CCaaS promised so much. The ability to innovate quickly, engage with customers in new ways, and add game-changing AI with just a few clicks.
Yet, how much has the typical contact center experience changed in the past ten years?
Still, “press one for this, press two for that” IVRs confuse and disappoint customers.
Almost always, customers have to repeat themselves because customer context fails to follow them.
Then, they must wait on hold as agents shift between disparate systems, struggling to locate the necessary information to help them.
All the while, operational costs have increased. After all, the cloud typically adds to long-term contact center expenditure.
Of course, it’s supposed to make up for that by adding additional value. Yet, from the outside looking in, not all that much has changed.
Cloud-Native CCaaS Will Disrupt the Market
Cloud-native contact center vendors are turning this dreary tale around.
“From the first versions of CCaaS, we didn’t really have something that was cloud-native. We had monolithic stacks of software in the cloud,” says Zeus Kerravala, Principal Analyst at ZK Research.
“A lot of those vendors now are having to rebuild their product to be cloud-native… once they’re cloud-native, it’s very easy to drop in new services.”
As a result, they can innovate quickly. Consider Sprinklr as an example. The vendor launched almost 150 new platform features and enhancements during its last release wave.
With this speed, such vendors can build solutions that tempt businesses away from their heavily customized on-premise offerings.
Until now, this has proven tricky. Indeed, only 29.5 percent of companies globally have switched to CCaaS, according to 2023 Metrigy research.
Yet, the growth of cloud-native contact center solutions, paired with the increasing sophistication of AI, will provide more businesses with powerful tools to change service experiences.
Cloud-Native CCaaS and AI: A Powerful Combination
AI is the future. The recent interest in ChatGPT underlines this, and cloud-native CCaaS vendors are continuously championing the narrative.
Why? Because pairing the cloud and AI provides businesses with new opportunities to leverage data for enhanced automation, intelligence, and CX management.
However, many contact centers still harness point solutions within their vendor’s portfolio. Meanwhile, cloud-native vendors are making it their mission to bake AI into everything.
Consider Sprinklr again. Its Founder & CEO Ragy Thomas stated:
“Everything has to be powered by AI… It should be embedded in everything from customer listening to contact routing and everything in between.”
Sprinklr’s recent product release exemplifies this mission. For instance, it launched an AI-driven impact analysis tool so that businesses can transform call center reporting.