Contact Center trends for 2022 and beyond

Creating an amazing customer experience is a top objective for every business. Here is a short list of customer service and contact center trends for 2022 and beyond.

FOCUS ON TOTAL EXPERIENCE

In 2022 we can expect an increased Focus on Total Experience as successful organizations have already realized that superior CX can be delivered only through harmonizing together the four crucial dimensions: the multi-experience (MX), customer experience (CX), employee experience (EX), and user experience (UX). Here, we can anticipate a particular focus on EX because of its tremendous impact on CX. In any case, companies will be expanding their CX programs with EX, MX, and UX – by correlating their various aspects, focusing on employee journeys, and creating common measurements framework aimed to fuse all essential elements of the experience equation.

CONTINUATION OF CCAAS GROWTH AND EVOLUTION

We should anticipate further growth and evolution of CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) in 2022; an increasing numer of companies are choosing this flexible model to support their customer services, while vendors are expanding solutions and capabilities at a surprising rate. Large enterprises, that are slower in CCaaS adoption, will look for optimal migration paths for their existing on-premises solutions – through various hybrid options that combine cloud applications with on-premises Unified Communications stacks, IVRs (Interactive Voice Response Systems), Workforce Management Systems, and similar. On the other hand, SMB (Small and Medium Business) customers are already benefiting from the ability to afford different advanced capabilities from cloud – capabilities that were previously out of their buying reach because of high implementation, hardware and other costs associated with on-premises model. Those advanced features, accessible only to enterprises in traditional world, enable SMB companies to deliver better CX, expand their reach, increase sales, do more with less, and in general – overcome being small. The complexity of digital customer journeys, where there is no single vendor able to adequately cover all necessary elements, motivates different technology providers to partner to form multi-cloud ecosystems. Their customers will benefit from innovative solutions composed of various complementing capabilities.

CONVERSATIONAL AND COGNITIVE AI DRIVES EVOLUTION IN SERVICES AND INSIGHTS

In 2021 we reached the peak of excitement with voice and chat bots. We have also seen many disillusions – driven by the fact that bots can still perform only very basic tasks and often mirror bad practices of traditional IVRs. However, any company that underestimates the value of AI in this area will inevitably be left behind. In 2022, it is expected that the approach to bots will become more realistic. A strong focus will be put on improving dialogs and designing superb services behind conversational user interfaces. Integration with cognitive intelligence (context-sensitive knowledge management, predictive analytics, and similar) is key here. Much attention will be paid to properly separating work between bots and human agents where organizations have gathered significant experiences. Here, handing off interactions by live agents to bots (and not just from bot to agent) for process completion is becoming an increasingly interesting option. With all of this, bots will be taking a more critical role in delivering superb CX, and conversational user interfaces will further increase synergy between humans and technology – just like graphical user interfaces did decades ago.

So far, we have reached the point where CX no longer depends on contact center platform features but on its ability to collect, process, and react upon data. In this sense, Communication Analytics represents a real game-changer – as it converts big data hidden in customers' conversations into small data or actionable insights that the company can use to make strategic and tactical decisions. Communication Analytics provides unparalleled insights into customers' experiences, emotions, perceptions, and behaviors. Among other things, it also helps companies to identify good and bad practices, products, or services gaps and understand the root causes of things that are happening. As such, Communication. Analytics holds great potential to improve not just CX but also every aspect of internal operations.

EXPERIENCES MOVING FROM REACTIONS TO PREDICTIONS

Instead of focusing on channels integrations, we expect that successful companies will be putting much more attention on Predictive Analytics. Predictive Analytics utilizes historical data to predict future outcomes. Applied in customer services, it helps to determine the wants and needs of a specific person at a particular journey moment. As such, it enables companies to do the right things for their customers – at every step of their journeys. Considering that insights from Predictive Analytics can dramatically improve CX, we anticipate its increased utilization for next-best-action suggestions, proactive retention, preemptive support, micro -targeted outbound campaigns, predictive contacts routing, and similar.

DIGITAL-THOROUGHLY INSTEAD OF DIGITAL-FIRST

Digital-first for customer services has been trending for years already, but in 2022 and beyond, we will see an increased focus on enabling end-to-end processes in the digital space. We all know situations where we start something on the Web but must visit physical places to fill in forms or sign documents. These types of frictions increase customer effort and costs for the company. The synergy of customer touchpoints and agent desktop applications with technologies like conferencing, screen share, collaborative documents creation, electronic forms, and digital signatures will remove those frictions and enable fully digital customer journeys, improving CX and reducing costs of customer services.

CX IS EVERYONE’S BUSINESS

CX is everyone’s business today, and every employee impacts it in a certain way, not just front-line representatives As customer services are critical for CX, companies are now showing a growing interest in enabling contact center agents to quickly get in touch with employees from different departments – while handling customer requests.

Ability to consult colleagues or even pull them into interactions with customers – to benefit from their knowledge, experience, and wisdom in different customer situations – decreases effort and improves the experience of both customers and agents. Technologies like presence, messaging, screen share, voice, and video conferencing – integrated with agent desktop applications – are playing a vital role here.

REDEFINING ROLE OF CONTACT CENTER AGENT

Customers today are very well informed, and they can resolve most of their requests using advanced, more and more AI-driven self-services. This means that inquiries reaching agents are more complex than ever before – which dramatically changes their role. Because of that, companies are abandoning traditional workforce optimization concepts – characterized by a focus on strict adherence to rules and procedures – and embracing a workforce engagement approach instead. Here, agents are empowered to use their own experience and judgment when dealing with customer requests. Instead of being contact answering robots, agents are becoming creative thinkers, problem solvers, and real ambassadors of the brand – critical assets for success in an experience- derived economy.

Author: Tvrtko Stosic, Consultant in fields of customer experience and engagement, AVAYA

This article comes from magazine:
FOCUS ON Business #3 March-April (2/2022)