Exploring The Future of The Contact Centre

The other day I received a phone call from the CEO of an organization that publishes research about the contact centre industry. He wanted to ask about the future of customer service. It was an interesting conversation, and as we talked, I made a few notes so I could think further on some of the key points we discussed.

The ones that I think are most urgent or interesting are:

• People want to communicate with people; although we are seeing an enormous improvement in automated systems, they are not good enough to replace the human element of a customer interacting with a brand. However, I do see more opportunities to use automated systems for monitoring mistakes and ensuring that humans are offering good advice - supporting the human advisors.
  
  
• B2B or B2C is becoming blurred; I don’t mean that selling Coca Cola is the same as selling business services from one company to another, but the way that businesses sell is increasingly similar and focused on human communication - especially because of social networks such as LinkedIn.
  
  
• Brand advocacy is increasingly important; especially true in sectors such as retail banking, health insurance and games publishing. Traditionally these industries have had quite low levels of advocacy, but now brands are exploring how the customer experience can generate satisfied customers that become more like fans.
  
  
• Proactive service needs exploration; there is a tendency for customers to often try Google for help before actually contacting a brand. This creates an opportunity for brands to more proactively help customers, rather than waiting for them to call customer support. Proactive support creates a great impression of the brand and can deflect calls to the contact centre.
  
  
• Wearable use will increase; tools like heart rate monitors have become increasing popular, but I believe they will soon explode in popularity as their feedback becomes more ‘live’ and visible. There will be an interesting development when insurers, and possibly employers, start asking employees to wear health monitors as a condition of employment.
  
  
• CX is genuinely driving new business; I know from reading the research of companies like Gartner and Forrester that between 70-90% (it depends on which report you read) of executives now consider the customer experience to be their number one priority. CX genuinely drives new business. It is no surprise that corporate leaders are taking it seriously.

As we talked, it became clear to me that as I think further on the future of the customer experience, there are some interesting and unusual facts that can be immediately observed today:

• The countries experiencing a greater increase in customer satisfaction are also the locations where advocacy is growing fastest - at present this is China and the USA.
• France has the lowest customer satisfaction in the world. Why France?
• The statistical observation of a small increase in customer satisfaction when averaged across all industries is generally the same when viewing by sector - all sectors are getting better slowly.
• Customers in the UAE contacted customer services more often than customers in any other country in the past year.
• All countries, except those in Latin America, are seeing an increase in the numbers of customers contacting customer services.

This was an interesting conversation that opened some new lines of thinking for me. I’m going to explore a few of these comments further in my next article as I try to determine what will certainly happen and what may happen in the next year or two of customer expectations and change.

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Please leave a comment with your thoughts on my comments or any ideas I may have missed.