There are few things more important in any business than the conversations you have with your customers. Experts from every vertical agree that if you want to get ahead in today's hyper-connected world, then you need to make sure that you're prioritising effective brand-to-consumer communication.
In recent years, the "call" centre has evolved from a frustrating environment packed full of desk phones and IVR systems, into an immersive environment where people can connect through voice, video, messaging and more. Now that customer experience is set to overtake product features and price as the main differentiator for businesses next year; it's safe to say that 2019 is going to be a transformative time for the contact centre.
Here's what I expect to see from the industry in the months to come.
Five9 Will Make Their Move for CCaaS Leadership
Named an industry leader in CCaaS within the 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant, Five9 has accomplished some incredible things with contact centres as a service. The brand has a fantastic reputation for ease of use and end-to-end reliability, making it an excellent choice for anyone embracing the transformative CCaaS space.
As contact centres encounter new technologies like AI, predictive analytics and sentiment analysis, Five9's CEO Rowan Trollope has a unique opportunity to drive his company forward into a new age of growth. Now that Trollope's former colleague Jonathan Rosenberg has left Cisco to join Five9 as CTO, the future looks even brighter. Rosenberg has a strong history as a software engineer and was also responsible for co-authoring the crucial Session Initiation Protocol that businesses use today. I believe that Rowan and Jonathan will make for a dynamic duo in 2019.
New Vendors Will Enter the Space
As contact centres continue to search for ways to accomplish more in less time, 2019 is likely to be a time of growth, collaboration, and consolidation. I expect to see new start-ups entering the space with a vision of transforming the customer experience roadmap, along with acquisitions of young SaaS CX-focused vendors that can help traditional contact centre companies evolve.
Applications are sure to usher in new opportunities for the contact centre this year, giving developers new ways to customise and transform enterprise software. SaaS start-ups that are capable of offering things like customer analysis and artificial intelligence may be snapped up by communication companies who want to convert their contact centre solution and begin competing from a CCaaS perspective.
Twilio Flex Spawns a New Wave of AI Transformations
In 2018, we saw the arrival of a new breed of contact centre with Twilio's "Flex" platform. This DIY customer engagement solution allows businesses to essentially build their own contact centre strategy from scratch, complete with modular features that they can deploy and customise however they see fit. Flex will give companies a way to add new versatility to the contact centre. However, it remains to be seen whether the system will win over some of the more established players in the space.