In the last few years, the contact centre sector has experienced more disruption than in decades. It has prompted companies to revamp their call centre manuals and embrace fresh company strategies that would guarantee their existence in the world-shifting technological transitions. .
Post pandemic, a lot of the new behaviours and social norms that had been formed by the pandemic were still in place. This includes a need for advanced tech tools that facilitate an increasingly individualised digital presence, the requirement of workplace flexibility, and the opportunity to work from home. Call centre employees see their status improving against the setting of a global labour shortage and growing emphasis on customer service.
Bigger, faster data also continues to alter how we work and interact with one another; its effects are also noticed in contact centres. Numerous technologies are already used by the contemporary contact centre features to control customer engagement, monitor productivity, and other things. These capabilities frequently lack end-to-end customer journey transparency and are disjointed.
Contact centres will place a greater emphasis in the upcoming years on technological solutions that integrate across different business processes and include AI. Building and retaining client loyalty is said to be difficult in 2023. This offers contact centres a fantastic chance to create value, which means if you deliver excellent customer service, you will pave the way for enduring loyalty and long-term value. But if you get it wrong, customers might leave.
Interestingly, call centre agent’s well-being will receive new attention in 2023 contact centre trends. The following are some advancements we anticipate agents will experience in 2023 contact centre future trends:
- Higher sales incentives and pay
- Upgraded equipment and technologies
- Flexible working conditions
- Possibilities for ongoing training and progress
- Employee well-being is acknowledged as a KPI
Now let’s dive into the contact centre trends in 2023 to help you plan better.
Top 7 contact centre trends in 2023
2020 saw a huge change in the worldwide workforce as companies introduced work-from-home policies to deal with the pandemic. For many employees, this required a significant adjustment yet offered significantly more flexibility than conventional contact centres.
As fewer employees return to work in traditional contact centre workplaces over the next few years, we predict a steady increase in hybrid work settings in contact centres.
Some of the top 7 contact centre trends in 2023 include:
1. Shifting to the cloud
A major difficulty in 2020 was how to accommodate distant workers, and cloud services provided the perfect solution. The popularity of cloud-based technology has exploded over the last two years, and this trend is undoubtedly here to stay.
Since cloud-based software is reachable from anywhere, it is a great choice for remote workers, but it can also provide higher levels of protection and more powerful features. The migration of systems to the cloud by contact centres is probably going to continue in contact centre future trends.
2. Incorporating speech interfaces
We are all accustomed to using Alexa or Siri. These conversational AI technologies are also available alongside conventional text-based chatbots; thus, speech interfaces aren’t just for personalised virtual assistants.
With the integration of voice recognition, businesses have the chance to provide seamless communication in the text or speech that each client prefers.
3. Implementation of Prescriptive AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) has already been used by sophisticated enterprises to streamline a number of commercial processes. Prescriptive AI, the following generation of this technology, offers a wide range of new features, from improved case routing and scheduling to more effective inquiry response.
Business interactions with customers, from discovery and onboarding to post-purchase assistance, will be transformed by prescriptive AI’s ability to anticipate users’ demands in new and interesting ways.
4. Ramp up with IVR and Self-Service
Customers are observing how self-service solutions like Interactive Voice Response (IVR) are changing due to the rapid development in raw computing capacity, becoming smarter and more potent.
However, it’s a fact that IVR is not brand-new. IVR was among the initial call centre automation trends, but the technology is still useful today. In fact, 40% of businesses claim to have significantly grown their IVR usage during the past three years.
What has changed lately? Well, IVR and chatbots can manage much more complex interactions and transactions owing to AI-powered improved voice recognition and natural language processing (NLP). Many businesses already provide some basic self-service solutions to cut down on the need for contact centres. However, customer tastes have unmistakably evolved in favour of self-service, making it insufficient for a chatbot to just send links to a website FAQ.
Self-service will provide a wide range of alternatives in the upcoming years of contact centre future trends:
- Chatbots that engage with visitors and direct them to the content they need or to a particular agent
- Utilising knowledge management to create customised content sources
- Societies that offer content produced by their members.
5. Demand for Analytics
Contact centres required analytics in 2020 that could assess the efficiency of an unanticipated remote workforce. Even after contact centres return to office-based labour, these measures will still be significant.
However, in order to create a better user experience, contact centres also require more thorough analytics that provide deeper insight into the user journey. To supply these insights, conversational AI technologies and chatbots will be essential. To give a complete picture of customer communications, they will link with CRMs, ERPs, and other software programmes.
6. Focus on Interdepartmental integration
A contact centre frequently acts as the company’s first connection, acting as a go-between for clients and the business. Although contact centres play a crucial function, they are frequently inadequately integrated with the rest of the business.
The outcome? While working with consumers, customer service representatives have little insight, and the rest of the company doesn’t gain much information from what goes on in the call centre. However, managers of call centres have indicated that they will work to close this gap in 2021 and beyond. It’s generally a low-priority, high-challenge subject, but this year it’s gaining traction.
7. A rise in the Use of Digital Solutions
Additionally, the need for digital solutions will grow as more human contact centre agents choose to work remotely. It will become tougher to maintain business consistency if, for instance, a digital employee is unable to report for duty because of a system malfunction. The development of technology to control AI-based products like digital assistants will therefore increase.
As AI-based solutions and the digital workforce assist workers by doing monotonous, rule-based manual work, individual employees will also put more emphasis on managing these systems. This will free up human contact centre agents to prioritise more on challenging tasks.
Gear up! It’s time to consider how these contact centre future trends in the call centre industry can help you grow. Stay updated, stay trendy!
