Despite the significant advancements made, the behind-the-scenes of CCaaS is still rather disjointed, causing a myriad of challenges for contact centers. According to Sprinklr's SVP, Global Digital Transformation, Paul Herman, this fragmentation is the result of three main 'elephants in the room' that we often avoid discussing:
Legacy solutions' difficulty scaling as effectively as digital-first solutions; CRM solutions' difficulty moving into voice and social media management; and social-first solutions, capable of easily scaling across channels, remaining relatively unknown.
As a representative of the third category, Sprinklr's vision is to overcome this awareness problem, helping brands transition into seamless, integrated workflows with better agent and customer experiences. Here's how.
The 3 Elephants of CCaaS
Let's start at the beginning: Legacy solutions.
"These are the companies who own the space and have been providing on-premise contact center tools for decades," Herman explains.
"Today, you must move to the cloud to keep up. So, the elephant in the room with these providers is, they have a system of record for Voice, but can they scale into Digital?"
For CRM systems, there's a slightly different elephant in the room.
"These are the players who can integrate with email quite well and have a solid system of record for customer data," Herman notes.
"The problem there is, can they move into voice and social? Some of these players have decided to abandon social media as a channel due to its complexity.”
And then we have social-first providers like Sprinklr.
"We've got fantastic architecture, we can scale, we're channel-less. But… Sprinklr who?" he says.
Herman refers to brands' need to become 'channel-less:' a situation where all channels are so seamlessly integrated that one can barely notice they're distinct.
"Enterprise customers need to move from these monolithic systems to highly integratable, flexible ones, especially in the world of AI," he notes.
Herman refers to the former situation as 'the swivel chair:' agents having to log into multiple systems daily to be able to do their job.
"The move is from multiple platforms to a unified one, and from multiple vendors to way fewer – aspiring for a single customer service solution across channels."
Different Providers, Different Strokes
Still in the realm of elephants, Herman likes to further describe the current situation of CCaaS using 'The blind men and the elephant' parable. Long story short: Each of the men only touches one of the elephant's body parts, leading to entirely different assumptions regarding its physical appearance.
"Everybody approaches CCaaS from different angles, which has led to many siloed solutions," he explains.
Traditionally, brands had one solution for workforce management, one for messaging, one for knowledge base, and the list continues. Now, consumers expect consolidation.
"I always compare it to the movie 50 First Dates, where Drew Barrymore goes 'Hello' every time," Herman says. "That's exactly what it feels like for consumers around every one of the customer touchpoints."
The Solution: Taking it One Bite at a Time
Now that we've established the CCaaS disparity problem, let's discuss realistic solutions. To demonstrate, Herman uses a final elephant idiom: Eating an elephant one bite at a time. Meaning, tackling the problem bit by bit.
"The best way to approach a transformation, and a CCaaS transformation in particular, is choosing your starting point and prioritizing the next steps," he suggests.