The Future of the Contact Center

Published 25 April 2019 - ID G00383538 - 16 min read

---

By 2025, the contact center organization will be exploiting the benefits of an application ecosystem and tools to better equip staff to work in teams. Application leaders for customer service must assess the technology and changes for the future of work to provide cutting-edge customer experiences.

Overview

Key Findings

• Application leaders struggle to buy contact center software that addresses the broader ambitions and challenges of the customer service organization. Contact center vendors often focus too narrowly on getting customers connected, overlooking the other key pillars of customer service.
• Application leaders for customer service no longer want to invest in a fixed contact center software application. They prefer to be free of the technology refresh cycle and to benefit from innovation on a fluid, ongoing basis.
• Usage-based software consumption and features — for entirely mobile-activity-based and team-based working — will enable a more digitally dexterous workforce to perform a mix of customer engagement and traditional back-office tasks during their day.
• Artificial intelligence (AI) will become a foundational element upon which contact center software is created. Almost all key application features will leverage some form of AI.

Recommendations

Application leaders responsible for customer service and support technology should:

• Adopt a holistic customer service application suite approach to procuring contact center technology, focusing on how the technology improves connecting with customers, orchestrating engagements, access to knowledge and coordinating resources.
• Use an application ecosystem approach to investing in contact center vendor technology that can power improvements by offering fluid and easy access to features and benefits.
• Empower greater collaboration in customer service with digital workspaces, by favoring providers that offer the commercial model and mobile productivity features that will support the dissolution of the front-office/back-office divide.
• Select contact center technology that’s built on a foundational approach to delivering the benefits of AI-based innovation, as well as being able to effortlessly combine with existing AI-based deployments or ongoing projects.

Strategic Planning Assumptions

By 2022, contact center as a service will be the preferred adoption model in 50% of contact centers, up from approximately 10% in 2019.

By 2023, customers will prefer to use speech interfaces to initiate 70% of self-service customer interactions, rising from 40% in 2019.

By 2025, customer service organizations that embed AI in their multichannel customer engagement platform will elevate operational efficiency by 25%.

Analysis

Contact center operations are defined by the technology deployed. Until recently, contact center infrastructure (CCI) supported the operational and physical design of staff sitting in neatly organized rows in selected offices, sporting the latest headsets and helping customers in an isolated way.

Contact center operations of the future will foster greater collaboration between employees with digital workspaces, as well as benefiting from software as a service (SaaS)-based consumption and innovation provided by born-in-the-cloud technology. Activity- and team- based working capabilities in contact center software and services will ensure better support of customer service ambitions as part of the broader customer experience strategy.

Several key technology changes are paving the way for the future of the contact center:

• Native mobile device agent desktops with in-app experiences. Staff are better engaged and empowered to be productive anywhere.
• Consumption models to support a complete change in the way contact center staff are organized and structured to support customers.
• Workstream collaboration and team-hub-native features to offer team-based messaging between customers and subject matter experts.
• Improved solutions for security and robustness at scale, helping to migrate fragile infrastructure and release large enterprises to fully exploit SaaS-based contact center software.
• Improvements across all contact center application features based on artificial intelligence (AI), forming an essential part of the core of the software.
• Use of mobile and home device software development kits (SDKs) to boost in-app experiences beyond surfacing contact information and transferring context.
• Utilization of mobile devices to speed up the identification and verification processes, and to make engagements easier and more secure.
• More advanced knowledge management, real-time next-best action and orchestration abilities — beyond having the current “there’s an adapter for that” thinking.

The most impactful areas of change are further described in this note. To fully realize the benefits of upcoming contact center technology, organizations must break free from the shackles of the endless and disruptive technology refresh cycles associated with traditional customer premises equipment and hosted tech platforms, to be able to innovate.

Contact center operations are set to mature — primarily based on a difference of approach with the technology and the degree of focus on broader customer service ambitions. By plotting one against the other, we create four future possible scenarios (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Future of the Contact Center

• Traditional contact centers — Support the largest number of customer service environments today, and, in reality, many could continue to operate as such. Often described as system-of-record solutions in pace layering, these kinds of centers handle large volumes of voice interactions with some support for email and chat. There may be a focus on providing connected customer journeys across channels, but, largely, they are still quite disconnected in terms of technology.
• Innovation-led contact centers — Realize the benefits of SaaS-based contact center software as part of a cloud-based application ecosystem that’s consumed more fluidly. The technology deployed may be better powered by AI in the core, and offer more connected apps, devices and engagements. Usage-based consumption powers experimental innovation; for example, voice self-service projects can be started with just a credit card.
• Customer service suite contact centers — Target a specific ambition to address the broader customer service challenges with connected budget and technology suite thinking. Although the depth of the technology in specific technology landscape areas isn’t necessarily the primary focus, better support for a more connected customer service organization is.
• Optimized customer service contact centers — Reflect both a broader focus on customer service ambitions and the realization of key changes in how technology is used. Typically, a SaaS-based application ecosystem is adopted and applied to a design that incorporates more connected thinking across an entire customer service suite of applications. Staff are inherently more engaged and empowered, breaking the mold of the traditional contact center staff setup.

The future could see any of the above contact center scenarios at the heart of a customer service organization. Application leaders for customer service should consider the recommendations in this note to decide on which of the future contact center scenarios is achievable for their customer service organization of the future.

Adopt a Holistic Customer Service Application Suite Approach to Procuring Contact Center Technology

The contact center is critical to meeting the organizational objectives of delivering consistent, intelligent and personalized customer experiences, irrespective of the customer engagement channel. “Getting connected” is one of four pillars of great customer service (see “Customer Service and Support Technology Primer for 2019”) that contact center vendors provide strong solutions for (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Four Pillars of Customer Service

These four pillars of customer service — getting connected, process orchestration, managing resources and knowledge and insights — traditionally reflect discrete investments by different business owners and stakeholders, leveraging different budgets. However, application leaders for customer service are now challenged with balancing departmental requirements with enterprisewide programs. A combined technology strategy — delivering innovation across all four pillars — has become a key focus. As a result, and given that a unified customer service and support (CSS) suite does not exist today, a contact center solution discussion often expands to cover adjacent technology areas. Multiple vendor types — including those for customer engagement center (CEC), workforce engagement management (WEM), knowledge management and analytics — often form part of the conversation.

Contact center software vendors are already broadening their solutions by delivering benefits often surfaced from adjacent technology landscapes. This reflects a future based on vendors continuing to inherit more of the burden of addressing customer service ambitions, with, potentially, a myriad of enabling technologies and best practices. Application leaders for customer service must connect thinking across the customer service organization and challenge contact center vendors to demonstrate their support for all four pillars — to realize the benefits of an optimized customer service contact center of the future.

Invest in SaaS-Based Contact Center Software as Part of a Cloud-Based Application Ecosystem

SaaS has emerged as a preferred way to cost-effectively empower staff to get things done. Subscription consumption benefits, combined with being able to spin up a browser and always have access to the latest productivity tools, has revolutionized the way departments such as HR, finance, sales and marketing run.

Three key factors have led to SaaS-based solutions being the default technology consumption style:

• Organizations struggle to keep up with, or are constrained in benefiting from, the continual stream of software updates from vendors.
• Cloud services include capabilities delivered currently by best-of-breed providers offering a lower total cost of ownership (TCO).
• Opportunities to exploit underused and emerging SaaS applications in support of a stronger alignment with deeper customer experience and digital workplace initiatives.

Contact center as a service (CCaaS) solution adoption is catching up with adoption of SaaS-based solutions elsewhere in the business, as confidence in buying within the contact center operation of larger enterprises grows. Improvements — in CCaaS solutions — in robustness at scale and security challenges are being better addressed. The compelling benefits of a cloud contact center application ecosystem have further driven this change.

Customers can now consume applications and features, as and when required, in a customized way. Contact center software, or the physically defined office, no longer needs to be a fixed thing — it can provide exactly the right benefits for a specific customer service organization. Three key styles of cloud contact center application ecosystem have emerged (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. Contact Center Application Ecosystem

• An application marketplace provides access to (potentially) an infinite number of “click to add” applications or features such as speech analytics or advanced reporting. This solution-first, platform-second approach (to define a more precise feature set) offers an ecosystem that’s flexible and cost-effective. Application leaders in customer service can and will be able to build out the perfect contact center solution for their precise organization, using “apps” that better serve staff and customer needs.
• An application suite reflects an approach where vendors are incorporating what are typically adjacent marketplace application solutions into a single contact center platform. This approach offers the benefits of incorporating routing, agent desktop, WEM, speech analytics, robotic process automation (RPA) and employee virtual assistant (EVA), for example, into a single solution that pivots around a single user record. This application approach typically delivers more benefits from the core AI engine, by connecting solution features in more advanced ways. Customer service organizations can easily access entire modules or benefits via a simple change in license.
• A developer-centric contact center reflects a renewed focus on empowering DevOps resources to innovate at the edge. The developer-centric style provides the ability to build capabilities against a more granular set of contact center requirements — to either extend existing contact center software capabilities, build new applications, or better integrate with additional applications. IT organizations with a developer-centric or DevOps approach to sourcing and maintaining contact center technology can benefit from the extended capabilities of CCaaS toolkits or consider a SaaS-based communications platform as a service (cPaaS) solution.

cPaaS vendors are evolving — to build CCaaS solutions based on cPaaS platform capabilities — suggesting a future where customer service organizations may benefit from both approaches in a single solution. This will offer faster time to value through “canned” apps, but with the flexibility to build from there — using an API-based approach — more precise and custom-made cloud-based contact center features.

The vendor landscape is set to demonstrate more offerings across the three styles of cloud contact center application ecosystem (see Figure 3). Fluid and effortless access to an array of continuously evolving capabilities is offering a solution-platform-solution approach that we already see in adjacent areas such as the mobile phone marketplace. Application leaders for customer service should invest in an application ecosystem capable of forming an innovation-led or optimized customer service contact center of the future.

Empower Greater Customer Service Collaboration That Will Support Dissolution of the Front-Office/Back-Office Divide

Technologies associated with digital workplace initiatives can have a transformational impact on business activities and the employee experience. Most work environments include elements of routine and nonroutine work, and all will be impacted by AI (see “Anticipate and Exploit the Top 12 Future Work Trends”). The customer service environment is more routine, and is therefore likely to experience greater disruption through the use of AI to automate routine tasks. At the same time, organizations recognize the benefits of greater collaboration in terms of engaged associates and innovation. As more work in the contact center becomes nonroutine, application leaders in customer service have an opportunity to leverage emerging features and software consumption models to redefine the digital workspace for the contact center.

Software consumption has evolved from perpetual licensing that’s capital expenditure (capex)-based to concurrent or seat-subscription-based licensing. An emerging commercial model is usage-based, effectively providing access to contact center software on a per-hour, per-agent cost basis. This has a profound effect on how contact center staff can be organized, when combined with contact center features fueling mobile activity- and team-based working (see “How We Will Work in 2028”). Instead of contact center staff being occupied for the majority of the day on customer engagements — dependent on occupancy and an employee-surplus setup driven by better first-contact resolution rates, they can also engage in traditional back-office tasks. (For further details, see “Select Consumption-Based Pricing for Cloud Contact Centers to Broaden Scope of Customer Service Applications.”) The office divide is set to disappear, with contact center staff forming part of the broader customer service and overall company customer experience team.

Contact center applications that have advanced engagement features offered natively on mobile devices, and with messaging and collaboration at the core of the design, are empowering agents to break free from working in isolated rows. Contact center staff are equipped to work more productively together, from wherever they are with the device they are carrying. Engagement via video will drive more demand for different working environments than the typical “factory floor” contact center, based on noise volumes and appropriate setting.

We’re beginning to see customer service centers set up for thousands of customers to have access to groups of customer service staff organized in teams. The staff have stand-up meetings, discuss customer challenges or ambitions collectively, and are more aligned to customer problems than traditional key performance indicators. This will become the organizational design for many contact centers of the future. The shifting future of work dynamics, including the gig economy (see “Learn How the Future of Work Is Transforming Employee Experience Globally”), will also be better-supported by both usage-based commercial models and entirely mobile-first, productivity-focused contact center solutions.

Application leaders for customer service should adopt team- and activity-based working that is powered by usage-based consumption and contact center software on mobile devices. This will enable them to develop an innovation-led customer service suite approach, or the optimized customer service contact center of the future.

Assess the Use of AI at the Core of Contact Center Software to Revolutionize Engagement and Interactions

The contact center is, typically, a highly optimized routine work environment, which means it is ripe for automating using AI. It is imperative that application leaders’ investments in contact center software are focused on harnessing the power of AI in customer service interactions.

One of the biggest challenges with implementing AI-based solutions is knowing, firstly, which use cases to apply it to (see “How to Use AI to Improve the Customer Experience”). Customers look to their incumbent contact center vendor for help. This vendor is then pressured to respond with a sense of urgency and, not least, to deliver something that can legitimately be described as an “AI-based” solution. So far, contact center vendors have offered AI technology through the following:

• Acquisition of something prebuilt — Thereby ensuring alignment with the existing value proposition
• A bring-your-own-bot approach — So that customers can leverage what they’re already doing, in harmony with the contact center application
• Technology partnerships — Making it easier for customers to consume and deploy AI-based solutions as part of the vendor’s offering

The kinds of benefits surfaced at this early stage of the market have, inherently, not fulfilled the full potential of what’s possible with AI. The matching of customers and staff instead of skills-based routing, or more intelligent conversational bots over supposedly dumb, rule-based chatbots, are a couple of examples that are powerful — but only scraping the surface of what we’ll see in the future.

Contact center vendors are investing in data science expertise to support engineering solutions that form, natively, part of the communications platform engine and user experience. AI-based technology in the contact center application itself will surface to provide, for example:

• Consideration of all customer touchpoints across an organization, in order to improve customer and staff engagement as part of customer experience ambitions (organizationwide)
• Utilization of more analytics data (including social), to prevent customers needing to engage — better-equipping agents when they do need to engage, and freeing up more agent time
• The use and control of mobile devices — including further exploitation of home and mobile phone virtual personal assistant (VPA) tools, realizing the benefits of “personalized” VPAs, and speeding up easier engagements (see “Predicts 2019: CRM Customer Service and Support”)
• Evolved self-training of machine learning models to shorten time to AI-based value
• The distillation of “knowledge everywhere” — reflecting on generation Z in particular as they are sharing more data than ever — to make customer engagements more intelligent or more likely to be addressed first time, every time
• Better use of proactive or outbound AI-based engagements to prevent customers needing to engage to begin with
• AI-based entities acting on behalf of customers, which will mean a shift in how contact center vendors have to support new flavors of engagement

The challenge of coordinating both bot- and people-based resources will become both greater and more crucial. If, for example, simpler customer engagements are handled by a bot, this leaves contact center staff in higher occupancy centers with nothing but the challenging and more complex engagements in their day. This then creates an agent churn problem (see “The Future of Customer Service Workforce Engagement Management”).

Application leaders in customer service and support should favor solutions where AI is already a part of, or is planned to be a part of, the core of the contact center software. These solutions will be the foundation on which to build an innovation-led or optimized customer service contact center of the future.