For the second year in a row, cloud contact center leader, Five9, is hosting its Fireside Chat webinar to share some intriguing predictions for contact center trends coming up in the emerging year.
2020 is soon to be squarely and happily in our rear view mirrors so it’s the perfect time to both draw some conclusions and look ahead. It’s been a long, eventful year, and there’s no doubt that COVID-19 has given us some interesting insights when it comes to the way consumers interact with businesses. The immense shift that the market has gone through this past year has changed the face of CX for good, forcing both a renewed focus on customer service and a change of perspective on the way it’s being provided.
On the live Fireside Chat webinar, taking place on December 8th at 11 AM PT, Rowan Trollope, CEO of Five9 and Sheila McGee-Smith, President & Principal Analyst of McGee-Smith Analytics, will team up again to reveal 5 major contact center predictions for 2021 that will help companies make the most out of the new year (and those ahead).
What to expect?
As part of the webinar, Rowan and Sheila are going to discuss the following topics:
- How their predictions from 2019 compare to the unforeseen events of 2020
- How contact center technologies have evolved in 2020 and the impact they will have on CX in 2021
- How the contact center is the new front door of the business
All are definitely hot topics for anyone involved in the CC business (which currently means anyone involved in any business, I’d say).
A Small Reminder
Before we allow Rowan and Sheila to safely land us in 2021, let’s have a look at the predictions they made last year for 2020.
Prediction #1: We are all Generation Z
According to the first prediction, 2020 was going to be the year when customer expectations between generations converge, and people of all age groups want to be able to engage with businesses through different digital channels.
I would say this prediction turned out to be partially true. Interaction with businesses via digital channels has definitely increased as a result of the pandemic; but it’s hard to say whether it has also resulted in narrowing down the generation gap, since many people still prefer to communicate over the phone.
Prediction #2: Customer Service: Go All in or Go Out of Business
This one predicted that 2020 will see businesses having to go all in in order to give top-notch customer service and deliver the level of CX expected by their customers. According to 2019 Rowan and Sheila, this intense focus on customer service would be a way of differentiating oneself from the competition, and would be critical for keeping companies alive.
We can all probably agree they were pretty spot on there. In many instances during 2020 the contact center was literally the only door to the business.
Prediction #3: Bots, Bots Everywhere, but Not a Bot to Think
Prediction number 3 said that in 2020, chatbots should be able to answer easy-to-handle questions only. For more complicated questions, bots should be redirected to human agents.
Sounds about right to me!
Prediction #4: 1 Human + 1 AI = 3
This prediction said that the future of the contact center lies in AI empowering agents in order to help them provide exceptional customer service. The explanation for this is that AI reduces a certain type of “repetitive” tasks traditionally done by human agents, therefore allowing agents to focus all their attention on the customer.
Not only is this prediction materializing before us, but Five9 itself is actively making it come true.
Prediction #5: Rise of the Citizen Developer
Last but not least, prediction number 5 predicted an increasing ability to personalize applications right in the contact center with citizen developers.
This prediction is definitely turning out to be true.
Given that so many of last year’s predictions came fully or partially true, without even being able to consider the pandemic and its effects, it is highly recommended to tune into this year’s Fireside Chat and get a closer look at what the contact center industry has coming up in 2021.
Registration for the webinar has already started, so feel free to register on the Five9 website.
