In 2022, collaboration environments gained ground, CPaaS garnered more hype, and murmurings of the metaverse grew stronger.
Next year, these trends will likely continue. Yet, others may also enter the fray as CX technology advances, hybrid environments mature, and economic uncertainty looms.
Against this backdrop, here are five customer experience predictions for 2023, put forward by Zack Taylor, Director of Strategic Communications at Cisco Contact Center BU.
1. Observable AI Matures
AI fuels many customer experiences. Yet, it is often under the hood, routing customers, supporting data flows, and streamlining business processes.
While exciting, Observable AI is far less common – with use cases including biometrics, augmented reality, and insights generation.
However, one example making headway in the CX space is conversational AI, as Taylor predicts:
Intelligent virtual agents will take another chunk off the human strain in the contact center – supporting both customers and reps.
Gartner research shares this sentiment, suggesting that AI will automate ten percent of contact center conversations by 2026. Currently, it only handles 1.6 percent.
Yet, reservations circling conversational AI persist. Indeed, continued deployment complexity and a fragmented vendor landscape may stunt this rapid growth.
Luckily, more innovative vendors – including Webex – are making great strides in increasing the accessibility of the technology. Indeed, it offers a hub of bot-building apps, making best-of-breed technologies available to Webex Contact Center customers.
Also, it delivers many simplified use cases, such as voicebots that collect customer information in call queues, which relate to their intent. Such information streamlines the subsequent customer-agent conversation and may offer an excellent first step into the world of observable AI.
2. Proactive Customer Support Advances
"Similar to conversational AI, proactive customer support is rising in prominence as contact centers look to negate the service needs of customers," says Taylor.
Unfortunately, these strategies are often ill-conceived. Indeed, two-thirds of customers have escalated to the contact center after receiving a proactive alert – according to 2022 Gartner research.
Why? Often, it is to confirm that the message is not spam, ask for further information, or confirmation. Consequently, even more calls flood through human-assisted channels.
One method to circumvent this issue is to prioritize proactive communication for urgent issues.
Yet, more innovative companies are building more intelligent proactive communications with CPaaS tools, such as Webex Connect.
Discussing how this could work in conversation with prominent industry analyst Zeus Kerravala, Jay Patel, VP and General Manger of Webex CPaaS, stated:
The ability exists to proactively anticipate what customers need most, put some analytics around it, and then proactively communicate with customers. These tools enable that.
Such approaches may catch fire in contact centers as many brands must rethink their proactive customer support strategies. Otherwise, they will continue to increase customer confusion.
3. New Channels Come to the Fore
Messaging apps offer much potential for businesses. Just consider how Chinese consumers use WeChat. The channel is already the most prominent networking, mobile payment, and shopping platform in the country – perhaps providing a glimpse into the future of Messenger and WhatsApp.
Moreover, some even predict that these apps will morph into browsers and, over time, will challenge Google and various other search engines.
Will this happen in 2023? No, but businesses may prepare for the future of consumer messaging and consider integrations with messaging apps. After all, as Taylor says: