The call and contact centre market is continually evolving, and many features and capabilities are now an expectation. AI, video, integration, omnichannel, working and managing from your mobile are now core for many organisations.
This has been an incredible period for the evolution of the contact centre toolkit for both agents and managers/supervisors. People now expect to not only be able to work from anywhere but have full functionality wherever they go.
They now expect, as standard, literally being able to maintain CRM integrations and data whilst being on the road or working with AI driven conversational analysis from a UC mobile app and accessing their contact centre’s sophisticated call routing rules - without being a traditional contact centre user - all things we are seeing on the upward trend.
If I had to sum it up though, I would say the overall trend is about consolidation. While people want more from their tools, they want to be able to do it with fewer tools. Companies want that single pane of glass to provide a 360-degree view of how a customer is being treated. It’s about presenting a unified experience to help deal with large volumes of queries and calls.
So, how are call and contact centre solutions evolving? There’s been a few shifts - of mindset as much as anything - of late. We’ve seen the widespread acceptance of video and collaboration tools, allowing teams to stay connected and maintain company culture as well enabling new staff members to feel part of the team, and we’re now into what I feel is the second phase of AI.
The first phase was when everyone was treating it like a new and shiny toy, but now we’re seeing people push it hard, seeing where it can help improve the employee and the customer experience.
We’re past the hype phase and now digging deep into getting result-driven use cases. With that, we’re seeing an understanding that yes, AI will help bridge the gap of language barriers and help provide response suggestions, but that it’s about taking the artificial intelligence and marrying that with human and business intelligence.
That is also resulting in, in some cases, the realisation that AI isn’t something that results in you cutting staff but adding to your staffing levels as you take CX and positive results to the next level.
Join forces with 8x8
Find out more about how you can partner with 8x8 to offer businesses a contact centre and communications solution that can keep customers happy, agents engaged, and employees connected.