Digital Lifescapes

The contact center industry stands at a pivotal moment. What began as simple call routing systems has evolved into sophisticated customer experience platforms that leverage artificial intelligence (AI), rich messaging capabilities, and omnichannel communications. The shift from traditional Contact Center-as-a-Service (CCaaS) to conversational messaging platforms represents more than just technological advancement; it's a fundamental reimagining of how businesses connect with their customers. Today's customers demand personalized interactions across their preferred channels, whether that's voice, SMS or emerging platforms like Rich Communication Services (RCS). They expect immediate responses, contextual understanding, and the ability to switch between channels without losing conversation history. Intelligent CCaaS Market Development The results tell a compelling story of market evolution and opportunity. According to the Juniper Research latest market study, the global CCa...

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...

Enterprise leaders with large customer care organizations are exploring Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications to improve their online customer experience, increase operational efficiency, and reduce costs to improve profitability. Trained AI can be used to automate tasks, such as answering routine questions, freeing up contact center agents to focus on more complex inquiries. AI can also be applied to personalize the customer experience by recommending new offerings. Additionally, AI can be deployed to analyze vast amounts of existing customer data to identify support trends and patterns, which can be used to improve the overall customer experience. Customer Care AI Market Development Worldwide Contact Center (CC) and Conversational AI, including virtual assistant end-user spending is projected to total $18.6 billion in 2023 -- that's an increase of 16.2 percent from 2022, according to the latest market study by Gartner. "Near-term investment growth rates for CC and CC Con...

ChatGPT is trained to follow instructions in a 'prompt' and provide a detailed response. Prompt Engineering is a concept in artificial intelligence (AI), particularly natural language processing (NLP). While this topic has gained much attention, it's merely a sub-sector of the greater AI market upside. According to the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC), global spending on AI -- including the software, hardware, and services for AI-centric systems -- will reach $154 billion in 2023, that's an increase of 26.9 percent over 2022. The ongoing incorporation of AI into a wide range of products will result in a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27 percent over the 2022-2026 forecast period, with spending on AI-centric systems expected to surpass $300 billion in 2026.   AI-Centric Systems Market Development "Companies that are slow to adopt AI will be left behind – large and small. AI is best used in these companies to augment human ...

Recent global economic trends may motivate some leadership teams to make across-the-board cuts to their operations. However, the savviest executives will selectively optimize their operating budget to sustain strategic imperatives. Just 7 percent of Chief Finacial Officers (CFOs) plan to decrease customer service spending over the next 12 months, according to the latest market study by Gartner. Moreover, 21 percent plan to increase customer spending, and 72 percent plan to maintain spending. "In response to inflation, supply chain disruptions, and a tight labor market, CFOs will make trade-offs in spending that affect customer service and support (CSS) leaders," said Sarah Dibble, Director at Gartner . CSS Business Technology Market Development Their essential function is not a top priority for cost-cutting, compared to commercial real estate expenses or facility management and finance, which are most likely to face budget cuts next year.  Nearly all CFOs will prioritize digi...

Across the globe, many enterprise CIOs and CTOs have already deployed several use cases that deliver effective customer care applications through cloud-based contact center solutions. Today's contact centers allow customers to interact online with service representatives within an organization. Historically, customers were only able to reach organizations via voice telephone calls. However, after legacy call centers developed into modern 'contact centers', this enabled customers to communicate via their preferred method online. As companies continue to develop contact centers and invest in prominent technologies such as cloud services, contact centers began to adapt their architecture from on-premises to cloud-based solutions due to their increased flexibility, reliability, scalability, and security. CCaaS Market Development According to the latest worldwide market study by Juniper Research, the global Contact Center-as-a-Service (CCaaS) market revenue will reach $15.6 bill...

Enterprise demand for data analytics insight and IT optimization continue to drive applications for business intelligence solutions. Meanwhile, CIOs consider new use cases for neural networks, machine learning, and natural language processing. Overall spending on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the United States will grow to $120 billion by 2025, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26 percent over the 2021-2025 forecast period. Moreover, all 19 U.S. industries in the latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC) are forecast to deliver AI spending growth of 20 percent or more. The U.S. also accounts for more than half of all AI spending worldwide. Artificial Intelligence Market Development Retail will remain the largest U.S. industry for AI spending throughout the forecast, while Banking will be the second-largest industry. Together, these two industries will represent nearly 28 percent of all AI spending in the United States in 2025 and will ac...

Savvy vendor CEOs know that every employee that comes into contact with a customer can potentially impact new growth. And, they're raising the bar of expectations. Sixty-four percent of customer service and support leaders now report "grow the business" is their most critical priority in 2022, according to the latest market study by Gartner. The results of Gartner's survey of customer care and support leaders, conducted in August-September 2021, indicate a significant shift towards "adding value" and growing existing clients that have become a top priority for forward-thinking organizations. "Business growth as a goal is well-aligned with the idea of value-added customer service that creates more value for the customer beyond simply resolving their issue," said Brad Fager, research director at Gartner . Reimagine Customer Service Value Creation Adding value in customer service interactions can lead to new revenue streams while also protecting exis...

Leaders of Customer Care and Support teams have discovered that the legacy approach of designing and building call centers with rows upon rows of agents in tiny cubicles is obsolete. Staff turnover is typically very high in these environments. Now, there's a better approach on the horizon, as a result of experience gained from the COVID-19 pandemic era. Contact center as a service (CCaaS) will likely reach full mainstream adoption in less than two years, according to the latest worldwide market study by Gartner. Some customer service and support early adopters of CCaaS have overcome the initial hurdles and are beginning to experience the benefits. "CCaaS is a growth market," said Drew Kraus, vice president at Gartner . "The technology offers greater software agility with a lower cost of ownership, making it a key area of investment in innovation and customer service applications that surpasses the offers of legacy premises-based or server technology." Contact Ce...

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...

Informed CEOs know that harnessing their organization's customer data with analytics can expose valuable new insights that enable business model optimization and product or service innovation. That said, the early adopter organizations have already gained a competitive advantage over their peer group. Companies that have experienced significant revenue growth collect more customer experience (CX) data than non-growth companies, according to the latest worldwide market study by Gartner. The market study found that nearly 80 percent of growth organizations use customer surveys to collect CX data, compared with just 58 percent of non-growth organizations. Customer Data Analytics Market Development "There is a clear trend among growing companies to actively collect CX data using a wide variety of tools such as surveys, usability testing, focus groups and real-time analytics," said Jessica Ekholm, vice president at Gartner . This is what Gartner's analysts call t...

Chatbots have become increasingly influential in day-to-day online life. These software applications are developed to automate a range of tasks, from simple banking transactions to answering customer care requests, and have been adopted across industries. The potential use cases for chatbots will increase with advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technology. It's likely that as AI capabilities evolve, chatbots will complete more complex tasks on behalf of a user without requiring assistance from human customer service agents. Retail Chatbot Market Development According to the latest worldwide market study by Juniper Research , consumer retail spending over chatbots will reach $142 billion by 2024 -- that's rising from $2.8 billion in 2019. This represents average annual growth of 400 percent over the next four years. The Juniper analyst findings identified the retail sector as a primary beneficiary of advances in Natural Language Understanding (NLU) technologies. Th...

Savvy CIOs and CTOs at innovative retailers and other progressive organizations are piloting and deploying new cognitive technologies that enhance their customer experience. This is an acceleration of the ongoing trend that's very likely to transform legacy online support applications. According to the latest worldwide market study by Gartner, 37 percent of customer service leaders are either piloting or using artificial intelligence (AI) bots and virtual customer assistants (VCAs), and 67 percent of those leaders believe they are high-value tools in the contact center. Virtual Customer Assistant Market Development In recent years, no other channel technology has piqued customer care and support leaders’ interest more than AI bots and VCAs, according to Gartner’s Technology Roadmap Survey. In the survey of 452 service leaders across all industries and business types, respondents showed that confidence is leading more companies to adopt the technologies -- with 68 percent of...

More telecom service providers will invest in emerging technologies that enable them to improve operational productivity via automation, and introduce new capabilities for their customers. Virtual assistant applications are emerging, as telcos start to deploy artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). While the telecom network operators are prioritizing these virtual assistants primarily to improve customer engagements and consequently reduce churn rates, they are also positioning themselves to compete directly with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple Siri and Microsoft Cortana. Telco Virtual Assistant Market Development According to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research, the virtual assistants will enable telecom service providers to save $1.2 billion on customer care management by 2022, resulting in a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17 percent over the next five years. "The recent introduction of virtual assistants in customer service sig...

The global retail sector has been greatly impacted by the shift to online eCommerce. That being said, remarkable in-store innovation continues to transform the retailer employee and customer experiences. Retailers are beginning to use wearable technology to improve processes and customer satisfaction. Retailer wearables provide in-store employees with access to information such as stock levels, as well as to facilitate communication with team members. This allows shopper requests to be resolved faster and ensures that the employee continues to interact with the customer, improving the overall shopping experience. Retail Wearables Market Development ABI Research forecasts enterprise retail wearable shipments will reach nearly 10 million in 2022, increasing from just 2 million in 2017 -- that's a CAGR of 38 percent. This makes retail one of the fastest growing enterprise wearable verticals, with numerous devices improving store operations. Devices such as smartwatches, smar...

Chatbots have the potential to complete many of the tasks currently performed by online workers via utilizing Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems that are capable of fluent conversations with human clients and customers. Chatbots are becoming increasingly influential in day-to-day online life. These applications have been developed to offer assistance in a range of industries -- from simple banking transactions, to eRetail customer service inquiries. The aim of a typical chatbots is to apply AI and cognitive computing technology to streamline routine business processes, such as customer service transactions and eCommerce processes. Chatbot Market Development According to the latest worldwide market study by Juniper Research, chatbots will redefine the customer service industry, with healthcare and banking sectors set to benefit the most from these ongoing application deployments. Juniper forecasts that chatbots will be responsible for cost savings of over $8 billion a year b...

The applications for smartphones within physical retail environments already extend beyond in-store product or pricing comparisons by consumers. Moreover, the future use-cases that are likely to emerge in the coming year will expand across a variety of retail sectors. It has been a breakthrough year for indoor wireless location applications for retail, with ABI Research forecasting deployments to approach 25,000 by the end of 2014 -- that's up by more than 100 percent from 2013. "Vertically, the bulk of deployments are in clothing, big box, grocery, and shopping malls in 2014, driven by a variety of applications such as customer analytics, offers or coupons, product search, staff management, and navigation," said Patrick Connolly, senior analyst at ABI Research . Looking toward 2015, we can expect to see the quick serve restaurant (QSR) market growing with a significant demand for queue management technologies -- as illustrated by companies like Starbucks and Taco ...

What are the new customer service channels that are gaining traction in the marketplace? How has the concept of customer care evolved? And, what are the challenges and opportunities of "social" customer service? These are some of the key questions that eMarketer considered as part of their market study. The increased adoption of the internet has led to major changes in customer service best practices, according to the latest eMarketer assessment. Savvy shoppers already have an array of online customer service tools at their disposal -- including live chat, social networks and smartphone apps. Today, the stakes are high for all retailers that try to keep up with the current trends. Consumers will quickly punish retailers that do not meet their customer expectations -- but they will also reward those that do. Findings from a Q1 2012 study by the Temkin Group showed that customers are loyal to businesses that provide good customer service. In fact,  86 percent of surve...

The proliferation of smart devices and mobile apps will give rise to a more sophisticated and interactive customer service experience over the next four years, according to the latest market study by Ovum. With more than half of inbound customer service calls in key countries expected to be made from a mobile device by 2016, and 30 percent of these from smartphones, Ovum analysts warn business leaders to rethink their customer services strategies. "The rise of smart devices and the incessant focus on customer loyalty has created the proverbial perfect storm for enterprises that want to reinvent the customer experience around smartphones and tablets," says Daniel Hong, lead analyst at Ovum . Ovum expects a dramatic shift in customer engagement as more consumers use mobile apps as their primary gateway to customer service. When you take into account the multiple pathways supported via the smart device and combine those with context relay then you have a game changer in th...

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...