I originally wrote this about 5 years ago, feels like we are already moving towards some of these coming true.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A contact centre \u2013 but not as we know it….<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Will we all be wearing silver suits and travelling to work in hover cars?\u00a0 Probably not, but we will be working in a different way in 2020.\u00a0 The contact centre as we know it is evolving. Technology, culture and customer expectations are all impacting how we want and expect to interact with organisations.<\/p>\n Trends are already emerging about working from different spaces, self-service and unified communications technology \u2013 so are these trends set to continue?\u00a0 How will they impact organisations interaction with their customers? And how do contact centres need to change to take account of them?<\/p>\n Automation:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Automation won\u2019t be a choice in 2020, it will be the standard.\u00a0 The luxury of a full time team dedicated to conversations with customers will be something that companies have removed.\u00a0 In its place will be fully automated services based on customers profiles, past behaviours and purchase patterns.\u00a0 Companies will be able to predict what you buy, and the questions you\u2019ll ask about the product and automate their responses to you on an individual level<\/p>\n Speaking to, or interacting with a dedicated person for service will still exist but it will be a niche activity that companies will charge for.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Contact Centre without the centre:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n With the Governments hover commute project pushed back to 2030 due to cost pressures, travelling to work is still a minority activity.\u00a0 Most of us will work from our homes, or community \u2018hub\u2019 buildings near our homes.\u00a0 Environmental awareness, and general overcrowding on all forms of transport will continue to increase, and the current trend to work from home or from \u2018other\u2019 spaces will become the norm rather than the exception. Technology will have improved to the point where we will have high quality, high speed network connections everywhere so you can be in touch in any location.\u00a0 Given that all of these are shared spaces, they will never have the perfect groomed acoustics of a dedicated, so future voice devices will need to have a performance that can make it appear you are working in a dedicated space.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Turning the organisation inside out:<\/span> <\/strong><\/p>\n UC has already transformed the customer experience, enabling contact centre agents to get hold of people with the relevant skill sets to address queries faster. However, as the technology matures the idea of publishing your organisations entire availability \u00a0externally will also become the norm.<\/p>\n No longer will people have to dial 0800 numbers to get through to a contact centre agent in an organisation who may or may not be able to help. With completely open presence a customer will be able to go onto a company\u2019s website and connect to the appropriate person directly via a link which will automatically call them\u00a0 and initiate the contact with the correct person from the outset. Presence will advance to include location awareness, so you will be able to find someone near to you and with the right skill-set<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Conclusion:<\/strong><\/p>\n Ultimately 2020 will see the end of the contact centre as we know it. Turning your organisation inside out will mean that each employee is responsible for interactions with customers.\u00a0 Technology will support direct interaction between customers and the right employee \u2013 these interactions will be a two-way exchange of knowledge.\u00a0 For customers wanting to enable services or purchase products \u2013 fully automated and predictive processes will be used.\u00a0 And finally,\u00a0 there will be no \u2018centre\u2019 \u2013 teams will be distributed across multiple environments.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I originally wrote this about 5 years ago, feels like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[509],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}