As facilities remain empty, many months after contact center employees were abruptly shifted to remote work, companies are asking questions about their customer service strategy. Many have invested in contact center as a service (CCaaS) to accommodate remote settings, but what customers require in terms of service is changing.
Some may argue that with workers geographically dispersed and customers more rarely making purchases or decisions in person, there’s not even any “center” to customer service anymore. There is a shift in how customers are accommodated, and companies considering new investments in CCaaS should think about what solutions might be most forward-focused as requirements change.
The changes may remind some of another shift in customer service that occurred previously, when “call center” concepts had to be expanded to contact center when customers began to trade voice calls for other types of communication.
There are two basic forces influencing major changes in customer service:
- Limited ability among companies to support the multichannel ways that their customers want to interact, including video, SMS/text, webchat, and social media.
- The prevalence of remote workers, many of which are not interested in returning to the office, in agreement with their employers.
These factors are bumping up against the legacy contact center technology commonly used, and while they support traditional customer service models well, they are not equipped for multichannel services or supporting remote workers.
Digital transformation and cloud adoption are generally pushing all technology forward, and contact center as a service is one of the solutions that is quickly changing. Experts predict that eventually a contact center may act more as a spoke on a wheel than a central, sole touchpoint for customers.
Where will the other spokes come from? Nobody knows yet, but as demand grows for more personalized service and improved conveniences, your company’s customer service strategy may be far different in five years.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is also expected to play an important role in equipping customer service for more efficient and convenient service. Currently the technology is useful for gathering account information before transferring a call to a live agent or solving routine issues like getting an order delivery update or refilling a prescription.
But AI could be more strategically used to anticipate that a customer who calls and has recently placed an order, for instance, might be calling to complain about receiving the wrong color shirt. Your CCaaS solution is able to predict that call because it is informed about an inventory issue that caused orders to be fulfilled incorrectly.
If your company is considering a contact center as a solution investment, Cloud Source can help you choose the technology that is not only right for your company now, but will also help you fulfill your strategy in the future. Contact us to learn more.