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AI capabilities to push global contact centre market to 16% growth in 2023

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The global contact centre (including conversational AI and virtual assistant) end-user spending is projected to total $18.6 billion in 2023, an increase of 16.2% from 2022, according to Gartner.

“Near-term investment growth rates for CC and CC conversational AI and virtual assistants are expected to dip as business volatility creates a lengthening of decision cycles,” said Megan Marek Fernandez, Director Analyst at Gartner. “Longer-term, generative AI and growing maturity of conversational AI will accelerate contact center platform replacement as customer experience (CX) leaders look to simultaneously improve the efficiency of customer service operations and the overall customer experience.”

The global conversational AI and virtual assistant market represents the fastest-growing segment in the contact center forecast, helping to spur 24% growth in 2024 (see Table 1).

Conversational AI capabilities are receiving greater investment as contact center decision makers look to incorporate conversational AI as part of a long-term strategy to reduce reliance on live agents. While the number of customer service interactions that are touched by AI continues to increase, most of these interactions are augmented with CC AI instead of fully offloaded to a virtual agent.

Overall, Gartner estimates around 3% of interactions will be handled via CC AI in 2023, growing to 14% of interactions in 2027.

Table 1. Worldwide Contact Center and CC Conversational AI and Virtual Assistant End-User Spending Forecast (Millions of U.S. Dollars)

2022
Spending		 2022
Growth (%)		 2023
Spending		 2023
Growth (%)		 2024
Spending		 2024
Growth (%)
16,077 17.6 18,690 16.2 23,171 24.0

Source: Gartner (July 2023)

Gartner expects general economic and geopolitical uncertainty to create some budget restrictions in 2023, resulting in a slowdown of premises-based contact center replacements and upgrade projects. However, customer-facing projects may be viewed as an important part of revenue retention and generation strategies.

“This means that while many IT investment areas will be weakened as budgets tighten, customer service and support initiatives that have the potential to differentiate the customer experience or streamline customer service operations could receive easier investment ‘buy-in,” said Marek Fernandez. “These factors will help contact center as a service (CCaaS) projects receive funding associated with broader corporate digital transformation budgets.”

Gartner expects CCaaS investment growth to accelerate as decision makers implement cloud-based contact center capabilities to modernize their customer service operations. This includes adoption among contact centers with many thousands of agents, which have been slow to adopt CCaaS. As part of modernization projects, CCaaS solutions will be implemented to support a broader mix of communications channels and will feature more significant uptake of advanced dashboards, analytics, routing, workforce optimization (WFO), knowledge and insight, and conversational AI capabilities.

Examining the impact of AI on Contact Centre and Customer Experience

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionising various industries, and its impact on the contact centre and customer experience sectors is profound. AI-powered technologies are transforming how businesses interact with customers, enhancing efficiency, personalisation, and overall customer satisfaction. Here, we explore the ways in which AI is impacting the call centre and customer experience sectors, reshaping the way businesses handle customer interactions…

Intelligent Virtual Assistants
AI-powered virtual assistants, such as chatbots, are transforming the call centre landscape. These intelligent systems can handle routine customer queries, provide instant responses, and assist with basic problem-solving. AI-driven chatbots can handle multiple customer interactions simultaneously, reducing wait times and improving response rates. They provide 24/7 support, enhancing customer experience and freeing up human agents to focus on more complex tasks.

Natural Language Processing and Sentiment Analysis
AI technologies, particularly natural language processing (NLP) and sentiment analysis, are improving customer interactions. NLP enables systems to understand and interpret customer inquiries, allowing for more accurate and relevant responses. Sentiment analysis helps businesses gauge customer emotions and sentiment, enabling tailored responses and proactive measures to address customer concerns. This AI-driven analysis enhances the overall customer experience by providing personalized and empathetic support.

Predictive Analytics and Personalisation
AI-powered predictive analytics help businesses analyze customer data to anticipate needs and personalize interactions. By leveraging AI algorithms, businesses can understand customer preferences, predict future buying behavior, and offer tailored recommendations. This level of personalization enhances customer satisfaction and loyalty, as customers feel understood and valued by the business.

Call Routing and Intelligent Call Routing
AI-enabled call routing systems use algorithms to match customers with the most suitable agents based on their needs and requirements. By analyzing customer data, such as previous interactions and purchase history, AI systems ensure that customers are directed to agents with the appropriate skills and knowledge. Intelligent call routing improves first-call resolution rates, reduces call transfer times, and enhances overall customer experience.

Voice Recognition and Natural Language Processing in Voice Assistants
AI-powered voice recognition and natural language processing technologies are revolutionizing voice assistants in call centres. Voice assistants can understand spoken requests, interpret intentions, and provide relevant information or assistance. These systems offer a more intuitive and convenient way for customers to interact with businesses, enhancing the customer experience and reducing call handling times.

Data Analytics and Customer Insights
AI-driven data analytics provide businesses with valuable customer insights. By analyzing vast amounts of customer data, AI algorithms identify patterns, preferences, and trends. This information helps businesses make informed decisions, refine their products or services, and improve the customer experience. Data-driven insights enable businesses to deliver more targeted and personalized solutions, ultimately enhancing customer satisfaction.

The impact of AI on the call centre and customer experience sectors in the UK is transformative. From intelligent virtual assistants and sentiment analysis to predictive analytics and personalized interactions, AI technologies are reshaping how businesses engage with customers. By leveraging AI-powered solutions, businesses can improve response times, personalise customer interactions, and deliver a seamless and satisfying customer experience.

However, it is important to strike the right balance between automation and human touch to maintain genuine and empathetic customer interactions.

Embracing AI in the call centre and customer experience sectors allows businesses in the UK to stay competitive, enhance customer satisfaction, and drive long-term success in an increasingly digital and customer-centric era.

These are the technologies impacting customer service and support in 2023

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The technologies with the most current value to service and support organisations are those that support assisted service.

That’s according to a Gartner survey of over 200 customer service and support leaders conducted December 2022 through February 2023, which revealed that the top technologies currently impacting customer service include: case management systems, internal collaboration tools and cloud-based contact centre systems to be of most value in 2023.

“Today, the most impactful technologies in service are ones that support reps to deliver low-effort, value-enhanced experiences in the live channel,” said Lauren Villeneuve, Sr. Director, Advisory in the Gartner Customer Service & Support practice. “These technologies are critical to continue to shift customers’ transactional issues to self-service so reps can focus on more complex issues.”

Figure 1. Top Five Most Valuable Technologies in Service (% of Respondents)

Source: Gartner (May 2023)

Customer service and support leaders generally saw more future value in technologies that help them understand their customers’ multichannel service journeys.
Leaders named several advanced Voice of the Customer (VoC) analytics methods among the anticipated-most-valuable technologies in service across the next two years, such as predictive analytics (85% respondents indicate high future value), digital experience analytics (84%) and customer journey analytics (83%).

Digital channel capabilities — in particular, using chatbots and delivering service via live chat — are also anticipated to see significant increases in value over the next two years.

“Customer service and support leaders recognize that the future lies not in simply adding more channels, but in delivering a continuous multichannel experience supported by consistent knowledge content and smooth, nonrepetitive channel transitions,” said Villeneuve.

Virtual Customer Assistants and Chatbots Are Expected to Grow the Most in Value

Survey respondents also recognize the growing need for investment in virtual customer assistants (VCAs) and chatbots. Of all the technologies asked about in the survey, they held the largest increase between current and future value: Roughly three-fourths of leaders indicated that chatbots will be highly or very highly valuable to their organization in two years.

Concurrently, VoC analytics methods are expected to have the largest increase in anticipated deployment by the end of 2023. As customer service and support leaders look to move beyond surveys for capturing VoC, a majority are expected to deploy or pilot some kind of sentiment analysis (72%), customer journey analytics (68%) and digital experience analytics (65%) by the end of the year.

“This signals that customer service and support leaders see the value of tracking customer experience as they navigate digital and multiple channel offerings,” said Villeneuve.

“The technology landscape in service and support is constantly evolving – and we expect it will continue to do so, particularly with the recent advent of generative AI,” Villeneue said. “For now, leaders are continuing to find value in the technologies which have traditionally supported service and are looking towards these technological advancements to further mature the function.”

Delivering a great experience for the new brand custodians

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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The role of Contact Centre employees has changed significantly in recent years. The arrival of AI, chatbots and webforms has encouraged customer self-service, leaving dedicated agents to handle the more complex issues requiring knowledge, understanding and empathy. But these employees are also increasingly working from home a few days each week, remote from colleagues and support.

They are targeted with achieving more first-time resolutions, irrespective of the complexity of each case. And they are expected to use an array of complex, interacting collaborative technologies – that may or may not operate seamlessly together. So how can a business optimise the digital employee experience for these increasingly valuable brand custodians? Tony Smith, contact centre and employee experience expert, IR explains…

Valued Resource

Contact centre agents are no longer the most junior, undervalued employees in the business. Today, they are the transitioning up the value chain, recognised as brand ambassadors, empowered to handle those complex customer interactions that cannot be managed through self-service technologies. Yet despite the elevation and recognition, contact centre managers continue to struggle with high levels of staff churn, leading both to additional costs and disruption that can undermine the quality of the customer experience (CX).

In an increasingly complex contact centre environment, it is now vital to understand the day-to-day digital employee experience (EX) of agents and its impact on their ability to deliver a great CX. It is no longer enough to track the standard key performance indicators (KPIs), such as call resolution, call abandonment and agent occupancy. Businesses need to understand how technology is affecting the experience and as a result influencing performance.

Call answer rate may be well within target, but if the video or voice quality is poor, what is the impact on the CX? Is one agent’s performance dropping because customers are unable to hear properly and therefore abandoning the call? When staff are both increasingly skilled and hard to attain, no business can afford to lose talent due to technical problems.

Complex Contact Centres

The challenge is that these individuals are typically using multiple tools across many diverse networks, creating a complex picture for IT to unravel. Indeed, in many cases the system uptime figures will look great – and the business will be blind to the specific problems affecting one or more agents. In these complex, multi-tiered environments it is now essential to achieve a single source of end-to-end monitoring. With one tool, a business can quickly identify the problems and the cause, such as the need to improve capacity to avoid call quality dropping when the contact centre is busy.

IT performance can be monitored on an agent-by-agent basis, highlighting issues that may be linked to home working, such as poor Wi-Fi or an agent using an unauthorised camera that is affecting video quality. Fast access to this insight empowers a contact centre manager to be proactive with individual employees, highlighting and addressing any technology issues that could be damaging their EX and hence the CX and, as a result, their performance.

Complete Digital Experience

This insight is fast becoming essential if companies are to address the loss of younger talent. The generations now in the workforce are both tech savvy and connected. They expect technology to work and work well – whether that is at home or in the office. They don’t want to arrive for a day’s training or a collaboration with colleagues to discover the equipment in the meeting room doesn’t work.

They also don’t want to arrive in the office to discover just three people on a floor that could support several hundred. Continually monitoring equipment usage across the entire business estate can provide key insight about building usage, and information used by buildings and facilities management to support operational planning.  If equipment is used just once or twice a month, companies can not only gain significant cost benefits through consolidating and reducing energy usage, but also ensure staff are always in a busy, supportive and collaborative environment.

Conclusion

Contact centre staff are increasingly valuable and valued – and the onus is on businesses to do more than just invest in IT to allow more customers to self-serve. Every part of the contact centre environment, whether an agent is at home, in the office, or reaching across the wider business to speak to a subject matter expert, must work perfectly to deliver a great employee experience. If the environment isn’t good enough, talented staff will leave for an employer that can offer a better digital workplace EX and, as a result, enable them to deliver a better CX.

Customer experience is employee experience – and vice versa

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Contact centres must provide exceptional customer experience (CX) – and technology, such as AI and chatbots, is playing a key role in transforming that experience. The fast-evolving customer journey is, however, also completely changing the employee experience (EX), with agents now tasked primarily with handling the complex and demanding customer interactions that technology cannot resolve.

But how many contact centres are actively assessing the impact on the employee experience  and, critically, measuring the resultant influence on CX? From flexible working to interactions with subject matter experts across the business, call centre agents are working across complex, multi-vendor collaboration environments – and every part of the IT infrastructure needs to work seamlessly if employees are to have the quality of experience required to deliver the new customer journey.

Given the improved business performance associated with engaged employees, the interplay between CX and EX cannot be overlooked. Tony Smith (pictured, above), contact centre and employee experience expert, IR explores the correlation between employee engagement, job satisfaction and customer satisfaction, and the importance of a single view of the truth across the entire customer – and employee – journey.

Engage Everyone

It is increasingly recognised that the delivery of great customer experience (CX) demands a great employee experience (EX), but far too few companies consider the two in tandem. Just as it is highly unlikely that dis-engaged employees would go the extra mile to help customers, contact centre employees faced with unhappy customer after unhappy customer are hardly having a great EX – and that can lead to higher rates of churn, disruption and, as a result, a poor CX.  It cuts both ways.

The challenge is that today’s contact centre environment is hugely complex. Companies have invested heavily in an array of innovative technologies designed to allow customers to interact through a variety of mediums. They are leveraging AI and chatbots to empower customers with 24×7 self-service. And they are encouraging agents to reach out  directly to subject matter experts in a bid to accelerate the resolution of complex customer questions. The problem for both customers and employees is that the experience across this complex environment is rarely seamless.

How many call abandonments are due to employees’ poor video quality when working from home? Are employee churn rates rising because customers are fed up with constantly repeating information from chat bot to web screen and agent? Companies will never achieve the customer journey vision without truly understanding, tracking and managing the interaction between CX and EX.

Complex Environments

The CX journey is often envisaged at corporate level but translating that to reality is not straightforward, especially when departments are using different technology.  It makes perfect sense for customers to self-serve but what happens when an individual needs to transition to an agent? Is the information input by the customer during a webchat automatically captured and shared with the contact centre agent when the interaction moves to a video call? If not, and the customer has to repeat the information every single time, the agent is starting each interaction in a negative situation, causing frustration on both sides, and leading to a quality of EX that is likely to accelerate agent churn.

Plus, of course, employees are often working remotely, which means the CX reaches through the organisation and into people’s homes. How is the business managing the new challenges associated with ISPs, Wi-Fi, laptops, unauthorised cameras and headsets, as well as multiple video conferencing platforms and collaboration tools? If contact centre employees do not have a good digital workplace, and if their tools are not performing as they should, their EX is too poor to enable the delivery of the desired CX.

It is important for the CX and EX teams to come together, to understand the customer journey, where it interacts with employee journey and to determine how, where and when problems are occurring. And that requires an end-to-end view of the entire IT estate: it is simply not possible to achieve the depth of understanding or speed of response required when reliant on disparate data provided by different monitoring tools.

Single Journey View

End-to-end monitoring of the entire contact centre environment, including home working and the different UC tools used across the organisation, can provide the business with invaluable insight into both CX and EX, and how they overlap. With a single view across the organisation, from contact centre tools to voice applications, video platforms, web and collaboration tools, a business can quickly determine whether the current IT estate can support the customer journey vision.

In addition to identifying strategic issues, such as the need to increase capacity at peak hours, a single view can also rapidly flag problems at a granular level to minimise disruption and avoid dissatisfaction. If agents – and customers – are complaining about video quality, for example, is the problem the video platform, the operating system, public internet, router or Wi-Fi? Or has the agent plugged in their own headphones and speakers? Is there a problem in achieving successful interactions between contact centre agents using one UC and subject matter experts using another? A single, cross platform tool can rapidly flag an issue, identify the problem and enable rapid remediation.

A single view of the truth also provides companies with a chance to assess the potential impact of changes that may affect the customer journey. Will, for example, a deployment of a new ERP or CRM system affect any part of the customer journey due to network capacity issues? How will the introduction of a new customer self-service tool work in practice? Using synthetic testing to assess the end-to-end implications for both CX and EX is enormously valuable, ensuring a business never introduces a change without truly understanding the wider business implications.

Conclusion

Investment in technology has become a priority for companies not only to improve CX but also address the challenge of employee recruitment and retention by delivering a better EX. In the process, however, too many have inadvertently created new pressures that need, urgently, to be addressed if the business is to deliver its optimal customer journey.

Bringing together those tasked with CX and EX and providing trusted, cross business insight can be transformational. With a complete understanding of both journeys, where they overlap and are complementary, a company can ensure that every change, and every technology investment is understood and managed to ensure the customer journey vision is realised to the satisfaction of both customers and employees.

www.ir.com/products/collaborate

Are you frustrated by the lack of collaboration between the big tech companies and their workplace technology? 

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By Rob Quickenden, CTO, Cisilion

Well, all that is about to change when it comes to workplace collaboration. Microsoft might dominate with Microsoft 365 and Teams, but there are still many companies that have huge investments in other meeting platform technology like Cisco Webex and Zoom.

For years Cisco dominated enterprise video, but since the pandemic, organisations have shifted to Teams in the millions and feel trapped with hardware which won’t work natively with Microsoft Teams, thereby limiting their collaboration strategy decisions.  

Many organisations use Cisco collaboration for their contact centres – technology which works seamlessly with Cisco Webex but again – not with Teams. This again hinders transformation since call centre users are unable to collaborate effectively with their customers on Teams and, worse, with other departments that have shifted to Teams. But all that is changing as Cisco and Microsoft are collaborating to offer complementary solutions across their customer base in two ways: 

  • Cisco Meeting Room technology is now certified for use with Teams 
  • Cisco Webex Contact centre is now certified for Teams 

Why does this matter? Because customers have been asking for a more straightforward way to achieve interoperability between Cisco meeting room technology and Microsoft Teams for years.  

Previously, to shift from Cisco Webex to Microsoft Teams, meant a complete hardware replacement of meeting room technology (or complex, clunky interoperability software). The latter is not a great experience for the user, and the former is not good for budget or from a sustainability perspective.  

Now businesses can keep their Cisco kit and either repurpose these to run Microsoft Teams natively OR, run both Cisco Webex and Microsoft Teams seamlessly together on the same hardware without interoperability apps and services. This means business can have the best of both, or the best of one. Rather than having to dump their hardware or invest in different hardware vendors, refurbish rooms, and incur expensive refit costs, they can continue to use what they have.   

What’s more – regardless of whether they desire to fully move to Teams, retain Cisco Webex or use a blend of both – the fact that Cisco Webex Contact centre is now fully certified for Teams means businesses that run, or want to run, Cisco Webex Contact Centre can now achieve seamless connectivity between both platforms.  

For many businesses, this gives them freedom over their choice of collaboration, voice and meeting technology without worry about integration with their Cisco Contact Centre. Teams now boasts more than 280 million users and is the fastest growing collaboration tool in the world with 20-25% growth year on year. So not being able to service customers who use Teams has been a huge headache for some businesses who had invested in Webex.  

This is also important for customers that have felt unable to move to Teams due to their sunk investment in Cisco meeting room technology. By partnering with Microsoft, businesses, Cisco and Microsoft all win. Cisco retains its loyal customer base (who love the premium Cisco hardware), Microsoft gets more businesses on Teams (as the blockers are down) and businesses can choose the best experience for their users that align to their collaboration strategy.  

Finally, Cisco Webex is a true enterprise class contract centre. Their certification with Microsoft Teams brings more choice to business, removes some of the blockers for Microsoft and allows Cisco to target businesses that use Microsoft Teams, and who are in the market for a new contact centre solution that is certified for Teams. With the big technology companies now collaborating on their workplace technology it’s a win, win for everyone.  

Chat apps driving the conversation when it comes to customer engagement

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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New research has revealed an apparent growing trend towards conversational experiences for customer communications, with chat apps such as WhatsApp Business Platform and social media channels such as Instagram driving the trend.

Infobip analysis shows that traditional channels like SMS still play an important role for time-sensitive messages, two-factor authentication, and one-time passwords. But when it comes to engagement and support, customers are shifting to more conversational experiences over chat apps.

The data shows a 73% and 51% increase in WhatsApp Business Platform and Email interactions in 2022 compared to 2021, highlighting the ongoing critical nature of these channels. Demonstrating the desire of customers to connect with brands on channels they already use, the data also reveals a thirty-fold increase in Instagram interactions last year. Meanwhile Google Business Messages and Apple Messages for Business interactions increased by 186% and 232%.

For customer engagement, WhatsApp Business Platform, Voice, and mobile app messaging saw the highest growth in 2022. Since the introduction of marketing messages over WhatsApp Business Platform, customer engagement and promotional usage increased interactions on the channel by 2.5 times. Meanwhile, Voice and mobile app messaging increased by 191% and 92%, demonstrating how customers now prefer instant, rich, and human-like experiences with a business or brand.

The data also shows how customers increasingly prefer to seek answers to their queries through chatbots on channels they use every day and that have rich capabilities. For instance, WhatsApp Business Platform interactions on Infobip’s chatbot increased by 69% in 2022 while Telegram and SMS interactions increased seven-fold and five-fold respectively.

When it comes to customer support, Infobip’s analysis shows customers now seek support on the conversational channels they use with their family and friends. Reflecting the desire for instant and rich messaging experiences, WhatsApp Business Platform interactions for customer support increased by 91%. Voice remains popular with a 51% increase.

“Our data reveals that conversational everything is rapidly becoming the norm for customer communications,” said Ivan Ostojić, Chief Business Officer, Infobip. “Whether for marketing, support, or sales, customers want a conversation with a brand on the channels they already use. For customers, the benefits are clear. They get richer, more convenient, and more personalized experiences. Businesses and brands meanwhile benefit from better customer loyalty and ultimately stronger sales.”

The move towards conversational everything is mirrored across many industries:

  • Reflecting the shift from traditional banking to conversational banking, rich messaging is picking up pace with huge increases recorded on Google Business Messages, Instagram, and Telegram
  • The retail and eCommerce sector recorded significant increases in MMS, Instagram and mobile app messaging interactions in 2022
  • The data shows skyrocketing growth among rich communications channels including Instagram, Telegram, and Messenger within the transport and logistics sector last year
  • In 2022, marketing and advertising companies have increasingly turned to rich communication on MMS, Messenger, and Google Business Messages
  • MMS and Google Business Messages are leading rich channels within the telecoms industry for customer communications

Majority of UK businesses still ill-equipped for a hybrid working future according to new survey

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UK businesses are firmly committed to a flexible working future but the majority are still in the planning stage of their hybrid working projects, according to a new industry survey of contact centre industry professionals.

102 UK Contact Centre Directors and Managers took part in the online “How successfully has your contact centre embraced hybrid working?” market study conducted by Pitch Market Surveys in partnership with the Welsh Contact Centre Forum, homeworking specialist Sensée, and insight and action platform provider SuccessKPI.

Survey responses were collected between November 3rd and December 19th 2022 and participants came from a broad range of different industries. Around a half (49%) of people responding work in large contact centres with 100 or more seats.

Return to the office?

Almost four-fifths of respondents (78%) said that, by November/December 2022, fewer than a quarter of their organisation’s contact centre advisers had returned to the office full time post lockdown. Two-thirds (66%) believe that 50% or more of their advisers will be working from home (at least part of the time) by the end of 2023.

Various hybrid models

The most popular hybrid working business model today is ‘flexible working between the home and office where EMPLOYEES decide where they work on any given day’ (37% of respondents). Other models used include ‘flexible working between the home and office where BUSINESSES decide where they work on any given day’, ‘set days at home and set days in the office’ and ‘(either) 100% from home or 100% from the office’.

Issues and benefits associated with WFH/hybrid

Pastoral Care (68%) and Communicating Effectively (66%) are the two issues cited most often by respondents as key hybrid working issues – with the main benefits being Happier and More Productive Employees (72%), Lower Carbon Footprint (61%), Additional Business Continuity (52%) and Traditional Recruitment Barriers Removed (45%).

Performance of WFH vs office teams

The majority of respondents say that the performance of their homeworking teams is comparable to that of office-based teams against all the criteria given within the questionnaire (including attrition, absenteeism, productivity, customer experience, and quality of service). For EVERY criteria given (apart from Average Handle Time), there is a greater chance of homeworker team performance being better than that of comparable office-based teams.

While most people agree that it is easier to recruit homeworkers than office-based workers, very few say that it is easier to monitor their work quality, manage their performance, or train them.

Are Managers ready for the challenge?

Under half (48%) of respondents think that their organisations have given Managers and Supervisors sufficient training and advice to manage, train and support their work-from-home teams.

Live adviser vs digitally-delivered customer service

When asked about technology channels used, 95% of respondents cite voice, 94% email, and two-thirds (67%) webchat. 89% of respondents say that customer contacts are mainly handled today by live operators. Looking forward, just 40% of respondents believe that the majority of their customer contacts will be handled by digital channels (i.e. not by a ‘live adviser’ phone call) by 2025.

WFH and self-scheduling hours

79% of contact centre professionals agree with the statement that their organisation ‘gives employees the opportunity to work flexibly so they can enjoy a better work life balance’. But 71% say that they can’t yet give contact centre employees the freedom and flexibility to self-select their own work schedules.

WFH/hybrid technology

82% of respondents say that they have enhanced IT or Information Security in order to enable home-based working.

“Three years ago, few businesses viewed full or part time homeworking as a viable solution for the majority of their people. The Covid lockdown changed that picture completely.  Employees today are increasingly demanding a greater say in how and where they work while businesses are seeing the long term benefits of homeworking – not for everybody in every situation but, nevertheless, for a sizeable number of people. The challenge is now on to make home and hybrid working effective – which will often require businesses to adopt a new mindset to how they recruit, train, schedule, technologically-equip, look after and manage their people.” said Simon Hunter, Chief Commercial Officer, Sensée.

20% of inbound contact centre volume will come from machine customers

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A fifth of inbound customer service contact volume will come from machine customers by 2026, as advances in Conversational AI, Automation, and Low Code Resources impact ways customers and reps interact.

Machine customers are nonhuman economic actors that obtain goods or services in exchange for payment. In customer service and support, they will resemble virtual assistants or smart devices that perform customer service activities on behalf of their human customers, such as reporting issues or gathering product information.“Machine customers will reset customer expectations about what constitutes a low-effort experience, creating a greater competitive gap,” said Uma Challa, Sr Director Analyst in the Gartner Customer Service & Support practice. “Organizations that embrace them will be able to differentiate their value and close the gap by meeting this new standard for effortless service.”

By 2024, Gartner anticipates 100 million requests for customer service will be raised by smart products.

Initially, machine customers will be best served in enterprise chatbot channels due to that channel’s ability to serve these requests at scale. Smart organizations will start to invest in conversational AI platforms (CAIP) to enable bot-to-bot communication.

“Organizations without a machine customer strategy in place won’t have a good way of distinguishing between human and machine customers,” continued Challa. “They may see their non-chatbot channel performance get worse without understanding why.”

Customer service reps are increasingly automating portions of their job to make their work easier, often but not always using company-provided tools to do so: Gartner anticipates 30% of reps will do so by 2026.

Examples of self-automation activities include using quick auto-response technology in emails to customers or using an unauthorized third-party call recorder to transcribe customer calls.

“While self-automation has been happening for a while in the software space, this trend will become more present internally in customer service because reps now have improved access to automation tools,” said Emily Potosky, Director, Research, in the Gartner Customer Service & Support practice. “Emerging resources such as AI models (e.g., Github Co-pilot, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Codex) will continue to make coding more accessible to reps, regardless of their skill level.”

With this in mind, Gartner expects there will be a greater variety of products in the marketplace centered around employee automation, specifically, low- or no-code solutions targeted at reps to help them self-automate. Vendors that offer collaboration platforms may also increase investment in coding features to allow for groups of reps to work together to self-automate.

“Customer service and support organizations that not only allow but authorize self-automation will become more competitive than those that don’t, as reps will notice and correct inefficiencies that leaders are unaware of,” said Potosky. “These organizations may also become more attractive employers, because potential job candidates are likely to appreciate the organization’s flexibility and openness to innovation.”

The rise of machine customers and self-automation opportunities represent a shift in how employees and customers use technology to interact with customer service. The growing accessibility of technology means that customers and employees are using it in unexpected, and often unauthorized, ways.

To prepare for this, customer service and support leaders should:

  • Create a framework for due diligence to review and approve self-automation opportunities.
  • Invest in a scalable chatbot platform to make it easier to enable machine customers to interact with enterprise bots.
  • Harness employees’ willingness to augment their own work processes, enabling them to create more engaging and effective ways of working.
  • Measure channel performance – bot-to-bot as well as non-chatbot channels – to understand the impact machine customers have on your overall channel portfolio.

148 million extra customer support calls: How the cost of living crisis is impacting customer care

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UK households will make an extra 148 million customer service enquiries this year as the cost-of-living crisis continues and consumer spending tightens.

That’s according to analysis by Firstsource Solutions, which says higher interest rates, inflation, and rising energy costs mean UK households are more likely to cancel subscriptions, downgrade packages, query bills and charges, and shop around for better deals.

Additionally, many households will struggle to maintain payments, get into arrears, and need to contact their providers for resolutions.

Forecast additional customer service enquiries to UK companies in 2023

  Enquiries per year, million Enquiries per month, million % of enquiries from the 20% poorest households
To financial services companies 64 5.2 34%
To energy providers 70 5.8 38%
To telecoms / media providers 16 1.3 25%
Total 148 12.3 35%

Poorer households are the most likely to struggle with payments. Those with incomes in the bottom 20%, under £17k per year, are likely to account for 38% of additional calls to energy providers and 34% to financial services companies.

Rajiv Malhotra, Head of Europe, Firstsource, commented: “In my experience, businesses want to be empathetic, but unprepared companies may soon find themselves with increasing numbers of vulnerable customers unable to get support, and ever longer waiting times. Putting the customer first means making it straightforward to ask questions and get responses across channels when and where it suits them. It also means having a process in place whereby customers with troubles, concerns or matters of a sensitive nature can speak to a human agent and get help when they need it.”

“We’re already seeing companies expand their contact centre capacity, but it’s difficult in the current labour market. Businesses can relieve some of the pressure on their contact centres by reviewing their digital customer journey by, for example, updating website FAQs, reviewing automated voice queues, adopting SMS and WhatsApp messaging, and channelling basic queries to chatbots. Companies can also plan ahead by considering options for more affordable packages and policies for customers who are behind on payments or facing financial difficulties.”