Digging In to the Contact Center ObsessionDigging In to the Contact Center Obsession

For us in the communications industry, not a day goes that you do not hear about or read something related to contact centers or customer service organizations. Whether we're talking about providing exceptional customer experience (CX), following the customer journey, applying artificial intelligence (AI) for self-service and optimal routing, deploying chatbots and Web click-to-chat to round out multi-channel and omni-channel implementations, migrating to the cloud for agility, or applying analytics for deeper understanding of customer interactions and motivations, the business of contact centers has become one of the most dynamic and critical areas of the communications technology industry.

And why not give such attention to contact centers? They are integral parts of how business is done, the glue that keeps the company running, and the one department that touches more parts of the company than any other. In a nutshell, the contact center is where the company-customer relationship unfolds and grows.

Once upon a time, contact centers were regarded as a cost center -- a necessary cost of doing business, or in some organizations, the place where orders were placed and processed. These contact centers would staff low-level operators, weren't focused on customer service (despite claims to the contrary), and were still bottom-line driven.

By contrast, today's modern contact center can be looked at as the place where the "rubber meets the road."

Marketing teams, for example, will use contact center data to determine how certain products are doing, and plan marketing campaigns based on analytics. Research organizations may develop new products or discontinue older ones based on end users' responses to questions and surveys, or larger-scope buying trends. Sales departments may plan a product sales drive based on the insight that their customers are more inclined to buy at a certain time of year, or at a certain price point. Accounting teams can better calculate cost of goods sold; accounts receivables groups can better predict cash flow, bad debt, and profit based on customer buying patterns. Finance orgs can more accurately determine where the company stands financially against their competitors, and business development groups can plan expansions based on customer localities. Further, sales and marketing teams can collaborate on product promotions and operations, and infrastructure can be better prepared to gauge and size their needs.

Think back to Enterprise Connect 2018 in March; it seemed like just about every other vendor booth on the show floor was related to contact center applications. In fact, of the roughly 200 exhibitors, 67 of them self-identified as providers of contact center products and services.

The Modern Contact Center: Industry Perspectives
So what is this obsession that our industry seems to have with contact centers? There are a number of factors driving this, most of all, the vendors themselves. On the other hand, if there wasn't a demand by the end user for these services, the vendors would go merrily along their way and invest in other technology applications.

To gain a better understanding of modern contact centers as a whole, I asked some colleagues in different segments of the industry what they are seeing as trends, what they are gearing up for and why, and what end user organizations should be aware of when evaluating a contact center upgrade or replacement platform.

One of my fellow SCTC consultant associates and collaborators, Cheryl Helm, of Helm Comminutions, said that for her, "contact centers have always been queen." When she first started nearly three decades ago in her practice, which deals exclusively with contact center technology and operations, there were a limited number of contact center providers, and the systems were both expensive and designed for large enterprise users. SMBs had to make due with ACDs, IVRs, hunt groups, busy lamp fields, homemade solutions, and limited and expensive reporting capabilities.

Helm attributes the recent contact center explosion to several factors, in part:

Next page: More perspectives on contact center cloud, costs, and AI

While the advent and proliferation of cloud applications can be seen all over the communications technology and IT applications spectrum, there is perhaps nowhere else where it has become more ubiquitous then in the SMB contact center space.

According to DMG Consulting's Cloud-Based Contact Center Infrastructure Market Report:

DMG estimates that revenue of the cloud-based contact center infrastructure market was at least $2.8 billion (excluding carrier revenue) as of the end of 2016. This represents only 11.4% of total contact center seats, so the revenue potential of this market is in the tens of billions of dollars. DMG predicts that the number of seats will grow by 22% in 2017, 22.5% in 2018, 23% in both 2019 and 2020, and then the growth will slow to 21% in 2021.

Steve Forcum, senior technologist, architecture and innovation, at Avaya, sees two main contributors to this trend.

First is the increased availability of the tools required to improve the customer experience for contact centers. The solutions in this space are smarter, more responsive, and more secure than ever before. Adopting solutions leveraging AI, the Internet of Things (IoT), and Blockchain requires substantial investments in both capital and resources, which put these technologies out of reach for many businesses. The cloud, and the work done to integrate these powerful technologies into solutions, has democratized access to these tools, meaning businesses of all sizes can deliver personalized customer experiences, which increases brand awareness, loyalty, and revenue.

At the same time, businesses don't want to invest simply to "keep up with the Joneses." The ability to identify, quantify, and measure the impact these investments made in the customer journey is critical. Many businesses are adopting new ways of measuring what works and doesn't -- such as Net Promoter Score -- to paint a better picture of the impact the contact center has on performance, brand awareness, and revenue growth.

Eric Crawley, another SCTC colleague and fellow Abilita consultant, sees the following trends in his contact center practice:

And of course, AI came up as another important factor driving the increased focus on contact center. Regarding AI, Dean D'Adamo, senior director, public sector and intelligent self-service, at Verint, says:

As customers have demanded that merchants be more responsive to their needs and be able to resolve issues in a single occurrence, business attitudes towards customer service have changed over the years, thrusting the contact center into the forefront of customer-company engagement. To keep pace with client demands, businesses need to be able to meet their clients on whatever media their client chooses to contact them on -- voice, chat, SMS, WebRTC, email, video, or social media.

When I asked one of my client's, Steve Devitt of Cigars International to summarize what he and his company expect from a modern contact center, he said, "In today's contact centers, you have to take a holistic view of the customer experience. You need to be capable of handling the customer contact on their terms, whether it be by phone, email, live chat, or text. In addition to being able to handle multi-channel communications, contact center analytics and workforce management software are key in operating a world-class contact center, and more importantly, providing the best possible customer experience.

"In our search for new telephony technology, our focus has been on creating a hybrid solution -- on-premises, combined with cloud technology. This will provide the needed flexibility as we build and expand towards the future. While the contact management, skills-based routing, and workforce management will provide much needed improvements, the advances in speech analytics and voice recognition offer some exciting opportunities to really improve the customer experience."

Another client uses their contact center to train interns and new hires. They feel that if someone is going to rise up through the ranks into management, there is no better place for them to learn about the company and how they conduct business, and to understand the business-customer dynamic.

The old attitudes of the contact center being a necessary expense, is changing and the contact center is now being recognized as the first interaction that a client may have with a company. It is where a company has the opportunity to enhance brand loyalty, get real-time customer feedback, show the customer that their business is appreciated, turn a complaint into a positive and even up-sell a customer.

This means screening and hiring higher skilled workers, providing better training, growth opportunities and incentives for agents to improve their skills and want to stay.

To that end, Noble Systems is addressing how to improve agent skill sets and retention issue through the use of gamification. Marshall Beaver, a senior strategic account manager for Noble, explained the theory behind this:

Next page: Solution evaluation, features, and considerations

Looking for Solutions
So what should you be looking for in a modern contact center? The first thing to remember is that your business is unique -- what is right for one client may not right for you.

There are literally hundreds of internal and external applications, features, and functions available to enterprises today. Some of the major features to consider are:

Understand what the goals are that you are trying to accomplish. Just because a vendor offers a feature, it doesn't mean you need it, or even that you should have to pay for it.

Go slow, and set realistic and attainable KPIs -- you don't have to implement everything all at once. Look for the features that will help solve or lessen your most immediate problems, implement it, work with it, and understand the impact on your business.

What Comes Next
As we look ahead into the future, several trends are taking shape:

Other things to remember when considering a contact center implementation:

Whatever direction you ultimately decide to go -- cloud, premises, premises/cloud hybrid, single vendor, stand-alone contact center software, in-house, consultant, out-sourced, etc. -- one thing should be clear: Contact centers are in your future and will be for a long time to come. Make sure you choose a platform that is scalable, flexible, and can be adapted to the next generation of technology.

"SCTC Perspectives" is written by members of the Society of Communications Technology Consultants, an international organization of independent information and communications technology professionals serving clients in all business sectors and government worldwide.

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