Explore These Contact Center Trends for Your Business in 2023
We have entered 2023 with new hopes and resolutions for our business – especially in the contact center industry. With the new year, the industry trends are now more focused on creating efficiency and cost-savings momentum. Also, enhancing customer experiences (CX) and employee experiences (EX). And this won’t be enough with traditional contact center labor models.
You have to double down on CX and technological innovations that help organizations gain long-term stability. Do you think your contact center and call center operations are future-proof? If not, then this is the perfect time to begin. Explore these contact center trends of 2023 and beyond to shape your business.
Evolving Conversational AI
Conversational AI is the new technological solution in the contact center industry that interacts like a human. It is far better than the simple chatbots and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system. Meanwhile, conversational AI is accelerating at a high pace in the year take ChatGPT as an example – it is creating a massive buzz.
Currently, the conversation AI has evolved to the point where customers are more comfortable using it as a self-service option. It solves their problems without having to speak with a live agent and is ready to allow greater levels of customer self-service. Additionally, companies can get richer and more relevant customer insights than what companies get today.
Better Productivity = Fewer Platforms
Contact Centers are supplemented with new tools for higher levels of performance, including CRMs, reporting dashboards, customer communication channels, ticketing systems, etc. But the irony is the more platforms agents use, the less productive they actually become. And there’s no exception in contact centers. According to statistics, around 70% of agents say the navigation of multiple tools is their number one productivity challenge.
What are other productivity challenges in the contact centers?
- Navigation of multiple tools (70%)
- Asking callers for basic information (49%)
- Data entry of customer information (41%)
- Inaccurate CRM data (38%)
- Correcting data entry errors (32%)
- Learning new technologies (25%)
- No integration of the QA process (16%)
Why such an adverse impact? Because of constant switching between different workflows or tasks to adequately perform in one’s role. Following Cornell University research, people on average take nine and a half minutes to get back into productive workflow after switching between different applications. The basic tasks consume too much time and affect productivity, leading to time consumption in a working day.
Accepting Growing Remote Work
COVID-19 (pandemic) was the huge reason behind the global remote working shift. People realized work can be done from home, and during the lockdown, about 90% of all contact center agents were working remotely. However, this number has decreased, and now organizations’ are adopting ‘hybrid working models’ – partially allowing agents to work from the office and home. Additionally, according to surveys, 70%+ of BPO staff favor hybrid over any alternative, and companies are thinking to make this a primary model for the years ahead.
Want to know the future working model?
Remote work models have huge benefits, including reduced operational costs, wider access to agent talent pools, and expansion of global service delivery. The future seems bright for remote or hybrid agent working models and yet, there is a number of hurdles to overcome. At present, we have virtual contact center software and cloud telephony, which is cloud-based and can be easily deployed anywhere in the world. It allows businesses to communicate without any interruption.
Explore more about the solutions here: https://sarv.com/cloud-telephony/
Prioritize Digital-first
On the list of contact center trends in 2023, automation and AI came out on top. AI-enabled learning, messaging, and cloud-based systems are now becoming a necessity. A primary trend that most companies would like to incorporate into their activities and focus on customer self-service solutions. AI and automation is an advanced technology that analyzes caller sentiment and provides relevant, real-time information and suggestions to agents.
It enables them to deliver an immediate solution to customers backed with human empathy. And there are several reasons for digital push (automation); however, the key motivation stands out:
- Mitigating the costs via enhanced efficiency to reduce economic pressure.
- Providing personalized solutions anytime and anywhere to grow customer experience.
- Automating agent-oriented tasks to safeguard the company against attrition.
- Allowing agents to focus more on the jobs to add more customer value.
The contact center includes various practical applications that automate agents’ processes and eliminates room for errors. Predictive Dialer, outbound IVR, exporting data reports, updating databases, chatbots, sentiment analysis with natural language, etc., are some of the applications. Moreover, the US can alone experience an increase of 35% by 2040 if automation keeps on growing with AI.
That’s a Wrap
Trends will keep on growing with advancements in technological solutions. Contact center trends will keep on evolving while some will remain the same. Now, we have conversational AI, chatbots, and IVR, which are expected to reduce agent labor costs by USD80 billion. Definitely, it’s time to combine your business with CX-obsessed solutions and run with the trends. Take McKinsey’s 2022 State of Customer Care report for reading, improving CX is the fastest-growing priority area for customer care leaders and it is increasing by 19% in the last three years alone.
You can also harness the power of these automated technologies in 2023 to offer context-relevant services. You can equip your agents with all the necessary tools and information.
Meet your customer expectations, beginning with a call with us. Our teams of experts will help you out.
We have entered 2023 with new hopes and resolutions for our business – especially in the contact center industry. With the new year, the industry trends are now more focused on creating efficiency and cost-savings momentum. Also, enhancing customer experiences (CX) and employee experiences (EX). And this won’t be enough with traditional contact center labor models.
You have to double down on CX and technological innovations that help organizations gain long-term stability. Do you think your contact center and call center operations are future-proof? If not, then this is the perfect time to begin. Explore these contact center trends of 2023 and beyond to shape your business.
Evolving Conversational AI
Conversational AI is the new technological solution in the contact center industry that interacts like a human. It is far better than the simple chatbots and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system. Meanwhile, conversational AI is accelerating at a high pace in the year take ChatGPT as an example – it is creating a massive buzz.
Currently, the conversation AI has evolved to the point where customers are more comfortable using it as a self-service option. It solves their problems without having to speak with a live agent and is ready to allow greater levels of customer self-service. Additionally, companies can get richer and more relevant customer insights than what companies get today.
Better Productivity = Fewer Platforms
Contact Centers are supplemented with new tools for higher levels of performance, including CRMs, reporting dashboards, customer communication channels, ticketing systems, etc. But the irony is the more platforms agents use, the less productive they actually become. And there’s no exception in contact centers. According to statistics, around 70% of agents say the navigation of multiple tools is their number one productivity challenge.
What are other productivity challenges in the contact centers?
- Navigation of multiple tools (70%)
- Asking callers for basic information (49%)
- Data entry of customer information (41%)
- Inaccurate CRM data (38%)
- Correcting data entry errors (32%)
- Learning new technologies (25%)
- No integration of the QA process (16%)
Why such an adverse impact? Because of constant switching between different workflows or tasks to adequately perform in one’s role. Following Cornell University research, people on average take nine and a half minutes to get back into productive workflow after switching between different applications. The basic tasks consume too much time and affect productivity, leading to time consumption in a working day.
Accepting Growing Remote Work
COVID-19 (pandemic) was the huge reason behind the global remote working shift. People realized work can be done from home, and during the lockdown, about 90% of all contact center agents were working remotely. However, this number has decreased, and now organizations’ are adopting ‘hybrid working models’ – partially allowing agents to work from the office and home. Additionally, according to surveys, 70%+ of BPO staff favor hybrid over any alternative, and companies are thinking to make this a primary model for the years ahead.
Want to know the future working model?
Remote work models have huge benefits, including reduced operational costs, wider access to agent talent pools, and expansion of global service delivery. The future seems bright for remote or hybrid agent working models and yet, there is a number of hurdles to overcome. At present, we have virtual contact center software and cloud telephony, which is cloud-based and can be easily deployed anywhere in the world. It allows businesses to communicate without any interruption.
Explore more about the solutions here: https://sarv.com/cloud-telephony/
Prioritize Digital-first
On the list of contact center trends in 2023, automation and AI came out on top. AI-enabled learning, messaging, and cloud-based systems are now becoming a necessity. A primary trend that most companies would like to incorporate into their activities and focus on customer self-service solutions. AI and automation is an advanced technology that analyzes caller sentiment and provides relevant, real-time information and suggestions to agents.
It enables them to deliver an immediate solution to customers backed with human empathy. And there are several reasons for digital push (automation); however, the key motivation stands out:
- Mitigating the costs via enhanced efficiency to reduce economic pressure.
- Providing personalized solutions anytime and anywhere to grow customer experience.
- Automating agent-oriented tasks to safeguard the company against attrition.
- Allowing agents to focus more on the jobs to add more customer value.
The contact center includes various practical applications that automate agents’ processes and eliminates room for errors. Predictive Dialer, outbound IVR, exporting data reports, updating databases, chatbots, sentiment analysis with natural language, etc., are some of the applications. Moreover, the US can alone experience an increase of 35% by 2040 if automation keeps on growing with AI.
That’s a Wrap
Trends will keep on growing with advancements in technological solutions. Contact center trends will keep on evolving while some will remain the same. Now, we have conversational AI, chatbots, and IVR, which are expected to reduce agent labor costs by USD80 billion. Definitely, it’s time to combine your business with CX-obsessed solutions and run with the trends. Take McKinsey’s 2022 State of Customer Care report for reading, improving CX is the fastest-growing priority area for customer care leaders and it is increasing by 19% in the last three years alone.
You can also harness the power of these automated technologies in 2023 to offer context-relevant services. You can equip your agents with all the necessary tools and information.
Meet your customer expectations, beginning with a call with us. Our teams of experts will help you out.
