The times are changing in the contact center industry, in contrast to the near about total outsourcing and limited functionality of the multi-company call centers amidst the dot-com boom of the early 2000s, two-thirds are operated as owned or insourced business divisions as well as capable of engaging customers through a variety of channels.

News: Alone in North America, there are more than 60850 active contact centers supporting more than 3.1 million customer service agent (CSA) positions. This resulted in the use of contact center technology to be mostly inconsistent between contact centers, even in the service of similar industries. Additionally, the businesses are recognizing the critical role played by customer service quality (and customer service satisfaction) customer retention and profits. The number of contact centers staffed by less than 100 CSAs will continue to grow well into the 2020s.

Here are the top 3 trends in contact center technology to look forward to.

AI and machine learning tools

According to the experts' predictions, by the end of 2020, up to 85 percent of customer support will be taken care of by AI technology. This prediction explains why 78 percent of contact center operations managers are inclined or are planning to adopt AI technology, and 80 percent have or are planning to adopt the use of chatbot technology by this year. A majority of the business leaders believe that successful integration o AI will boost employee productivity and allow CSAs to concentrate on high-order issues.

Intelligent Interactive voice response technology

Although Interactive Voice Response technology (IVR) has been there since the 1970s, new developments in speech recognition have made it a valuable tool for increasing customer service quality, primarily when used in conjunction with chatbots and AI. Unlike the old IVR, the use of new IVR technology in contact centers can house the customers' growing fondness for voice-to-search tools, digital CSAs, and automated self-service. IVR is also an incredibly efficient tool for customer journey mapping, as the firms can create logic-based procedures which are at par with brand goals.

Customer recognition software

Customer recognition is a critical component of customer service quality. 72 percent of consumers expect that CSAs will have access to the data about their purchase and service history. Nearly half of customers expect specialized treatment in compensation for being a good customer. Henceforth it is not out of the blue that contact center operations managers are willing to invest in advanced customer recognition software to empower CSAs so that they can meet these expectations.

See also: Top Artificial Intelligence Companies