Industry Insiders—Innovative Insights
Forward-thinking peers on the future of customer experience and the contact centre
The transformation of the modern, multi-channel contact centre—from a necessary cost centre to the hub of customer experience and an essential driver of business success—continues accelerating, fueled by rapidly evolving customer expectations and technological innovations. Keeping pace with this transformation remains challenging, even for the most customer-centric organisations. How do you separate fleeting fads from true trends? Where should you invest—which technologies and which strategies—in order to deliver a next-generation customer experience? What should your contact centre be focused on today—in order to protect and promote your business’ success tomorrow?
To help you answer these tough questions, we asked some of the top experts, innovative thinkers and opinion leaders in the contact centre and customer experience industry for their thoughts. Here’s what they had to say about the future of CX and the contact centre:
THE CX REVOLUTION HAS JUST BEGUN
We’re about a decade into a massive shift, across every industry, toward elevating the customer experience (CX) as the most critical focus for any organisation. Today, 9 in 10 businesses say they’re competing primarily on the basis of customer experience. But our industry influencers tell us that the CX revolution is just getting started.
“Customer expectations will continue to change, as customers demand better experiences, faster service, and more self-service options.
– Blair Pleasant, President & Principal Analyst, COMMfusion
“We are on the cusp of major changes. Generational changes will fundamentally change the customer experience and the technologies that support it.”
– Paul Stockford, Chief Analyst, Saddletree Research
CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS DRIVE THE BIGGEST TRENDS IN CX
No huge surprise here: The continued evolution and elevation of customer expectations will shape the biggest trends and most critical focus points for tomorrow’s leading CX brands and top-performing contact centres.
- HYPER-PERSONALISATION
- FAST & FRICTIONLESS SELF-SERVICE
- UNLOCKING THE INTERNET OF THINGS (IoT)
- SHIFTING CHANNEL PREFERENCES
“Using data and AI, brands will be able to gather all information about customers in one place. That means each customer will have a profile with their past purchases and interactions with the brand, plus their preferences, demographics and life changes. These profiles will allow for a seamless experience without customers having to explain themselves and create more customised and relevant experiences.”
– Blake Morgan, Customer Experience Keynote Speaker
“Hyper-personalisation will make the experience more personalised, more predictive and more trackable.”
– James Dodkins, Founder, Rockstar CX
“Some companies will collect enough data to go to the next step of personalisation, which is individualisation—which customers will love. They will be treated like a person—a friend. (Like from the TV show “Cheers,” where everybody knows your name.) But it will be bigger than that. If the customer lets them, the company will deliver a customised and individualised experience that will help drive customer loyalty.”
– Shep Hyken, Chief Amazement Officer, Shepard Presentations
“Customers want an easier and frictionless (or less friction) experience. Companies like Amazon are teaching our customers what that looks like and the expectation will be that any and every company should do something similar.”
– Shep Hyken, Chief Amazement Officer, Shepard Presentations
“Faster response, faster service, faster delivery. We live in a time when patience is a thing of the past, and marketers and brands alike need to focus on how quickly they can serve—and deliver—to and for their customers.”
– Shelly Kramer, CEO, V3 Broadsuite
“Technology at a foundational level has the opportunity to help our customers self-serve more easily and quickly, as well as help employees handle customer inquiries more productively and efficiently. These are some of the essential building blocks of great service and experience.”
– Adrian Swinscoe, Best-selling Author, Forbes Contributor, Strategic Advisor and Aspirant CX Punk
“More and more companies will begin using the IoT (Internet of Things) to drive a better CX. It may be as simple as integrating with Amazon Echo, Google home, or some other smart speaker. Or it can be sensors inside of products that alert the company and the customer that they need to get service or maintenance. There will be more connectivity between products and smart devices as companies ramp up their innovative CX ideas.”
– Shep Hyken, Chief Amazement Officer, Shepard Presentations
“Messaging and other digital channels will overtake voice as the main point of interaction.”
– Blair Pleasant, President & Principal Analyst, COMMfusion
“Face-to-face (video) interaction will become the norm, and expected by customers.”
– Shelly Kramer, CEO, V3 Broadsuite
“Self-service customer support options will get better. Be it on a website, chatbot, etc., customers will start to enjoy the convenience of having control of their situations and their questions answered quickly and efficiently.”
– Shep Hyken, Chief Amazement Officer, Shepard Presentations
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) MAKES THE CONTACT CENTRE SMARTER, FASTER—BETTER
Perhaps no technological innovation holds more potential to revolutionise CX than artificial intelligence (AI). With all the buzz around artificial intelligence (AI) in the contact centre, we asked our experts to cut through the hype and give honest predictions on how AI will transform the contact centre in the next few years.
“AI isn’t magic. It is a highly sophisticated set of technologies and applications that can be used to improve and optimise the performance of customer service departments and contact centres. There are dozens of AI technologies available today, but the 3 that are at the core of service are NLU/NLP/NLG, real-time analytics and machine learning. In the next 10 – 15 years, companies will find many more uses for AI, and it is going to help revolutionise the service world.”
– Donna Fluss, CEO, DMG Consulting LLC
THERE’S NO REPLACING THE HUMAN TOUCH
While most of the trends focus on how technologies will transform the contact centre, almost all of our experts stressed that live, human agents will remain critical to an exceptional CX—and that the most successful organisations will use automation, self-service and AI-driven capabilities to support and enhance their agents’ human-to-human interactions.
Click on an Icon to See What the Experts Have to Say
SAGE ADVICE ON THE ROAD AHEAD
The CX revolution puts the modern contact centre in the centre of a customer-centric strategy for business growth. But in this elevated role, contact centres face more pressure—and more complex challenges—than ever. We asked our experts for their parting wisdom on managing the ever-evolving road toward delivering next-generation CX.
Are You Listening? The Truth About What Customers Want in a Digital World
“Customer Experience will only thrive if leaders take hold of this work as the legacy of the organisation. Without active leadership involvement, organisations will focus on the mechanics of CX, but the differentiation of a company’s purpose won’t occur. Experience is about leaders choosing how they will and will not grow – and guiding the organisation to that end state.”
– Jeanne Bliss, President, Customer Bliss and co-founder of the Customer Experience Professionals Association
“Until we see CEOs getting on board and committing to designing and delivering on a customer-centric culture, organisations will struggle to transform. And while we’re talking about enriching human interactions, as they say, “charity begins at home.” Employees are humans, too! Without a great employee experience, it’s difficult to deliver a great customer experience. As such, it will be more important than ever to continuously do the work to understand employees and customers—and put them at the centre of all the business does.”
– Annette Franz, Founder + CEO, CX Journey Inc.
“Technology for technology’s sake will ruin a company’s customer experience. Remember: Technology is just a tool to help deliver an amazing experience—not the holy grail; not a magic bullet.”
– James Dodkins, Founder, Rockstar CX
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