwhile, cloud-native vendors are making it their mission to bake AI into everything.
Consider Sprinklr again. Its Founder & CEO Ragy Thomas stated:
“Everything has to be powered by AI… It should be embedded in everything from customer listening to contact routing and everything in between.”
Sprinklr’s recent product release exemplifies this mission. For instance, it launched an AI-driven impact analysis tool so that businesses can transform call center reporting.
The solution assesses the biggest blockers and drivers of high customer satisfaction and net promoter scores.
Moreover, Sprinklr also released predictive, intent, and video analytics tools alongside solutions to automate call monitoring, workforce management, and self-service customer support.
Yet, alongside the technology evolution must come a mindset shift and process changes. Otherwise, service experiences will stay stuck in the mud.
Evolving the Contact Center Vision
The temptation when migrating to the cloud is to seek out like-for-like systems and processes as those installed on-premises.
However, this often adds layers of complexity. After all, legacy contact centers are highly customized, with many bolt-ons, making up an intricate patchwork quilt of systems that includes older capabilities no longer necessary to the service experience.
A cloud contact center transformation offers the chance for a more streamlined approach, where leaders isolate the mission-critical features to create a skeleton experience.
Then, they can add flesh to the bone, following the principle that customer experience is not about finding solutions but having no issues in the first instance. The best care is no care.
Thomas advocates for such an approach, suggesting businesses consider: “How can we apply the research lens to everything we do?”
“Leaders can constantly look at: what are my top issues? Then, fix those issues upstream and allow the consumer to solve it autonomously as the second best option.”
Such an approach chops down contact volumes and frees up resources to enable a more proactive service operation. “The front gate to a digital universe,” as Thomas puts it.
“Your happiest customers should be your advocates, and you should understand who they are. Your advocates need to be treated differently, and when someone is unhappy, you should understand why and act.”
“These capabilities are all out of scope for a traditional player. Even the CRM players, it’s just not how they think. But, they can think this way. Contact centers must take the blinders off.”
Vendors Must Address Cloud Problems
As CCaaS adoption has started to grow, deployment problems have risen to the surface.
Escalating costs is one example, and with many CCaaS vendors charging in terms of headcount, they have little incentive to help businesses lower their contact volumes to counteract this.
Other issues include handling tricky migration loads built on old systems, avoiding cloud vendor locking, and ensuring carrier autonomy.
Several statistics compound these issues. Indeed, a McKinsey & Company study revealed that upwards of 80 percent of CIOs have yet to achieve the benefits of cloud migration.
New entrants in the CCaaS space must address these issues to change this status quo while driving forward a new vision for the contact center and innovating quickly.
Sprinklr has committed to doing precisely that. To learn more, visit: www.sprinklr.com
