Great Scott! It’s that time of the year again.
With 2024 almost upon us, it is time to look forward to key contact center trends that will determine the direction of the sector in the years to come. Unlike the sci-fi “Back to the Future”, we don’t need a souped-up time machine to predict the future. Instead, we will rely on the pulse of technology, customer behavior, and industry innovations.
Hold onto your headsets, folks, because we are about to embark on a contact center journey that feels straight out of a futuristic blockbuster. Instead of fancy gizmos, we’ve got state-of-the-art tech powering our way into the future. Featuring contact centers as the heroes and the plot centered around delivering top-notch customer service, let’s read out this script for 2024.
Here is a list of 8 trends that will lay the script for contact centers in 2024
1. CX Will Bring Profits (And Losses too!)
CX is a game of inches rather than yards and 2024 will be no different.
Contact Centers that will continue to invest in targeted CX improvements will not lose sight of their customers and ultimately their business revenue.
Catering to the customer’s changing tastes and preferences and tackling the customer’s short attention spans would require businesses to change their customer service strategies. While good CX will make a difference causing customers to come back and reinvest, negative experiences can make the customers jump the ship.
One-third of customers will leave their brand after a single bad experience, according to a PwC report.
2. Omnichannel Services To Be Backed Up By Location-based Services
Customers from the “Generation Technology” want their service providers to meet them on the channel of their choice. That’s not something new but when customers switch the platform, they detest repetition. This is where the need to integrate all these channels into a single universal platform arises. So, a true omnichannel strategy will need to go beyond mere functional online presence and maintain the fidelity of the brand and experience across every touchpoint.
| 💡 Read More | Role of AI-powered Omnichannel Contact Centers in Elevating CX |
While our understanding of communication channels flashes the limited images of social media, text, and chat contact centers will need to expand their repertoire to include location-based services too in the future. This will allow them to offer more realistic solutions that are specific to needs based on the customer’s location, holding much significance for the retail sector.
3. Voice, Conversational, and Natural Language Interface Slowly Taking Center Stage
Voice assistants and other conversation interfaces will find a greater uptake in the coming years. Taking from adopting voice assistant tools such as Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant outside the personal space into the corporate domain signifies that customers will increasingly engage with businesses via voice commands.
Amazon has even announced its plans to integrate Generative AI functionality into its Alexa product line, prepping the industry for a new channel driven by voice commands.
| 💡 Learn More | How ChatGPT has accelerated the role of Conversational AI in Contact Centers? |
As the trend necessitates businesses to prioritize voice-based experiences over traditional text-based interactions, there needs to be a consideration around crafting customer-centric conversations that mirror natural human dialogues, and integrate these voice user interfaces into multi-modal experiences for a smooth and contextually-rich conversation flow. With voice technology adoption, it will also be important to leverage NLP for speech recognition and interpretability.
4. Customer-facing GenAI Adoption Will See An Uptick
2023 saw announcement after announcement of vendor integrations with ChatGPT and other GenAI technologies, and the coming year will not be much different. This enthusiasm displayed by executives towards GenAI adoption is going to be a push factor for many firms to test the technology regardless of whether their organizations are ready, according to a Forrester report.
2024 will see businesses scaling up their genAI capabilities to fulfill the ambitions of hyper-personalization. In the realm of CCaaS, GenAI will find deployment across applications, reshaping the industry through automation, enriched interactions, and streamlined processes.
Further, there’d be a renewed focus on deriving real business value from GenAI applications to justify their billions of investment.
| 💡 Learn More | GenAI is here; what next for contact centers? |
5. Converge of UCaaS, CPaaS, and CCaaS Will Continue to Grow
Integrated communications have been the focus of contact centers for some time now. In the years to come, the traditional lines between CCaaS, CPaaS, and UCaaS silos will blur further. CPaaS alone has reached a market value of $11.8 bn and the number is expected to reach $130.8 in 2024, thanks to the rapid adoption of cloud platforms.
CPaaS will drive the convergence between UCaaS and CCaaS to facilitate more integrated communications.
Its ability to unify communications and data sources in the contact center will provide companies with a dynamic customer service intelligence environment, making it easier to build personalized campaigns and deliver unique services.
Further, CPaaS vendors are beginning to bring multiple solutions together into an all-in-one service for communications, making them more deeply integrated with the UCaaS platforms.
6. Security-Centric CX
While it’s true that customers are happy to hand over information in exchange for a good service, but having your customer’s data stolen and sold doesn’t really make up for an admirable CX. Keeping the rising threats and their advancing sophistication in mind, a focus on security will be a no-negotiator for businesses.
Especially since the introduction of Generative AI has made contact centers collect and process sensitive information, causing them to become easier targets.
A 2021 Consumer Survey revealed that 63% of customers are happier dealing with businesses that make it easy to see how their data is used.
From advanced encryption methods to sophisticated algorithms and authentication/verification techniques, security will become an inextricable part of user experience in the years to come. Along with this AI will find a more profound application in threat detection – such as pattern analysis and anomaly detection for swift response.
| 💡 Also Read | Is your Industry in the deep of deepfakes? |
7. VR: The Next Trend-Setter
If you think VR is the monopoly of gaming nerds, then you’re mistaken!
In the modern business landscape, VR is gaining popularity in almost every industry. A customer can use VR to try on clothes, test the features of a new vehicle, or experience an event that they want to avoid attending in person.
From a business perspective, contact centers can render instantaneous support combined with in-person assistance for complex problems that require demonstrations, walk-throughs, and more. With VR technology, companies can guide their customers on how to make updates to a product or fix an issue from a distance without waiting for a technician to arrive.
By ensuring the element of convenience in their customer service delivery, contact centers can achieve the one thing that matters most for businesses: the trust and loyalty of their customers.
8. Cloud-Powered Contact Center
As we fast forward into 2024, cloud-based contact centers are likely to emerge as the ultimate catalyst, driving innovation and efficiency in delivering unparalleled customer support. The need for agility and scalability will be the factors driving the adoption of cloud-based solutions.
With the cloud, contact centers will gain the flexibility to scale resources dynamically ensuring optimal performance during peak periods and cost-effectiveness during lulls.
Apart from finding applications across various industrial sectors for its ability to detect and prevent fraud, its integration with AI, ML, NLP, predictive analytics, and IoT is bound to provide a seamless and efficient customer experience.
Further, the cloud’s influence will also extend into the realm of Virtual Reality (VR), i.e. Cloud VR will make immersive VR experiences available to people who may not have access to high-end VR hardware.
| 💡 Get the Whitepaper | How Cloud Contact Centers will define the next-gen customer experience in 2024. |
Wrap Up
As we move into the new year, there is no doubt that technology will come to dominate a huge aspect of customer service and CX. Early movers who adopt these technologies will have a huge advantage over their competitors in the years to come. As automation technologies overwhelm our personal and professional domains, retaining the human touch will also remain in crucial factor in ensuring customer loyalty.
Step into the realm of a futuristic contact center with state-of-the-art unified contact center solutions from NovelVox!
