CCaaS platforms streamline the creation of omnichannel experiences, reduce operational costs, and offer an unlimited level of agility.
That agility means vendors can innovate at break-neck speed, providing companies with countless new tools to delight and retain customers.
As CCaaS platforms continue to evolve, here are some of the major trends influencing the contact center landscape.
1. Connected Clouds and Tools
Now that companies are shifting more of their processes into the cloud, there’s a growing demand for platforms that empower teams to connect all their distributed tools in one convenient space.
Countless leading CCaaS vendors, like Five9, have already begun offering companies an easy way to connect their contact centers with unified communication platforms.
However, the opportunities companies have to align their workflows and tools is evolving. For instance, now companies can connect their UCaaS/CCaaS solutions with CRM platforms, workforce management (WFM) tools, and even marketing applications.
We’re even seeing the rise of more flexible APIs and SDKs which allow teams to bridge the gaps between various software solutions, allowing for comprehensive workflow automation.
2. Increasing Focus on Journey Orchestration
As they shift into the versatile cloud environment, companies don’t just want to replicate their old on-premises customer journeys. They want to leverage the power of the cloud to create more powerful, immersive, and intuitive journeys for their customers.
CCaaS vendors are paying attention, offering companies tools that help them to effectively route calls through a range of channels, unify data in a centralized environment, and monitor every touchpoint they have with their customers.
Companies can even leverage comprehensive journey orchestration tools that simplify the creation of outbound, inbound, and blended contact center workflows.
3. Upgrading the Gen AI Opportunity
Generative AI has emerged as a significant trend in the CCaaS landscape, empowering companies to access more intuitive tools for customer service, content creation, and agent assistance. Initially, many CCaaS vendors simply rushed to enable access to generative AI opportunities.
However, now, leaders in the contact center space are enabling teams to optimize and enhance their Gen AI solutions for longer-term benefits. For instance, Five9 launched an industry-first generative AI studio, that offers organizations comprehensive control over their AI models.
With this low-code/no-code interface, anyone can create a customized bot for agent assistance, customer service triaging, and more. You can even enhance the abilities of your bots by creating your own prompt library and infusing AI models with proprietary data.
4. The Rush to Release WFO Tools
After Gartner made “resource management” a core requirement for CCaaS leaders in its Magic Quadrant, vendors have raced to infuse their platforms with workforce optimization tools. Unfortunately, many of these solutions lack the depth that companies need.
Some newer CCaaS vendors claim to offer tools that help automate contact center forecasts, but they provide users with limited models to explore. Additionally, many of these less-advanced systems only scratch the surface of workforce optimization (WFO).
Companies with more comprehensive solutions will also offer learning management, conversational intelligence, and even gamification tools – and these will have an edge in the evolving CCaaS space. After all, great customer experiences start with highly engaged employees, and well-managed resources.
5. The Rising Importance of Employee Experience
As mentioned above, the experience contact center employees get from their tools and workflows has a direct impact on the quality of customer service they can provide. As companies recognize this, vendors are producing more advanced tools focused on employee engagement.
Five9, for instance, offers companies a comprehensive workforce engagement suite, with built-in tools for gamification, employee sentiment monitoring, and workforce management. Plus, many vendors are empowering agents with more intuitive agent assist solutions.
These AI-powered bots can now work alongside team members, offering access to real-time coaching and next best action guidance, surfacing relevant data, and enhancing productivity.
6. Vendors Simplify the CCaaS Transition
While demand for CCaaS solutions is increasing, the migration into the cloud is still a complex process for many organizations. To ease the transition, vendors are releasing new innovations and models that empower companies to move to the cloud more strategically.
For instance, Google released two distinct CCaaS platforms within 12 months, offering access to both a hybrid contact center system, and a fully-fledged cloud contact center. Five9 has taken a similar approach, snapping up Aceyus to provide companies with a customer data platform they can use to consolidate and move their data to the cloud.
This solution ensures companies can access an uninterrupted stream of data, sustaining the workflows required for an efficient contact center, while minimizing disruptions.
7. Connected Customer Experiences
Creating a connected customer experience in 2024 is about more than just giving customers access to a range of communication channels. It also requires companies to invest in strategic alignment, connecting sales, marketing, and customer service teams.
Silos between these departments lead to more frustrating interactions, with customers having to share the same information with multiple employees and repeat themselves constantly. To address this issue, vendors are offering access to more unified environments for customer data management.
For instance, Five9’s Aceyus platform provides companies with an environment that centralizes CX data on a real-time dashboard, offering every team a consolidated view of the customer.
8. Advanced Analytics
AI isn’t just having a significant impact on self-service experiences and agent performance in the contact center. It’s also helping businesses to surface more data from every discussion. With AI-powered analytical tools, contact centers can more effectively pinpoint where bottlenecks happen in customer journeys, across multiple channels, and track common consumer issues.
The right analytical tools can help with everything from routing customers, with insights into intent and sentiment, to forecasting call volumes and enhancing scheduling strategies. They can also help companies accurately and effectively monitor crucial metrics.
For instance, they can track first contact resolution rates, by analyzing intent in repeat calls, and draw insights from customer feedback.
9. Evolving Omnichannel Communications
Omnichannel communication has been a growing trend in the CCaaS space for a while now. For years, customers have wanted more options for how they interact with companies. While phone calls are still a popular option, there’s a growing demand for messaging, social media-based support, and even video interactions.
Leading vendors are taking note, offering access to everything from SMS and mobile-based service solutions, to video conferencing tools. However, the top CCaaS providers don’t just enable access to a range of channels, they also ensure the data between those channels is truly connected.
By bridging the gaps between each distributed channel and allowing for integrations with CRM systems and other tools, vendors are helping agents to retain context in conversations.
10. The Rise of Supportive Services
Finally, one significant trend we’ve seen emerging in the CCaaS landscape recently, is that vendors are offering more value-added services to their contact center customers. While most CCaaS providers have always offered basic help with technical support and platform configuration, many now offer dedicated migration services, product training and customer support.
Some vendors even offer consulting and strategic guidance services, to help companies implement the perfect contact center transformation plan. Plus, brands like Five9 offer access to robust contact center training solutions, like the Five9 University, to help boost technology adoption rates.
Watching the Latest CCaaS Trends
The contact center is always evolving, and the flexibility of CCaaS platforms means CX strategies can adapt faster than ever before.
As companies continue to accelerate their migration to the cloud, and embrace the scalability it can offer, the contact center will only continue to evolve.
