A new year, a new vision for your contact centre?
As 2024 begins, one thing is for certain: putting brilliant customer communication first is likely to pay dividends.
Here, Matt Yates, Vice President of Engineering at leading CCaaS platform provider MaxContact, hits the ground running with predictions for the coming year - and key advice on how to make it slicker and smarter than ever before…
Artificial Intelligence
Chatbots have been around for years, but most people would agree that 2023 was AI’s big breakthrough year. No prizes, then, for guessing that 2024 will see even greater deployment by businesses of all sizes and in all sectors. Sure, there was a lot of hype around ChatGPT, but get ready to reap the serious benefits of real-time speech analytics and conversational AI. Enhanced accessibility to these game-changing solutions will transform contact centre quality assurance processes; giving brands new levels of insight into how they are interacting with their customers and, importantly, how to make those interactions better. Technologies like real-time call transcription that provide agents with on-screen prompts to help them progress a customer conversation are already here, but 2024 will see them deployed much more widely. Similarly, AI-powered augmented document look-up, synthesized voice digital assistants, and more customer self-service tools will save agents valuable time and provide faster, more satisfying outcomes for customers. Post-call summary notes will take 30-40 seconds to produce rather than several minutes, reducing agent workload and improving well-being. Agent coaching, too, will be improved; driving up performance and helping to recruit and retain the best talent. Of course, all businesses will be on their own particular AI maturity curve, and it will continue to be vital for them to go at a pace that is right for them. For our reseller partners, the potential benefits of helping their customers on that journey are huge, and we’re looking forward to supporting them in every way.
Integration
2024 will see a continued increase in the cloud-based unification and centralization of core contact centre functionality. Dialer management systems, Customer Relationship Management systems, Speech analytics tools, Unified Communications as a Service platforms – they have all brought value to the contact centre during 2023 but this year businesses will take the next step of bringing them all together. No more agent swivel-chairing between multiple systems, no more wasted time or unnecessary process replication, and no more frustrated customers who now expect a seamless experience whenever they interact. Towards the end of 2023, we saw an increase in the number of requests for the incorporation of a CCaaS solution into an existing CRM, removing the need for agents to log in as the CCaaS solution intelligently links and powers interactions directly from the CRM. The dialer and the digital omnichannel functionality is all managed via a CCaaS back end that integrates seamlessly into a well-established CRM which everyone is familiar with and which provides the business with that classic single pane of glass visibility. 2024 will see more of that consolidation and simplification. Great news for businesses, and great news for customers.