CX and WFH 2021 Trends: CX Today Expert Round Table  

Customer experience (CX) saw a radical transformation last year, with digital and touchless channels taking centre stage. As per a recent report, a staggering 80% of organisations feel it is “very” or “extremely” important to deliver high-quality digital CX to their customers in 2020; just 1% said it was not important at all.   

Powerful unified communication solutions give you the backend support needed to achieve CX excellence amid market complexities and evolving expectations, something that’s become part of BAU in the post-pandemic era. On the one hand, you have customer service agents transitioning to and staying with WFH for the foreseeable future, requiring organisations to revisit their digital infrastructure (i.e., move from on-premise). On the other hand, customers now expect your presence on digital channels as par for course, and this is unlikely to change even when in-person interactions return to a pre-pandemic normal.  

In this environment, how do you navigate market complexities to come out on the winning side? Can digital technologies act as an enabler, giving you a competitive advantage as the economy rebounds? To find answers to these questions and explore what lies ahead, we spoke to experts from six digital CX pioneers.  

In this edition of the CX Today Round Table, we are delighted to be joined by:  

• Paul Holden, Head of Sales at Akixi, a call and contact centre analytics software company 
• Brendan Dykes, Senior Director at Genesys, an omnichannel CX technology giant  
• Paul Jarman, CEO of NICE inContact, a cloud-based contact centre major 
• Jonathan Allan, CMO of Puzzel, a company known for its flagship customer service platform  
• Julien Rio, Senior Marketing Director at RingCentral, a cloud-based communications provider  
• Natalie Keightley, Senior Director of Solutions Marketing at Avaya, a communications hardware and software solutions company  

We asked our experts to share their insights on the market context of 2020, key opportunities on the road ahead, and the WFH impact in 2021. Here is what they had to say.  

Which Trends Helped Shape CX in 2020? 

If we consider where CX is headed this year, 2020 will inevitably serve as the take-off point. If the last three quarters were all about reacting to the pandemic, the upcoming ones must determine the industry’s long-term response. Our experts agreed that customer-centricity in a low-touch/touchless world was the dominant theme from 2020, giving rise to disruptive digital adoption in some cases. Others pointed out that there was a downswing in the quality of experiences, meaning that 2021 will be all about course correction.  

Here are the insights in full detail.   

Paul Holden, Head of Sales at Akixi  

Holden from Akixi told us, categorically, that COVID-19 was responsible for all CX strategies, forcing several organisations to pivot in their tracks. “There was a huge compelling event in 2020 almost forcing remote CX and Working from Home (WFH) – that was, and still is, Coronavirus,” Holden said. “Those behind the curve had to implement WFH capability very quickly, literally overnight in many cases,” he added, highlighting that not everyone was equipped for this change.  

In several cases, existing practices and plans had to be tabled, with pandemic-readiness taking priority over everything.  

Holden told us that he saw an article on LinkedIn asking the question, “Which C-level led your digital transformation in 2020, was it the CEO? CIO? Or CTO?” According to him, the answer is straightforward – “None of them, it was ‘C’ovid.” 

Brendan Dykes, Senior Director at Genesys

Brendan Dykes from Genesys agreed with Holden, noting that the pandemic was among the most influential drivers in 2020. But he also added that previous trends like CX personalisation continued to be relevant.  

Here are the top two trends from 2020 according to Dykes:   

1. COVID-19 and cloud adoption

“COVID-19 had a big impact on businesses across the board. There was a sudden need to ensure employees were transferred to remote working, which, for many organisations, meant accelerating their cloud contact centre adoption.” 

2. A continued demand for personalised experiences 

“While COVID-19 and the cloud were a driving force for many businesses, the other area that is shaping the industry is the need for businesses to provide truly personalised experiences to customers,” Dykes said, mentioning that there are implications for the entire organisation and not just the support function. 

“This doesn’t only apply to the contact centre, but the wider business across marketing and sales departments. People are increasingly turning to brands that provide them with the most personalisation to their interactions.” 

Paul Jarman, CEO of NICE inContact 

With several brands becoming unavailable to attend to their customers in-person, digital communication channels saw a dramatic rise in popularity, says Nice InContact’s Paul Jarman. “The biggest trend was the accelerated shift towards digital and self-service channels, which took on a newfound importance in 2020.”  

He shared insights surfaced by Nice InContact’s research reaffirming this trend.  

• “Our research found that 73% of businesses now offer online chat, compared to 67% in 2019.  
• The proportion of businesses offering at least one AI-powered channel for customer-facing service increased by 16%.” 

Interestingly, he also spoke about opportunities for personalisation enabled by the growing reliance on digital. Instead of a fragmented multichannel system, companies were motivated to adopt omnichannel for greater personalisation.  

“Driven by necessity, contact centres had to offer truly digital-first, omnichannel services – including both self-service and agent-assisted channels – that supported customers anytime, anywhere and provided the personalised service they expected,” he said. 

At the back-end of this new paradigm was the WFH contact centre agent.

“Linked to this was the need to embrace a WFH model, as remote working requirements forced the industry to adapt to a distributed workforce. This required businesses to optimise their analytics, workforce engagement, and contact centre infrastructure to empower their agents to excel regardless of where they were,” Jarman added. 

Jonathan Allan, CMO of Puzzel

Puzzel’s Jonathan Allan spoke about two trends that shaped customer experiences in 2020 – 1) contact centres becoming the core of business continuity and 2) the diversification of customer communication channels.   

As digital CX emerged as a top priority, there was a greater demand for effective contact centre operations. “Customers turned to contact centres for reassurance during uncertain times, and the contact centre will continue to be the pre-eminent primary brand touchpoint and face of a business in 2021, particularly as restrictions continue to affect customers’ ability to receive in-person customer service,” Allan opines. 

Alongside this newfound centrality of contact centre operations, businesses had to keep up with emerging channel expectations. “Over the last six months, we’ve also seen a change in customers’ preferred communication channels with SMS, web-chat, and survey increasing on average by 37%, as well as seeing a decrease in voice calls.” 

What does this mean for 2021? “Looking ahead, brands must prepare for such changes in customer expectations, being prepared to adapt to fast-moving environments, to ensure they don’t lose out against rivals,” Allan believes.  

Julien Rio, Senior Marketing Director at RingCentral 

Rio from RingCentral looked back at 2020 with mixed emotions.  

“2020 was a disappointing year for customer service. Almost every website belonging to a major retailer, insurance provider or telecoms operator published an alert blaming the pandemic for over-extended waiting times and/or reduced operating capacity,” he said, pointing to a possible dip in performance for many and ensuing customer disappointment.  

But companies were swift to respond, embracing the cloud and strategic reforms to adapt to the need at hand.  

“It was companies with contact centres relying on the cloud that could ensure issues were dealt with quickly. Those with legacy, on-premises solutions encountered serious obstacles – from having unsuitable technology to unable to quickly respond to unexpected staffing issues. The shift from on-premise to cloud, therefore, was a defining trend of 2020.” 

In addition to remote-friendly technology on the cloud, companies came up with re-envisioned strategies that would help maximise the cloud potential and stay flexible. 

“The year also kickstarted flexibility reform, not only when considering remote customers, but also, the working-from-home revolution for contact centre employees. We began to see a shift in customer service strategy, with big businesses starting to consider how to implement cloud-based solutions that will allow them to remain agile.”

Natalie Keightley, Senior Director of Solutions Marketing at Avaya

Keightley from Avaya mentioned that customers frequently faced challenges when interacting with brands in 2020. If a company couldn’t build a digital workplace on time and with the expected efficacy, the customer, as well as the CX agent, had to pay the price.   

“The digital workplace trend, which grew steadily in the enterprise space over the past few years, hit the contact centre world with force this year as buildings closed and agents moved to remote working. Those who couldn’t quickly adapt struggled, and although customers had some degree of tolerance at first, by the end of the year, sympathy was running out when it came to long waiting times and poor CX,” she said.  

The customer support function doesn’t easily align with WFH – as Keightley said, “It can’t have been fun trying to navigate multiple screens for vital information over a consumer broadband connection with an irate customer on the line.”   

The key to CX success, therefore, was a WFH-ready agent toolkit. “If it was bad for customers, then it was also grim for remote agents. Good CX starts with good EX (employee experience), and these employees need the right technology to do their job. If they are properly equipped, as this year has proven, they can do their job brilliantly from home,” she added.   

From here, we moved into opportunities for CX buyers and users in 2021.   

Which Technologies Will Create the Biggest Opportunities around CX and the Remote Environment?  

As the global economy regains its footing in 2021, companies have an opportunity to leverage cutting-edge technologies that deliver memorable customer experiences. It is estimated that the CX technology market will grow from $ 8.5 billion in 2020 to $14.9 billion by 2025, making this the start of an important period of ongoing investments.   

Our experts opined on the various technology investments available to CX buyers in 2021, and which ones could create maximum value in a continued WFH environment. Expectedly, cloud-based communication and contact centres head the list, but there are also a few surprising entrants like artificial intelligence (AI) and voice.   

Here are the insights in full detail.  

Paul Holden from Akixi is of the opinion that investments in the cloud shroud be your top priority if it isn’t so already – “Cloud UC and CC technologies [will create the biggest opportunities] without a doubt.” he puts this down to four reasons:  

1. Cloud platforms are easy to scale 
2. They can be consumed as a service 
3. They are location independent 
4. Users can be connected to the enterprise anytime, anywhere 

 As a result, contact centre agents are empowered to drive value.

“These technologies actually make delivering effective customer experience easier and more accessible” 

Brendon Dykes from Genesys mentioned three technologies that should be on your agenda this year: automation, self-service, and workforce engagement.  

Despite having been around for several years, the pandemic propelled CX automation and customer self-service into prominence, reducing human dependency at a time of labour shortage and giving customers more flexibility. “Due to the extraordinary year that we have had, we have seen that organisations are looking more and more into self-service and automation to help them cope with the surge in demand many businesses saw during the first wave of the pandemic.”  

And contact centre agents will gain as well – “These solutions can help customers solve queries on their own and ensure that agents are helping customers with complex issues.”  

The third technology on the agenda is also geared to help agents, focusing on their wellbeing, in addition to maintaining productivity.   

“The other technology is workforce engagement management (WEM). While agents are working remotely, it is important that businesses ensure they stay motivated and keep learning new tasks that help with their career progression”

NICE inContact’s Paul Jarman agreed with Akixi’s Holden on the importance of the cloud, adding on the need for adopting AI. In 2021, the cloud will unlock steady returns in a WFH environment, while AI-assist augments agent capabilities.  

1. The cloud

Jarman noted that, “Cloud-based platforms provide the agility and flexibility that are now vital. With a cloud infrastructure, businesses can quickly respond to evolving customer needs and address customer issues in new ways.”  

“The cloud allows agents to onboard quickly and seamlessly work from home, while also making it significantly easier to add and integrate new digital channels to drive growth and customer satisfaction,” he said.