The Contact Center Forrester Wave™ 2023: What Can CX Leaders Learn From It?

To help you make sense of the Forrester Wave™ 2023, we’ve picked out our major takeaways for CX leaders, which are:

• That CCaaS is no longer simply on-prem solutions brought to the cloud, but an entirely new species.

• The reasons why implementing Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the contact center is a must.

• The importance of the single-stack, integrated CX suite.

• That customers expect more personalization than ever.
  
  
  

The Age of Omnichannel CCaaS Is Here

The contact center Forrester Wave™ 2023 points out that the flexibility of omnichannel CCaaS solutions has taken them far above their on-premises predecessors.

This transition was reinforced during the COVID-19 pandemic. CCaaS provided unbeaten flexibility for agents now forced to work from home, and unrivaled scalability for businesses facing a surge in customer demand.

This convenience makes CCaaS systems a staple of the new CX landscape, but it was their rich functionality that set omnichannel CCaaS apart. Omnichannel CCaaS solutions brought every channel of contact into one, browser-based agent interface, allowing for joined-up, channel-agnostic interactions. These solutions could also integrate with any third-party system of record through APIs, empowering agents with customer data.

The age of omnichannel CCaaS has well and truly begun. What does the future look like?

Integrating AI in the Contact Center is Essential

The contact center Forrester Wave™ 2023 highlights the importance of integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the contact center as comprehensively as possible.

Recent leaps forward in generative and conversational AI have put contact center automation at the front of everyone’s minds. Those CX leaders who act fast to involve AI in the everyday processes of their contact center will gain a huge advantage over their competition.

Here are just a few possible use cases for AI in the contact center:

• Natural Language Processing that detects customer intent from spoken statements, and routes them to the best available outcome accordingly.

• An AI assistant that offers script suggestions to agents, and ensures that compliance statements are read.

• AI-powered statistics that factor use sentiment analysis to gain valuable insights into your Customer Satisfaction.

• And much more.

The path forward is clear; you need an omnichannel CCaaS solution that makes implementing AI easy.

Integrated Omnichannel CCaaS

According to the Forrester Wave™ 2023, the average contact center director managers 20 different vendor relationships. Needless to say, when something goes wrong, this complex web of relationships is not easy to untangle.

CX leaders should be looking to consolidate as many contact center functions as possible under the umbrella of a single solution.

Single-stack CCaaS brings with it a whole host of benefits:

• Only one point of contact for any faults, radically simplifying the support process.

• Bring all contact center functions into a single, accessible interface, simplifying the user experience and improving contact center efficiency.

• Access every channel of customer contact from within that interface, allowing for seamless, channel-agnostic customer interactions.

In 2023, flexible integrations are a must for the contact center. A single-stack CCaaS solution creates a more efficient contact center.

Personalized CX

The final prediction from the contact center Forrester Wave™ 2023 is that customers will continue to demand more personalized experiences. In the digital age, being responsive and efficient isn’t enough; your customers want to be heard and understood. Personalized experiences are the first step toward CX that sets your business apart.

Creating personalized CX, however, requires a deep knowledge of the customer. Agents, both human and AI, must be empowered with customer data. To do this, integrations into third-party systems of record are crucial.

When a customer gets in contact, the agent should be immediately provided with:

• Essential details (name, address, etc.)

• The details of the products and services they use.

• Details of any previous interactions, and whether they were successful.

• The details of their current inquiry, as stated for routing purposes.

By empowering an agent with all this, you enable them to create outstanding, memorable experiences. Presenting this information within a single interface means those interactions also become far more efficient.