Gartner has uncovered three technologies that it believes will have the biggest impact on contact centers by 2028.
The U.S.-based research and consultancy firm has revealed these transformational technologies to be generative AI, digital customer service, and conversational user interfaces.
The findings came to light through the Gartner Hype Cycle for Customer Service and Support Technologies, 2023 report, which seeks out critical, new technologies for its supporting customers.
Drew Kraus, VP Analyst in the Gartner Customer Service and Support practice, provided his interpretation of the report in no uncertain words: "The common theme of these three technologies is their ability to streamline the customer journey and enable customer service leaders to meet customers’ growing expectations.
Within the next five years, we expect these technologies to change the face of customer service and support.
Generative AI
Gartner has predicted that 80 percent of customer service and support organizations will be using some form of generative AI technology to bolster agent productivity and customer experience (CX) by 2025.
It currently places Generative AI at the ‘Peak of Inflated Expectations’ but sees the technology moving through the ‘Trough of Disillusionment’, onto the ‘Slope of Enlightenment’, and finally ending up on the ‘Plateau of Productivity’.
Currently, the only technology occupying a space on the final ‘plateau’ is CCaaS.
Generative AI will mostly be used for content creation, AI-supported chatbots, and automation of human work. The biggest impact it is likely to have is on customer experience, the report finds.
A Gartner poll also found that 38 percent of leaders are seeing improvements in customer experience and retention as the main reason to deploy large language model (LLM) applications.
Kraus commented on the findings related to generative AI: "The impact of AI on the customer service function cannot be overstated.
Not only do we expect organizations to replace 20-30% of their agents with generative AI, but also anticipate it creating new jobs to implement such capabilities.
Digital Customer Service
With the introduction of so many digital engagement options for customers, expectations have been raised to a record high.
Adding more channels can also have the effect of increasing the overall effort required for customers as they may end up using multiple channels for a single purpose.