Digital Lifescapes

I've been monitoring research about the evolution of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) applications in Customer Care channels. Gartner predicts that 30 percent of Fortune 500 companies will offer service through only a single AI-enabled channel by 2028. That's very insightful. This forecast underscores a shift in how large enterprises approach customer care. The move towards consolidating service offerings into a single, AI-powered channel represents a dramatic departure from the multi-channel approach of the past. It's a bold prediction that could reshape the implementation of existing customer support processes and global frontline corporate business operations. Key AI Market Development Insights The headline statistic is particularly striking. This suggests a high level of confidence in AI capabilities and a willingness to fundamentally restructure traditional service delivery models. Gartner predicts that by 2026, conversational AI deployments within contact c...

The 'future of work' for call center or contact center employees will include more 'flexible working' location options. Seventy percent of customer service and support employees want to continue to work from home (WFH) at least once a week after the pandemic ends, according to the latest market study by Gartner. In September 2020, Gartner surveyed 5,000 employees, including 550 customer service professionals, and found that service employees who traditionally did not have many opportunities to WFH are now used to it and like it, and they wish to continue in some capacity once the pandemic is over. This is in line with most service leaders who believe WFH is here to stay post-pandemic. Eighty-one percent of service leaders believe between 30 percent to 80 percent of their workforce will primarily be working from home two years from now. Future Hybrid Workforce Market Development "As service leaders weigh the future of their work from home programs, they’ll have to b...

Call centers must address their customer's changing channel preferences and improve first contact resolution on the web -- in both emerging and developed countries -- according to the latest market study by Ovum. To help understand how adoption of social media and smartphones is evolving, Ovum conducted a survey of over 4,000 consumers across four developed countries (the US, the UK, France, and Germany) and four emerging countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). In a new report the market research firm outlined the survey results, including the ways in which consumers are using social media for customer service across these regions. "Web savvy consumers in emerging markets, such as China and India, are more inclined to use social media for customer service as opposed to consumers in developed countries, said Aphrodite Brinsmead, Customer Interaction Analyst at Ovum . They are using social media to ask and respond to questions in communities, as well as to complain...

According to Infonetics Research, the IP contact center (IPCC) market will finish 2008 up 37 percent over 2007, with many vendors reporting robust sales, particularly in Asia Pacific. The Infonetics' report shows sales of unified communications (UC) products will end mixed in 2008, with unified messaging platform sales up and communicator software sales flat. Because of the deterioration in economic activity worldwide, enterprise spending on telephony products is expected to slow in 2009, which will also pull down the overall UC and IPCC markets, although the IPCC and communicator segments will weather the economic downturn better than others. "The communicator market continues to be fluid, with growth not yet following established patterns and market share positions shifting one period to the next as PBX vendors battle each other and Microsoft," said Matthias Machowinski, Infonetics Research's directing analyst for enterprise voice and data. It's an exciting mark...

According to IDC's upcoming study Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) Unified Communications Forecast and Analysis Update, Q207, the unified communications applications revenue in the region will grow from $448 million in 2007 to $844 million in 2011 at 17 percent CAGR. "Currently, IP contact center forms the largest share of UC applications spending. During the latter part of the forecast period, conferencing applications revenues will outperform other UC applications as enterprises get serious about improving collaboration in the region. In Q2 2007, instant messaging revenue saw the highest growth over the previous quarter," says Shalini Verma, Senior Analyst for IDC's Asia-Pacific Telecommunications Research. The current growth is fueled by the adoption of IP telephony in the government, banking and financial services, and services industry verticals, as well as greenfield projects in emerging markets. These industries are also likely to be the early adopters of unified...

Strong customer relationships are critical to the success of most businesses. Also, companies rarely get a second chance to make a quality first impression. Because 77 percent of today's interactions are still being conducted by phone, it is still critically important that front-line customer service representatives can operate efficiently and effectively, according to the Yankee Group. Call centers engage in customer relationship management (CRM) projects to transform themselves into an intelligent contact center -- defined as a single point of contact to provide quality customer care, while also acting as an individualized marketing channel to push new products and services. A contact center must empower front-line customer service representatives (CSRs) and customers with actionable information through context-driven assisted and self-service applications. CSRs and customers now have the correct information in the right format for each interaction, increasing the efficiency and ...

Are contact- or call-centers perceived by their senior management as strategic assets to their businesses and, therefore, a high priority when it comes to investment in growth and capabilities upgrades? A recent survey by InfoTrack found that only 42 percent of contact center respondents have an explicit objective to be perceived by corporate management as a strategic asset. However, within that 42 percent, 20 percent said their senior management believes investments in their contact centers are strongly aligned with the strategic objectives of the business --and 65 percent said investments are reasonably or strongly aligned. The message is that for those centers actively pursuing this as an objective, they are making good progress. That said, the problem is that fewer than half of all contact centers are even trying to achieve this objective. Given the projects that I've previously worked on with clients, I'm not at all surprised by these findings. When asked about the impact...