This year will prove to be a strong year for the cloud industry. My six predictions for 2014 are below:
Moving to the Cloud: In the UK, early adopter companies started their movement to the cloud in early 2010 and 2011. Companies across all industries and sizes are now adopting the cloud as standard. Nearly every IT RFP now has a cloud provider requirement. However what is still not being considered is how the cloud can connect to the outside world. Connectivity is as important if not more important than the call centre functionality itself.
Self-Service in the Contact Centre: Customers have been unhappy with poor IVRs for years now. Contact Centres need to use customer data and smart analytics (such as speech analytics) to develop better call workflows leveraging existing data. This will achieve an improved self-service model, one that puts the customer at the center.
Growth of Mobility and Mobile Apps: A rich two-way mobile experience expands your customer service, extends your marketing reach, and improves capabilities within the contact center. Business apps will continue to grow, causing customers to interact better and embrace mobile especially for customer care becoming cross-channel mobile conversations.
Socially Accepted: Although social media for customer care hasn’t taken off just yet for contact centres, in 2014 we will see the first integration of social media with customer service not just a service provided by the marketing team. Companies will start embracing social customer care and engaging on more of their customers preferred communications channel.
Customer Data Gets The Red Carpet Treatment: Incorporating multiple sources of information, like mobile phone number and preferred channel of messaging, into contact centre data will drive premiere customer engagement and improve the customer journey.
Omni-channel experience: Carrying the context of a customer interaction across the channels in a convenient, competent, personalized and proactive way takes your strategy from multi-channel to an omni-channel experience. I expect we will see the first omni solutions being rolled out in 2014.
Learn More:
- Read the article, "Could your contact centre benefit from Being in the Cloud?"
- Watch the customer testimonial, "Why not use the Cloud?"
- Read the white paper, "Choosing the Right Cloud Contact Center Solution."
