Fitting Technology for Contact Centers’ Needs

December 5, 2024

Written by Eric Krapf, General Manager and Program Co-Chair, Enterprise Connect Publisher

On No Jitter this week, Robin Gareiss of Metrigy has one of the best overviews I’ve seen of AI’s role in the contact center. Since CX is probably the leading use case for AI right now, her article provides a useful way to understand where CX AI is likely to break through, when, and how.

Robin breaks it down into 4 areas:

• Virtual agents (i.e., the next generation of what we used to call chatbots)
• Agent assist
• Making customer service a revenue driver
• Analytics

Only the first point, virtual assist, is directly customer-facing. The next three promise better service (and thus happier customers); sales opportunities; and better contact center management (which translates to cost savings as well as potentially better service).

So if you’re responsible for contact center technology in your enterprise, which do you target first or concentrate on the heaviest? Everyone would like to answer, “All,” but that may not be practical. So you need a deep, nuanced understanding of the specific challenges to each, as well as what they could deliver to your enterprise’s contact center.

Take virtual agents. We’re all familiar with the fear they’ll go rogue or deliver external communications that don’t meet your industry’s compliance requirements. But the challenge doesn’t stop there. A less dramatic but still important consideration has to do with the customer journey. It’s not well understood how best to manage that journey if the initial self-service process doesn’t resolve the customer’s need. Nicolas de Kouchkovsky of CaCube Consulting will be leading a session on customer journey orchestration at Enterprise Connect 2025, and he’ll address problems like “channel hopping,” and “fragmentation”, where ineffective implementation can actually make self-service less efficient.

The other points have their own challenges. Agent assist applications promise everything from quicker call resolution to impromptu upselling (per Robin’s third point). But we still need to understand more about what these applications will do to the agent’s experience; the AI-driven assistance must provide timely help without overwhelming the agent with information and suggestions at the same time they’re trying to deal with a customer. And of course it must be accurate and, well, helpful.

Enterprise Connect 2025’s CX/Contact Center track again is larger than ever, encompassing not just AI-focused topics, but also case studies and expert advice on cloud strategies, and more. We’ve also built one of our new Strategic Impact Summits around Customer Engagement—you’ll get a full morning’s worth of in-depth content and networking focused on how you can drive technology to enhance customer engagement.

In addition to CX, our program is chock full of great sessions on topics ranging from Collaboration Platforms to Security to Management & Strategy. I hope you can join us March 17 – 20 in Orlando, FL – register now for your best rates!