Newly published for 2024! Check out the 4 megatrends shaping the future of customer and employee experiences in our CX Trends 2024 report.
2023 and 2024 contact center industry trends are focused on creating efficiency and cost-savings momentum while also improving customer experiences (CX) and employee experiences (EX). To achieve this, traditional contact center labor models won’t be enough. Instead, double-down on CX and technology innovations such as remote workforces, intelligent automation, and cloud infrastructure.
To help your organization gain long-term stability, here are the 7 contact center trends shaping 2024 and beyond:
- Distribute your workforce
- Continue remote operations
- Prioritize digital-first
- Expand CX self-service
- Rethink security policies
- Restart your sales engine
- Build a new training program
These contact center operations and technology trends for 2024 are shaping customer and employee experiences. Let us now dive into each in more detail, including why they are so important, business outcomes they can deliver, and next steps towards implementation and optimization.
Strategy #1: Distribute your workforce
Digital transformation skyrocketed during quarantine. This sudden and rampant change in how we communicate with agents and customers shook businesses operating only in siloed locations. Those who weren’t flexible enough to adjust faced agent shortages, operational issues, and business continuity challenges.
Meanwhile, organizations with distributed operations and at-home infrastructure fared better than those with centralized brick-and-mortar locations during the crisis. Contact centers with resources across the map were ready to disperse and deploy at-home resources or move operations elsewhere.
The days of the mega-centers are waning—the future is fast, nimble and spread out. Use a physical and remote hybrid model of work to maximize diversification in skills, resources, and locations. This flexibility will be needed to deploy customer service agents for various volumes and support needs.
Strategy #2: Continue remote operations
Disasters, natural or man-made, drew large volumes of support and exceeded capacity, leaving customers on hold during stressful times. Based on Harvard Business Review research during the crisis, some companies saw hold times increase by 34% and escalations go up by 68%. Expected or unexpected, leaders will want to be prepared for the next crisis. Remote options and flexible staffing models help contact centers stay prepared at scale.
The beauty of remote work lies in the ability to go well beyond the means of a traditional brick-and-mortar center. Utilize the service capabilities enabled by remote work to give your organization a flexible avenue to deploy emergency staff in times of distress. In times of uncertainty, the power of cloud based contact centers lies in pivoting and scaling support capacity quickly.
Strategy #3: Prioritize digital-first
Digital transformation tools surrounding automation, AI-enabled learning, messaging, and cloud based-systems now a necessity. Customer-facing organizations realized the mission-critical benefits of a digital-first when they had to deploy solutions quickly during the crisis.
The ability for artificial intelligence to analyze caller sentiment and provide relevant, real-time, suggestions to agents enabled them to deliver immediate results backed with human empathy.
Make automation, AI-enabled learning, messaging and cloud-based systems a mainstay for your contact center operations. Organizations have already seen costs decrease while contact resolution, employee productivity and customer satisfaction increase through a mix of agents and technology.
Strategy #4: Expand CX self-service
Massive effort was needed to support urgent needs in every industry when the pandemic hit. The triaging of labor resources to emergency issues made self-service essential to help deflect call volumes. Smart IVRs, online FAQs, automated chatbots and enhanced knowledgebases became key call deflection solutions.
These deflection solutions freed up agents for invaluable work that required more attention, thoughtfulness and empathy.
The push for self-service will enable organizations to get more service capacity with the same units of labor. These advancements will be useful for providing customers with relevant information quickly without having to force everyone into the voice channel.
Going forward, contact centers must provide digital omnichannel support with human back-up. When deploying self-service options, make it accessible for customers to move across channels and reach an agent promptly.
Strategy #5: Rethink security policies
Technology innovations are securely enabling remote work in areas including virtual private networks (VPNs), private cloud systems, "dummy" workstation machines, and more. As remote work becomes more common, security policies are evolving to allow these technologies to be applied in a contact center environment.
The future of work has changed, but security measures cannot. Now that a hybrid model of work is cementing itself, security should be better defined. For example, consider how video monitoring will allow for more flexible work arrangements without higher costs. Security leaders will have to rethink what works best and not be limited by what has been done in the past.
This may mean retraining individuals on what is expected of them when working from home. Introducing agents to refresher courses in security and contact center compliance can help them understand what is acceptable in their new home workplaces going forward.
Leaders will also want to consider deploying VPN multi-factor authentication. Utilizing two-factor authentication is safer than relying only on a password for protection. Two-factor setups are incredibly important for tracking who has access to cloud systems hosting sensitive data.
Strategy #6: Restart your sales engine
In-person sales visits are greatly minimized and broad, untargeted sales strategies will not be sufficient with tight budgets. Leaders have to consider how their digital tools fit into their overall sales strategy to accelerate the sales engine.
Use advanced analytics to help target the most likely sales leads and retention opportunities, paired with an optimized inside sales team to help sales organizations be more effective and improve speed-to-close. From a tactical perspective, an at-home inside sales model also allows for greater flexibility and more personalized customer experiences. Remote sales agents will also be essential to connect with customers for renewals, replacements, and upselling/cross-selling activity, which helps increase customer loyalty and lifetime value. Utilizing direct sales outsourcing is another great way to provide your team the skills and expertise to accelerate your sales engine.
Strategy #7: Build a new training program
Contact center agent training is a critical piece of great CX delivery. Organizations will have to rethink what the classroom environment will look like in a hybrid remote and physical future. Now more than ever, agents separated by unforeseen circumstances will want to be connected to an organization that is strong and held together.
Your organizations can leverage asynchronous, digital tools such as gamified learning, AI-driven training practice scenarios and immediate feedback on individual strengths and weaknesses to tailor contact center training that produces the highest performers. Leverage the potential of secure, non-classroom formats to personalize learning styles for different learners and offer self-paced, ongoing assessments.
Contact center future trends: Be ready for what comes next
As this article details, the 2023 trends in the call center industry can be used as a roadmap to help accelerate your company's digital transformation not just for this year but for the decade ahead. As both private and public sectors move past uncertainty and optimize their operations for 2023 and beyond, learn from these contact center industry trends and build upon them as permanent aspects of you customer experience and contact center technology strategies.
Further reading: CX and contact center technology trends reports
We hope you enjoyed this article looking at contact center trends for 2024 and beyond. Here are some additional reports on trends in the call center industry from our CX strategy and contact center outsourcing experts to help your company enhance customer experiences and accelerate digital transformation.
Contact Center Automation Tools and Trends for the Decade Ahead: Contact center solutions have moved way beyond just inbound and outbound calls. The implementation of contact center and call center automation provides many operational efficiencies and new ways of optimizing omnichannel support. Learn how call center technology trends such as automated and live chat, sophisticated interactive voice response (IVR) systems, and agent automation tools are shaping call center operations in the decade ahead.
Contact Center Digital Transformation Best Practices: Customer support is not the same as it once was. To exceed customer expectations and improve customer relationships, brands need re-imagine their center management and service organizations from a more customer centric point of view. In this article, learn about key call center trends that can help you optimize your customer experience and accelerate your digital transformation. Also learn about additional digital transformation and contact center technology trends, such as using data driven, predictive analytics to improve insights across all customer communication channels.
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Cloud Contact Center Trends - 5 Ways Cloud Unlocks Contact Center Potential: Cloud contact center technology provides the ability to maneuver flexibly while saving costs, but moving to the cloud is only half the battle. The real advantage is understanding how to deliver next-gen customer and employee experiences made possible through cloud technology. Discover 5 ways implementing cloud technology can help increase value and decrease costs for your contact center.
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3 Strategies to Keep Your Head Above the Cloud (Contact Center): Cloud contact center technology provides the ability to maneuver flexibly while saving costs, but moving to the cloud is only half the battle. The real advantage is understanding how to deliver next-gen customer and employee experiences made possible through cloud technology. Discover 3 ways implementing cloud technology can help increase value and decrease costs for your contact center.
Understanding the Customer Journey Every Step of the Way: There are a number of things a business can do to become truly customer-centric and create better personalized experiences. In this strategy guide, our customer journey consulting experts detail five ways journey maps can help you better understand the current state of your customer digital experiences.
11 Ways to Grow your Business: In a fast-changing landscape, one thing is certain - scalability, speed, and focus are essential skills to grow your business. In this strategy guide, learn 2023 telemarketing trends and how outsourcing inside sales can increase sales leads, enhance your sales funnel, and grow customer lifetime value.
Voice of the Customer Strategy and Best Practices: Most customer experience leaders say they have active voice of the customer (VOC) programs in place. They track NPS, ask customers to complete post-interaction surveys, employ speech analytics, and keep an eye on social media mentions. But too often they are not really listening. Gain valuable insights about your products and services by implementing these five best practices for customer feedback. Also learn about customer data analytics complications that hinder voice of the customer program implementation and how to overcome them.
