People love lists, and it seems predictions for the contact centre in 2017 industry is no exception. The dawn of 2017 saw it tabulating topics and issues expected to be important in the year ahead.
- CCW Digital has come up with a total of 16 things that contact centre leaders must do in 2017.
- Contact Center Pipeline has gathered 17 contact centre experts to share their views on what’s coming up in 2017.
- CCW Digital is promising insights throughout the year from no fewer than 52 “incredibly insightful individuals”.
US web site CCW Digital, which claims to be “the most significant community, resource hub and advisory for customer management practice, call centre and customer experience professionals,” had a list of Eight Things Contact Centre Leaders Must Do In 2017, as follows.
- Establish an EP3 Experience (EP3 being shorthand for effortless, personalised, predictive, and proactive experience)
- Reward Customer Centricity
- Optimize the Agent Experience
- Humanize Technology
- Integrate & Unify Contact Channels
- Earn Every Seat at the Table
- Value Scalability and Versatility
- Leverage Data
- Keep embracing voice. Start embracing voice
- Embrace next-generation agent development
- Train based on the voice of the customer
- Don’t just think about service
- Get smart about artificial intelligence
- Establish your corporate identity
- Be experiential
- Help your organisation say “yes” – at all times, in all channels
Meanwhile, over at monthly magazine Contact Center Pipeline, they’re offering 17 trends for the contact centre in 2017, based on the views of 17 industry experts who were asked to “share their thoughts on what to keep an eye on in the upcoming year.”
Contact Center Pipeline has broken these insights into four parts:
- part 1 looks at artificial intelligence, training, speech analytics and contact centre employment;
- part 2 at contact centre technology, headset technology, quality standards, PCI compliance and contact centre cloud migration;
- part 3 at voice of the customer, mobile, forecasting and scheduling and quality monitoring;
- and part 4 at customer experience as the centre of strategy, remote working, omnichannel journey management and cloud-based omnichannel.
With 17 pundits taking punts on what’s coming up you might expect a few conflicts and contradictions as well as consensus. Fortunately, Call Center Pipeline has limited each expert to one topic. So for example, in part 1 there are individual contributions on artificial intelligence, training, speech analytics and employment.
“Incredibly insightful individuals are constantly uncovering solutions to customer experience challenges.”
Call Center Pipeline’s 17 sources of wisdom, however, are dwarfed by the offering from CCW Digital. It has promised to provide, throughout 2017, insights from the top customer experience influencers for 2017 “incredibly insightful individuals [who] are constantly uncovering solutions to customer experience challenges … [and] more importantly, are constantly sharing what they find as part of a campaign to create a more customer-centric marketplace.”
There then follows a list of names, with CCW promising these individuals “will begin creating exclusive content for CCW Digital,” all 52 of them!
What is for sure, the one thing the contact centre industry won’t be short of in 2017 will be advice.
Contact Centre in 2017 and beyond
A contact centre in 2017 starts with choosing the right technology. Premier Contact Point’s cloud contact centre solution contains all the features you need for now and into the future. Contact us for an obligation free demo of our powerful contact centre solution.