XALEON BLOG

Top 3 Contact Center Trends In 2020

Ziad Hussien
4 min Read
Apr 8, 2020

We can all agree that 2020 is quite an “interesting” year. Industries are evolving the way they do business, and contact centers are no exception. It’s already a known fact that many contact centers are moving their business from a ‘cost center’ to a ‘center of business opportunities.’

In the last couple of years, virtual agents and cloud communications were at the top of everyone’s minds. Social media and online platforms rose to power as more and more contact centers utilized their services.

This year, digital transformation seems to be at the forefront of the industry as businesses trend to provide their customers with an optimal customer service experience.

Here are three Top Trends for Contact Centers in 2020:

Trend #1 – KPIs have Changed

It’s a whole new ball game now that KPIs main focus is no longer Average Handling Time or Cost per Call. Today, contact centers focus on Customer Satisfaction and First Call Resolution as their main metrics for measuring KPIs.

Forrester VP and Principal Analyst Kate Leggett said customers just want “an accurate, relevant, and complete answer to their question upon first contact so they can get back to what they were doing before the issue arose.”

Modern contact centers are adopting visual engagement tools for proactive communication to better customer experience. It’s a pain figuring out precisely what the customer wants without proper live engagement tools.

How can Visual Engagement Tools boost your KPIs?

  • Improves the Net Promoter Score – Live engagement tools help customers throughout their entire buyers Journey. By incorporating these tools, you reduce customer efforts, enhance the agent’s knowledge, higher agent engagement, and, most of all, have better resolution rates.

  • First Contact Resolution – With live tools, such as Co-Browsing or Video Chat, agents can quickly identify the needs of customers. Whether it be filling out a complex bank form or guiding customers through an online purchase, visual engagement tools facilitate the customer journey across your website that result in First Call Resolution.

  • Increase the productivity of agents – Rather than wasting valuable time trying to understand the needs of your customers, your agents can use visual engagement tools and guide the customer to a faster resolution.

Trend #2 – Artificial Intelligence

Contact centers are using AI to streamline call center experiences for customers and agents. Contact centers use AI for analyzing call data and records to foretell customer behavior.

Artificial Intelligence has delivered on making the customer journey easy, offering straightforward engagement across the customer experience. It also saves call center managers the painfully long hours of creating call routing algorithms.

Having an AI system in place enables businesses to route conversations to the most suitable agent and minimize customer wait time.

Furthermore, the infusion of artificial intelligence in conversations has drastically improved agents’ efficiency. AI application assimilates information over time and formulates patterns that can be easily addressed. This helps the agent’s efficiency by providing multiple solutions or responses to a customer’s complaint. Based on the situation, agents can either choose to follow the AI’s conclusion or disregard it.

Trend #3 – Better Support with Omnichannel Communications

More and more businesses are turning to a holistic customer engagement approach that uses unified models of Omni-channel communication. Customers value the ability to engage with a company through multiple avenues at the same time.

Invespcro research reveals that businesses with omnichannel customer engagement retain 89% of their customers.

The customer journey is complex and doesn’t follow a single rule. While a customer’s journey may begin on one channel, feedback and reviews are taking place in an entirely different channel.

Developing Omnichannel communications can layout better customer support practices and provide a healthy foundation for your business to grow.

Last Words

The competition among call centers is increasing rapidly! More new technologies are likely to impact the contact center space, and it’s paramount that you get on board with new trends in customer support. Visual engagement tools, AI systems, and omnichannel communications have shaped the way contact centers operate in 2020, and this wave will only grow.

Don't forget to tell your friends!

Ziad Hussien

In his dynamic role as Head of Content at Xaleon, Ziad is known for his tenacity and passion for shaping the future of company-customer communication. In this blog, Ziad shares his insights on how to improve and deliver the best possible customer experience when being in touch with customers digitally. Outside of Xaleon, he is an avid reader, blogger, pianist, poet, and a proud husband.

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