When the first call center emerged in the 1960s, its purpose was simple: provide customers with a way to contact the companies they were doing business with. They were simple and somewhat ramshackle operations—little more than a few phones and a handful of willing agents. But that’s all they really needed at that point—simply being consistently accessible to customers was, at one point, enough to provide a competitive advantage.
Fast-forward to 2024. Even with the increasing presence of artificial intelligence and automation, the modern contact center still has a singular aim—to elevate the customer experience. For better or worse, today’s contact center leaders have countless technologies to consider when building out their contact center. It can be overwhelming, but it also provides an excellent opportunity for an organization to ensure that it meets its customers expectations.
In this article, we’re going to highlight a few of the contact center technology trends and technologies that are defining the contact center experience in 2024 and beyond. First, though, we’d like to briefly set the stage by introducing the top customer service and support priorities for modern contact center leaders looking to keep up with the times.
What Are the Top Priorities for Customer Service and Support Leaders in 2024?
As they relate to contact center trends, Gartner recently published a report outlining three top priorities shared by contact center leaders across a number of industries; top priorities include:
- An increasing desire or demand for more versatile self-service options for customers. After all, few customers want to wait in a queue for a simple request (like a password change or support ticket).
- A developing interest in the power of generative AI, including how it can enhance both the customer and agent experience. For example, contact centers can leverage AI to better understand the types and volume of customer inquiries, analyze the customer journey, and derive actionable insights for optimizing operations.
- A commitment to understanding—and optimizing—the customer journey through analytics. According to Gartner, the customer experience is defined as the “customer’s perceptions and related feelings caused by the one-off and cumulative effect of interactions with a supplier’s employees, systems, channels or products.” That means every interaction they have with an organization should be of consistently high quality—regardless of channel. Ultimately, the more data an organization is able and willing to analyze, the better-positioned it will be to create an improved customer experience, one that aligns with customers’ natural preferences and priorities.
To learn more about these priorities, and how contact center leaders are making meaningful changes to future-proof their contact centers, you can request a copy of Gartner’s full report here.
What Are the Key Contact Center Trends for 2024?
Now that we’ve defined the top customer service priorities, we’re ready to look at how contact centers are prioritizing a better customer experience—including the technologies that make it all possible.
The trends in contact center technology for 2024 and beyond largely align with the customer service and support priorities covered above. Well-selected contact center technology strengthens a company’s ability to provide self-service options, optimize the contact center using generative AI, and harness data and analytics for continuous improvement.
Consider the following contact center trends, which are actively transforming today’s most innovative contact centers:
- Customers increasingly expect companies to provide self-service capabilities. Not only does providing this functionality satisfy customers, it also means agents can spend less time handling small, repetitive tasks and instead spend their time on more fulfilling work.
- AI is coming to the contact center—but agents shouldn’t worry. In addition to handling basic, repetitive tasks, AI is starting to transform the contact center. Now, instead of having to pull endless data and analyze multiple reports, contact centers are using generative AI to identify opportunities to further optimize their operations.
- Data, data, data. It’s difficult to overstate the importance of data in the contact center. From understanding (and improving) the customer journey to evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of the contact center, actionable data is the key to improvement. Today’s contact center technology providers understand this, and make it easy for supervisors to collect and analyze historical as well as real-time data.
In the modern contact center, choosing the right technology is extremely important, and should never be treated as an afterthought. The right technology empowers agents to elevate the customer experience—all while optimizing contact center operations.
What Is the Future of Contact Centers?
While it’s true that there’s no real way to predict the future, reviewing the current state of contact centers—including their priorities and trending technologies—gives us a good idea of where it’s all going.
- For example, we can confidently say that the future is omnichannel, since customers expect to be able to contact a company without having to pick up the phone. By choosing omnichannel contact center technology—rather than piecemealing different solutions together—contact centers can provide a more streamlined and consistent customer experience.
- We also know that the future is dynamic and unpredictable. Think about the past few years, for example, and how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way we live and work. By choosing contact center technology that is customizable and scalable, organizations can ensure that their solutions can grow and evolve alongside their business.
- Finally, it’s become increasingly clear that the key to a great customer experience is a great agent experience. By providing agents with the right tools and technologies, they can provide more timely and personalized solutions for each customer.
Will Call Centers Become Obsolete in 2024?
As customers increasingly prefer an omnichannel experience, the single-channel call center may eventually become obsolete. To remain relevant and competitive, organizations should strongly consider upgrading to an omnichannel solution.
What Are the Tech Trends to Watch for in 2025?
It’s never too early to start thinking about the future—so what should you expect? In terms of customer experience trends for 2025, McKinsey suggests that “hyperpersonalized care” should be on every contact center leader’s radar.
As McKinsey goes on to note, however, this doesn’t mean throwing out what’s been working well in the contact center. Instead, it’s “simply a matter of continuing to do what they are already doing, only better,” something that can be achieved “with new strategies, technologies, and processes that tailor the care experience to each customer’s needs and journey.” It also means knowing your customers, understanding their journey, and making that journey as easy, seamless, and productive as possible.
This can all be accomplished by adopting an omnichannel or unified communications approach to the contact center tech stack. This not only improves the customer and agent experience, it also provides an opportunity to streamline operations and consolidate vendors, which can lead to impressive cost savings.
It’s easy to dismiss “omnichannel” as just another buzzword or trend, but all evidence points to it not going anywhere. In fact, as McKinsey notes, an omnichannel experience has become “a requirement for survival.” A final point worth noting: not all omnichannel is created equal. Successful implementation requires clear objectives and well-selected technology, among other factors (which you can read more about in the linked article).
Let’s Future-Proof Your Contact Center
If you only take one thing away from this article, it should be that the key to a better contact center experience comes down to using the right technology. Of course, it’s easy to become overwhelmed when comparing different solutions. If you can relate, you should consider working with a managed services provider like InterVision. We work with contact centers to help them identify their needs, evaluate potential solutions, and even configure and implement their chosen tech. And we make it easy! Reach out today to start the conversation.
