It’s Time For Your Contact Center Transformation

The contact center of the past has been irrevocably changed—not only by the pandemic, but by shifting consumer expectations. Consumers expect contact centers to quickly identify and respond to their issues, and they’re also open to receiving additional product and services recommendations from contact centers. As a result, the days when businesses saw the contact center as a necessary evil—part of the overall cost of doing business—are long gone. In this new world, businesses have been forced to acknowledge that a consumer’s relationship with a brand can shift dramatically based on the quality of experience they have with their contact centers. To support their contact center transformation, companies are rethinking their approach to the contact center work environment and looking toward contact center customer service as an opportunity for differentiation.

Insights From the Field—Treasure Data at Enterprise Connect

Last month, our team attended Enterprise Connect 2022 in Orlando, Florida. Enterprise Connect is the largest conference/expo aimed at enterprise communications and collaboration. In addition to having a strong presence on the showroom floor, Treasure Data also sponsored two in-depth sessions: “Personalizing and Optimizing the Customer Experience with Holistic Customer Data” with our partner, Sinch, and “How to Leverage Customer Data for Contact Center Success” with Sheila McGee-Smith, a leading communications industry analyst.

Photo: Team Treasure Data at Enterprise Connect 2022.

To get an idea of contact center trends, we had numerous conversations with managers of contact center technology who are investigating ways to improve the user experience. They are doing this while dealing with issues such as workforce optimization, turnover, call routing, and time to resolution. There is agreement on the need for real-time personalization, as well as a heightened understanding of the changing workforce. Here are three key themes from the event:

1. The hybrid work model is here to stay.
   Contact center employees are going to continue working remotely, and they need real-time access to data to support customers.
2.  Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) are having a huge impact on contact centers.
   CDPs can unify customer data from multiple silos and applications into a single source of truth.
3. Technology, including AI technology, is driving the digital contact center transformation.
   This is crucial, especially as companies must support their agents who have to handle hand-offs from chatbots.

Photo: Treasure Data booth at Enterprise Connect 2022.

Taking a closer look at AI-driven communication, there is a tremendous amount of opportunity in emerging AI technologies that go beyond the typical algorithms which analyze user behavior to offer up personalized recommendations (not that those aren’t great). Sophisticated AI chatbots are now used in car dealerships and even restaurant chains like Chipotle. Most of us have experienced conversational AI (CAI) by talking to voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, or Google. Some particularly clever responses might make it seem that these speech-enabled applications are actually taking part in an intelligent dialogue with us. However, these technologies are just responding based on the vast reams of data that comprise deep machine learning.

So is conversational AI really making customer service smarter? A recent study published on CDP.com showed that while many were open to AI’s overall influence in the customer experience, those attitudes changed dramatically around AI in customer service. According to the study, while nearly 53% of respondents had interacted with an AI-powered chatbot, only 34% found those chatbots to be helpful. Furthermore, 23% felt that the experience was frustrating or needlessly time consuming. All in all, a majority of respondents stated that access to live agents would “significantly improve” their customer service experience. But is that scalable, especially as the trend toward digitalization continues?

Your Contact Center Transformation

Many of the key takeaways from Enterprise Connect boil down to this: It’s time to transform your contact center to keep up with customer expectations. Your customers want personalized product recommendations, so it makes sense they also want personalized customer service. So how can you ensure that your contact center agents have a comprehensive view of the customer across the entire customer journey? Can you use AI to achieve insights into your customers’ preferences and values? And what’s the best omnichannel engagement strategy for those customers?

The answer lies in the data. Along with advances in contact center technology, this kind of foundational data is invaluable, especially when unified within a Customer Data Platform to provide a Single Customer View (SCV). And just like hybrid work is the way forward, a hybrid between AI and live agents is a complementary solution that can improve the contact center experience.

With access to customer data, contact center agents can anticipate issues and resolve them more quickly, provide nuanced recommendations for customized products or services, and more. This same data can also be leveraged using AI and chatbots to effectively automate more of the customer experience and speed resolution of basic questions. Furthermore, your organization can use the new information gained during these customer interactions to refine the process and deepen future engagement. This results in higher customer satisfaction, a strengthened relationship with the customer, and an increase in lifetime value (LTV).

Is Your Contact Center Ready?

We recently published a Contact Center Transformation Readiness guide that includes a dynamic self-assessment to determine areas of opportunity in overall contact center strategy, operations, and execution. Get your free guide now!

If you’re planning to attend the Customer Contact Week event in Las Vegas in June, our team will be there and would love to discuss how Treasure Data can help you connect your contact center customer data and customer service systems. We’ll have more information on how to book a meeting closer to the event.

In the meantime, contact us to learn how Treasure Data CDP for Service can help accelerate your contact center transformation while empowering your contact center agents to provide the best customer experience and leveraging AI to drive better recommendations.