What Does the Future Hold for Your Contact Centre?

Ron Stevenson guides us through some contact centre trends for the future and articulates where you can fit in.

With so many new year predictions for 2017, we’re reminded of our previous tech prophesies coming to life in the form of innovations like personal computer assistants and video calls.

Granted, it took several decades for these ideas to come to fruition. But, for today’s contact centre pros, we don’t have that kind of time. Tomorrow’s innovations are staring us right in the face and shifting the way we work, for the better.

Is It Tomorrow Yet?

In reviewing your 2017 budget, think about nascent innovations that are set to explode – things like chatbots and the Internet of Things (IoT). Preparing for them today will make your future that much brighter. And according to IDC: “Preparing for the future could be your most important task, today.”

If you are in the strategic planning phase, you’re not alone. The Dimension Data 2016 Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report finds that most contact centres are planning technology updates within the coming year.

These updates are said to focus around webchat, mobile apps, automated services, including IoT and social media.

Time to Fast Forward

The holy grail of the contact centre is anticipating customer needs so that engagement is more efficient and, where appropriate, more proactive.

As the future takes shape, it’s clear that the cloud is the core mechanism for delivering new capabilities that address fluctuating customer need and for integrating organisational silos and systems. Legacy contact centres often struggle to keep up with the consumer demands for new paths to connection.

They’re finding that it’s not so simple to plug new technologies – such as mobile, webchat, IoT, social, and analytics – into legacy systems. But that’s changing. By 2020, IDC forecasts that spending on cloud services will nearly equal what is spent on traditional IT.

Where Do You Fit in to This Future?

For many, these significant changes will have a big impact on existing contact centres, with new technologies enabling better customer engagement, innovative customer journey analytics, and streamlined proactive communications.

No doubt, the future holds some amazing advances that will change the role of the contact centre in tomorrow’s organisations. It’s critical that we understand what’s coming.

No Crystal Ball? No Problem – This On-Demand Webinar Explores Tomorrow’s Trends

IDC, a leading analyst firm, regularly measures trends and projects directions that technologies and companies will take to embrace future business changes.

Instead of delving through reams of studies yourself, have a look at this on-demand webinar, ‘Contact Centre Managers’ Roadmap to the Future in the Cloud’, in which Mary Wardley from IDC and speakers from Genesys in the US explore how the contact centre of tomorrow won’t resemble the call centre of yesterday.

This webinar is a great way to learn more about what customers are demanding today and the cost effective moves you can make to address these needs. It also takes a look at the biggest concerns about moving to the cloud, including:

• Data protection, security, and compliance
• TCO: cloud versus on-premise
• Culture biases and limitations of the cloud
• Integration and customisation
• Picking the right cloud platform vendor

Learn more about what’s coming and how to fend off competitors by embracing this future and moving your contact centre into the modern age.

The webinar explores the current contact centre and customer trends and how the cloud is changing the way in which companies deploy new technology. It will also demonstrate how a cloud contact centre can be a key tool in helping you improve customer engagement in some important ways.

To watch the webinar and learn more, click here.