Navigating the Evolving Customer Service Landscape: Predictions for 2024
By Todd Fisher, co-founder and CEO of CallTrackingMetrics
In the ever-changing realm of customer service, staying ahead of the curve is essential for businesses to thrive. As consumer expectations and behaviors continue to evolve, companies must adapt their strategies and embrace emerging technologies to remain competitive. Leaning on my fellow industry experts, this article delves into key predictions for customer service in 2024, highlighting the transformative role of AI, the rise of self-service channels and the growing importance of customer experience.
“Patience will become an increasingly important strategy for demand generation leaders. For example, rather than being content with marketing qualified leads, success further down the funnel will impact marketing decisions. Leaders will rely less on quick wins and more on a built-out marketing mix that gets back to the fundamentals, keeps the audience in mind and supports consistent, lasting performance.
As consumer behaviors and preferences evolve, so must our strategies, and we can facilitate that evolution by really listening to our customers — putting out more surveys, orchestrating more focus groups, revisiting call recordings. We will prioritize being nimble and able to adjust as old tactics fall by the wayside and new avenues emerge.”
“The idea of a big room with hundreds of agents working terminals is out the door. CCaaS (call centers as a service) will be the prevailing model, blending a front line of intelligent voice assistants for assessing caller needs, providing resolutions (with ever-increasing range and effectiveness), or escalating the call to a tighter group of experienced agents to handle calls requiring very complex issues, or those requiring empathy. An AI competency center will keep people in the loop, and help to ease new team dynamics into the new work ecosystem - one in which the menial tasks are automated using a sophisticated tool managed (like all software) by knowledgeable employees.”
“Advanced chatbots will permit digital self-service channels to be more sought after by customers, who will continue to prefer picking up the phone thus prompting businesses with high-churn call centers to invest in more functional, conversational voice AI to handle the majority of their inbound support/service calls. These intelligent voice assistants will play a central role in the customer experience, and may often be the sole point of contact between a brand and their customer, making them as essential to a business as its website.”
“We’re seeing a lot of interest from typically slower-to-adopt industries, like home services, retail, and hospitality, not from an operational, cost-cutting perspective per se, but because they’re looking to hit the crossroads of maximizing their customer’s experience with their brand with automated efficiency. The concept of waiting on hold to talk to an agent – virtual or otherwise – is at an end.”
- Nikola Mrkšić, CEO and co-founder of PolyAI
“As AI continues improving, the phone channel will become much more natural and sought after. Through the gathering and synthesization of caller data, AI will be able to determine the correct next steps to build engagement, like sending a personalized deal or other special offers directly to the caller’s email. In a time when personalized marketing has become table stakes, this level of tailored customer service will win over the next generation of consumers.”
“Younger consumers increasingly buy things off the internet or retailer’s apps. It doesn’t seem plausible for them to pick up the phone and call with an inquiry or issue. However, there are still plenty of people in the across generational divide who choose to make that call. It’s not necessarily as intuitive for them to Google the name of a store, navigate to the correct web page, find the product they want and order it.
But voice is the great unifier. Though it is usually the last to be digitized because it is the most challenging, digitized voice channels democratize the digital customer experience. For example, an AI-powered voice assistant could redirect a consumer to a more appropriate digital channel by texting them a direct link to the product they’re looking for, ultimately helping them navigate the digital landscape. Industries that serve many older individuals, such as healthcare, need to adopt these kinds of technologies sooner rather than later to empower older generations to use those digital channels and receive the best customer experience possible.”
“AI and ML are starting to have a larger and larger influence on the call center and now touch all aspects of the customer journey, starting at the forecasting and scheduling, where ML can review previous call history and provide a recommended schedule to optimize call center performance to the start of customer engagement with a Natural Language IVR or Chatbot that can answer inquiries or handle self-service (when integrated with back end systems), Then when speaking to an agent Knowledge articles, script suggestions and guided process can be used to help agents provide a resolution to the customer inquiry with significantly less training. All the while the transcript and real-time recording in the background can alert supervisors of challenging conversations and provide a view into agent performance and customer sentiment. Then at the end of the call, AI / ML can summarize the call and take notes while selecting disposition codes. That completes the customer journey, and it touches each component. While for an agent, performance reviews and quality evaluation can be AI-based. The transcripts are being reviewed for sentiment and behavior to allow a larger number of calls to be performance-reviewed. Traditional QA was 3-5 calls per agent per month, while new approaches allow for ALL calls to be reviewed, providing a far more accurate view of agent performance. The technology is influencing the contact center in all aspects of operations.”
“The reality is that it's no longer a conversation around selling points and trying to convince a business to make a change. It's a necessity for businesses that operate a contact center to migrate to CCaaS because the "experience" is what customers will expect. Customers want to interact with businesses that provide them with their channel of choice (omnichannel), and both automated and agent interactions are personalized and supported by AI/ML technologies. Legacy and/or non-Contact Center solutions are not set up to do any of this successfully. How a business interacts with and supports its customers is becoming part of the Brand, it's no longer an afterthought.
The biggest challenges come down to education. Aside from the new features and approach to technology, the shift is fundamentally a large process change to how most contact centers are used to doing things. This means that a consultative layer is likely added to the typical "stuff" that needs to take place for a technology migration to the cloud.”
“Companies must embrace continuous improvement to stand out as the tech marketplace continues evolving. There doesn’t have to be a silver bullet or “ah-ha” moment. Still, by consistently pushing through the grind to make products and services more stable, easier to understand and more valuable to customers, companies will naturally build a sustainable competitive advantage.
If I could predict the future, I’d be 20 years ahead. However, in 2024, I'm confident we'll see faster CPUs and GPUs, enabling more people to access large language models (LLMs) and other breakthroughs in computer science. This will create even more opportunities for the sales and marketing industry as businesses develop new and innovative ways to use these technologies to solve real-world problems.”
The customer service landscape is undergoing a paradigm shift, driven by the rise of AI, the expansion of self-service channels and the growing emphasis on customer experience. Businesses that embrace these trends and adapt their strategies accordingly will be well-positioned to thrive in the years to come. By prioritizing patience, personalization and market adaptability, companies can navigate the evolving landscape and cultivate enduring customer relationships.
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About the Author
Todd Fisher is co-founder and CEO of CallTrackingMetrics. Todd founded the business in 2012 with his wife, Laure, in their basement and together have grown it into an Inc. 500-rated,top-ranked call management platform serving over 30,000 businesses around the world.
Todd developed the initial software and as the CEO he continues to be the driving technical force of the company. Prior to CallTrackingMetrics, Todd co-founded SimoSoftware before selling it to RevolutionHealth in 2005. In 2009, Todd helped co-found Captico LLC, providing online software solutions for small businesses looking to accelerate their marketing and online presence.
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