After drawing on our experience and advancements in contact center technology, as well as feedback from contact center as a service (CCaaS) customers, Dialpad presents to you, four predictions for what’s next for contact centers in 2022:
1. AI will get even smarter.
We can’t talk about the contact center without highlighting artificial intelligence (AI). Thanks to machine learning and natural language processing AI has grown beyond simple self-service menus and is a major part of the contact center experience.
In the coming year, particularly, conversational AI will continue to grow. For callers, the expansion of conversational AI means more intelligent routing, virtual agents, and 24/7 self-service options. For agents, it means better assistance to provide helpful answers faster.
2. The agent experience will become paramount.
Want to know the best way to make sure your customers are happy? Make sure your agents are happy and feel successful after every customer engagement.
Happy agents make for a better customer experience and require the following:
- Better tools to locate needed answers and serve customers
- Predictive scheduling, through workforce engagement tools
- Regular training and learning management
- Rewards and other motivation tools
In return, businesses will see a big improvement in morale, much lower turnover, and higher customer satisfaction scores. Everyone wins!
3. Contact centers will put the “omni” in “omnichannel.”
How many channels for communication do customers use? They can call, text, email, use social media, send a carrier pigeon—okay, scratch that last one. But the point is: many channels are available, and you must be prepared to use all of them. Each channel has its own benefits and uses, so customers will choose ones that suit their needs and preferences.
A true omnichannel experience means that all must integrate and maintain customer context. There’s nothing worse for a customer than having to repeat the same information countless times. The omnichannel contact center of the future will keep everything connected, regardless of how customers reach them.
4. The hybrid workforce and cloud revolution will grow.
Is it time to return to the office? Even if it is, do we want to?
As many businesses struggle with questions like this one, more continue to embrace another option: hybrid work, where employees can work from anywhere, based on their schedule and business demands. Being adaptable leads to the migration of contact centers to the cloud and the implementation of more flexible solutions. The cloud makes it easy to get agents up and running in minutes from anywhere and is continually updated and secured.
In short, we’ll be seeing a lot more work from anywhere, whether that “anywhere” is in homes, in offices, or on the go using mobile devices.
