Glimpses of the Next-Gen Contact Center

Introduction

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to speak at a conference in New York City on the “The Future of Call Center Technology,” or Next-Gen Contact Center. There are some dynamics taking place at this moment that are creating a “perfect storm” around a Next-Gen Contact Center. They include:

• Social Media integration
  
  
• Mobile users
  
  
• Speech Analytics
  
  
• Cloud-centric Contact Centers
  
  
• Video integration
  
  
• Next-Gen UC integration

All of the above provide hints of what the Next-Gen Contact Center will look like.

What We Already See

We’ve already seen adoption of Contact Center technologies over time, some of which include:

• CTI integration
  
  
• Call recording, including screen scrapes
  
  
• Scheduled callbacks
  
  
• Post call survey
  
  
• E-mail response queries
  
  
• Web response queries
  
  
• Data mining
  
  
• Speech recognition
  
  
• Speech to text

History says that it takes approximately (up to) 10 years for a new technology to become mainstream in the commercial market segment. We currently see mobility and social media way ahead in the consumer segment of the market, in fact, in the consumer space we cannot seem to get enough of either of these areas.

Both social media integration tools and speech analytics have been introduced into the Contact Center environment over the last 36+ months, and in many cases, just beginning to see adoption now. When recently polled in an ad-hoc survey, it was cited that just 10 percent of those surveyed are beginning to use these technologies. In the end it’s about embracing the value of these new technologies and incorporating it as a process and function into your Contact Center.

Next-Gen Customer Service

I drafted a definition of Next-Gen Customer Service, as follows:

“Next-Gen Customer Service will provide elements of instant feedback, rich context, collaboration, higher customer engagement, handling calls from/to any device, and utilizing all UC tools to provide a customer experience that is rich, rewarding, and a delight. In this era Customer Service will know no bounds.”

In my opinion, elements of the Next-Gen Contact Center will help complement the definition above, including:

• Cloud Everywhere – accessing a Contact Center rep through a cloud-based service will be the majority of customer service calls in the near future
  
  
• Real-time feedback on quality experience – through metrics and real-time feedback, Contact Centers will be able to better gauge how they are performing
  
  
• Better analytics (Big Data integration) – Big data will have a huge impact on creating metrics and analytics for better measuring the Customer Service experience
  
  
• Apps Growth – Apps will continue to drive opportunities to connect directly with customers
  
  
• Mobility to the Contact Center – Mobile devices, including smartphones, tablets, and laptop/tablet hybrids, will become a key means to communicating to the Contact Center
  
  
• Video Customer Service – Video, which to date has gotten little traction in the Contact Center arena, will become the mainstay means of communication in the near future
  
  
• Next-Gen UC – Next-Gen UC will incorporate all of the ingredients of the current UC technologies AND , in addition, add easy to use, device awareness, identical user experience across multiple devices, powerful search, geo-location presence, and rich content (integrated to Salesforce, Google, other apps)

Some of these already correlate to current market trends mentioned earlier. Integrating mobility as a core element/strategy will help drive the Next-Gen Contact Center for the following reasons:

• It’s convenient
  
  
• It’s relevant and always available
  
  
• It’s comprehensive (i.e., smartphones and tablets)
  
  
• It’s the preferred media (eventually)

Enter – The Amazon Factor

Amazon.com has recently launched its Mayday button in the latest Kindle HDX, providing a video experience with a Customer Service representative unlike anything we have seen to date. Some interesting Contact Center components included with the Kindle Mayday button include:

• A 15 sec SLA – A 15-second SLA is the new defacto for answering a Kindle HDX “Mayday call” (industry standard defacto for a Contact Center is either 80/20 – 80 percent of calls answered in 20 seconds). Using this statistic alone, Amazon clearly is setting the bar for a new level of customer service and customer experience
  
  
• Multi-Channel Web query – Through a private Amazon portal, the individual is querying an Amazon customer service rep, similar to a Web query
  
  
• Video/voice – Uses video over IP to connect a customer service representative, not a telephone call. This means from a customer interfacing viewpoint proper lighting, seating, dress codes, for a customer service experience different than the standard “telephony call.” From a technical viewpoint, it must include all elements of a great video call, including bandwidth, minimal latency, jitter, pack loss, availability, and as many elements of QoS as possible
  
  
• Real time help – Help is no longer just a Help key or connection to a set of Help links as in today’s “Help” environment; instead, Mayday brings real-time help by a trained customer service expert to provide help to the customer in real time
  |
  
• Collaboration - both the customer service rep and yourself will be able collaborate with one another and share screens of the Kindle HDX
  
  
• Device Take-Over – Kindle HDX customer service representatives will be able to take over the Kindle HDX with the user’s permission and provide real-time on-screen help and fixes for various customer requests
  
  
• Tracking success/metrics – Amazon will leverage metrics for call length, SLAs, customer feedback, and other metrics to measure the success of the Mayday button and the Amazon customer experience. Note that the call is video (vs. audio) and expected call length will likely be higher than the industry defacto of three minutes for a voice-only call (based on dynamics of customer greeting, solving an issue, and consumer response).

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has been quoted regarding the Mayday button as the company’s new "Wow" factor – at the intersection of "customer delight" and "deep integration through the entire stack." The new Amazon technology incorporates “hints” of the Next-Gen Contact Center by incorporating video, collaboration, multi-channel, and a hard-to-beat new industry SLA. It also incorporates elements of the earlier defined Next-Gen customer service, including instant feedback, rich context, collaboration, higher customer engagement, handling calls from/to any device, and utilizing all UC tools to provide a customer experience that is rich, rewarding, and a delight. While we do not know all of the Contact Center tools used at Amazon, be rest assured that video, metrics, and ERP and CRM will be among those facilitating the Amazon customer experience.

Good News and Bad News

The good news is that we are entering the Next-Gen Contact Center arena, and in the early-adopter stage. The bad news is that if these technologies are not on your organization’s roadmap (even longer term), be ready for your competitor to adopt and have on their own roadmap.

It’s time to begin to look at those elements of the Next-Gen Customer Service experience and Next-Gen Contact Center to maintain and enhance your company’s customer service position in the marketplace. It’s also time to facilitate creating your own Next-Gen Customer Service Strategic Plan, incorporating many of the elements and technologies mentioned in this post, with a planned rollout for optimizing and incorporating these next-gen tools to bring a Next-Gen customer experience to your customers.

6 Responses to "Glimpses of the Next-Gen Contact Center" - Add Yours

Paul Scott 11/30/2013 2:03:16 AM

Stephen, great article and I think you've summarised many of the key trends and challenges contact centers will face over the next 5 to 10 years. However the biggest single determinant of change for contact centers is human behaviour; customers simply prefer to try and fix things themselves these days and its trend that has profound implications for contact center technology and operations. The human factor comes up in the Global Contact Centre Report issued in November. Over 800 organisations took part in this survey and the trend data backs up a lot of the takeaways you've highlighted.

Steve Leaden 12/2/2013 11:07:11 AM

Paul -

Thank for your thoughts and I appreciate your comments. You are absolutely right - human behavior is a deterrent. Using the tools stated in the article, I believe that as long as an "ease of use" factor is part of the Contact Center design which attracts people to use a Web site, a call-in, a video call-in, then customers will be more likely to engage the Contact Center. I know in some retail environments, the idea of getting to a Customer Service rep quickly can be a big deterrent. I recently was on a call to a major carrier, as a consumer, and entered my account #, went through 5 different menus, waited close to 10 minutes, and when I finally got to a representative still got "what is your account # please" with other basic generic non-customer engaging questions. I am sure many of us have experienced such at some point.

So I would encourage organizations to ask some key questions here, based on the profound changes you cited:
- "How can our organization use these newer technologies to engage customers at a higher level and minimize "self fix" trends or other less-engaging processes?"
- "What is our current SLA and how can we improve on it?" How easy is it to get to a customer service rep and how quickly?"
- "How can we personalize the customer experience recognizing the customer, their name, and areas they personally care about?"
- "How can we create a "customer delight" environment that encourages customers to come back to us regularly with the promise of repeat business through better troubleshooting and problem solving, better interaction?"

I think Amazon is looking to change some of the above with their new technology, engaging the customer personally, helping to solve the problem proactively, and promises of a shorter SLA.

Thanks again, Paul, for your thoughts - definitely something to ponder for sure.

Steve

Dave Michels 12/2/2013 11:54:16 AM

I am suspicious of the 15 second SLA for live answer with Mayday. It is impressive, but it's not really meaningful. First, the only ones that can use it have the new Kindle, that's a small group. Not like an 800 number. Secondly, seriously - who is going to use Mayday more than a few times - mostly out of curiosity. How much support does a Kindle need?

In other words - Amazon is getting great attention and publicity with Mayday, and it was innovative - but it isn't real world. Great customer service is far more achievable when it's limited to small groups on very simple items.

Art Rosenberg 12/4/2013 8:34:31 AM

I have already commented on Amazon's "Mayday" announcement, with a practical suggestion for showing a picture of the agent the consumer is talking to, not watching them "on camera." More importantly, however, is the general need to immediately acknowledge any form of customer contact "contextually," rather than put them into a traditional telephone wait queue. (We are not talking about emergency services that require immediate attention.)

As consumers become more accessible and more flexible with mobile smartphones and tablets, the old "telephone game" for customer services can be easily replaced with online mobile apps (self-services), flexible "click-for-assistance" options, timely notifications and alerts, and flexible callbacks when necessary.

Lawrence Byrd 12/9/2013 10:31:06 PM

I have to disagree with Dave Michels - I think the whole point of Mayday is that it is specifically targeted to a particularly important group of customers. In this case all those that are investing in, or being gifted, Kindle HDX tablets (where the real money is made on the books, movies and purchases they then go on to make, rather than the device ... razor blades and all that). And this is where there is a major tablet market-share war going on against Apple that Amazon wants to impact with this customer experience as one of their top 3 highlighted features for buying a Kindle HDX. And I wouldn't say the number of future potential tablet owners is a "small group".

So why should a new customer experience not be "real" if it only applies to a targeted customer segment? The whole point of the NORMAL Amazon buying experience is that I NEVER talk to anyone and I don't even know how to call them. I am very "process loyal" to Amazon - I am a steady customer because it always works and does what I expect with close to the best prices anywhere, NOT because I get a good contact center experience. In fact, I get NO contact center experience - my customer service interface to Amazon is the UPS truck that I put things back on the few times I don't like what I get!

So I think Amazon's choice to open up a more expensive customer experience model for one particular sub-segment of their customers says some interesting things about how important they think this segment is to them, rather than being a model for all their customers. I do agree that they would hope to minimize calls over time, and I see the whole "let me show you" screen-markup design as precisely helping them train users rather than doing things for them - an excellent in-context customer experience design model.

Steve Leaden 12/10/2013 9:49:52 AM

Dave, Art, Lawrence –

Many thanks for your comments. I wrote the article as a result of looking down the road in the Contact Center space, and cited Amazon taking a leap as to doing something ‘in front’ and different than others out there. Amazon is known for being visionary and ‘out of the box’ both technically and offer-wise. Look at the Kindle, Amazon Prime, Amazon SAN Web Services, US Post Office use on Sundays, and the new ‘drone’ delivery system recently announced.

True to Dave’s point, Amazon may be limited to start and thus possibly control the user experience better with a limited audience. The fact that Amazon is providing a video experience, 15 sec SLA, and device takeover at no additional cost I find fascinating, and in my opinion sets the bar, at least in principal, for things to come.

To Art’s point, to immediately acknowledge any form of customer contact "contextually," rather than put them into a traditional telephone wait queue is unprecedented. And to Lawrence’s point, an excellent in-context customer experience design model – I agree.

Thanks all for your comments. We’ll see where this takes Amazon over the next 12-24 months.

Steve