Businesses are under continuous pressure to go beyond their conventional scope to deliver value. Among the key objectives that drive value, better customer experience (CX) has been in the list of all business stakeholders including the CIO, according to Foundry’s 2022 State of the CIO. Customer experience has emerged as key value drivers for enterprises and brands, to deliver a seamless journey which will have to go beyond conventional contact centers. How businesses respond to customer concerns is critical to modern shoppers. The widespread access and availability of mobile devices sets high standards for what consumers expect from today’s business. Moving a contact center to the cloud has the potential to improve the quality of the customer experience dramatically. Fast-growing businesses are discovering that CCaaS is the future of the customer experience. CCaaS is a cloud-based customer experience solution that lets contact center directors use third-party software and hardware that they specialize in and regularly upgrade so that you don’t have to. Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) is an on-premises call center option.

Why does CX matter more than ever?

CCaaS enables enterprises to merge their own indigenous or common digital channels into a single system by integrating social network messaging and online chatting functionalities. In the case Of B2B communications, businesses will be directed to a contact center staffer who understands their specific customer journey based on their history, purchasing patterns, and previous encounters, rather than a random associate. Brands can develop genuine relationships which can boost brand loyalty and customer retention even further.

AI Ushers in the Future of CCaaS

Automation and AI are propelling CCaaS into a more proactive mode, where customers can be notified of problems before they become personally aware of them. The way to think about this entire experience is not to have your customer go through the menu options to connect to someone, only after getting transferred multiple times — that is not the ideal path to success. The path to success with CCaaS requires being proactive, anticipating problems, and ensuring that the customer can engage in multiple channels based on their preferences and priorities. AI has brought and will continue to bring “the next big wave” for contact centres, assisting in driving intelligence through both the customer journey and the contact centre. AI can detect intent, offer guidance, make predictions, and be proactive — all before a customer or employee requires assistance. Customers can benefit from artificial intelligence through open APIs that integrate with AI engines, natural language platforms, and machine learning technology, allowing them to integrate with various bot vendors on the market.

IVR along with other voice service, video, mobile self-service and augmented reality will make way the Future CCaaS more scalable and sustainable

The primary purpose of CCaaS platforms is to provide organizations with flexibility, reliability, redundancy, and scalability when using sophisticated CCaaS capabilities to improve the customer experience. For CCaaS, an IVR, Click2Call, Missed Call, and Call Masking are all multiple touchpoints that help agents interact with customers.

Data Management with qualitative and quantitative data, analytics, real-time optimization, personalisation and communications tools and platforms have enabled CCaaS to drive better experience. The evolution of IVR along with other voice service, video, mobile self-service and augmented reality will pave the way to make the Future of CCaaS more scalable, sustainable and most importantly value driven. Continuity of interaction is key to deploy CCaaS successfully. The customer should be able to switch to any channel without losing the context of their interaction. For instance, if the customer makes a switch from chatbot to a call, the agent should be able to continue seamlessly without making the customer repeat the information again. Although there are still multiple technical challenges to integrating omnichannel contact centre services, the enterprises’ attitudes toward contact centres are evolving to deliver a holistic experience, which can create a massive impact on creating brand loyalty. Cost-cutting cannot be the main motivator, a lasting and a superior experience should be one of the primary objectives along with efficiency while discussing the adoption of CCaaS. As more organizations deploy Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS), the key to success is to think of it as a support to a human agent and not a replacement tool. It is no longer enough to simply identify the next available contact centre executive to assist a client. The best representative within the organization should be assigned to business clients. Just imagine, how valuable it would be to hand over the client who is about to end their business relationship to a well-trained retention specialist.

Published in The CXOtoday –
CCaaS powered by AI to transform Customer and Agent Interactions