Opening Up Modern CCaaS: Anticipating Change

A recent look at Verint’s Open CCaaS provides a clear view to how CCaaS and also customer service in general, are about to evolve.  

Contact Centers have come a LONG way – that’s fairly obvious.  What may not be quite as obvious is how the path to “modernity” has been a logical progression of micro-steps and giant leaps over the past 20+ years.  And while looking back on technological history may seem a little unproductive, let me assure you, if you work in the worlds of CX, customer service or any of the adjacent disciplines, the context of where we’ve come from absolutely informs where we are now and more importantly, where we (and by extension, you) are headed next.

In the beginning, there was On-Prem.

Traditional On-Premises Contact Centers: In the past, contact centers were typically built and operated on-premises, requiring substantial investments in hardware, software, and infrastructure. Companies had to manage their own servers, telephone systems, and network connectivity. These contact centers were often limited to handling voice calls, and scaling up or down was a cumbersome process.

Emergence of Multi-Channel Communication: As customer expectations expanded beyond voice calls, contact centers began incorporating additional communication channels such as email, chat, and fax. This allowed customers to interact using their preferred methods, enhancing convenience and accessibility. By 2018, 47% of consumers were using live chat for customer support.*

Then we migrated to the Cloud

Introduction of Cloud-Based Contact Centers: The introduction of cloud technology revolutionized the contact center industry. Companies started adopting cloud-based solutions that offered greater scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency. Cloud-based contact centers eliminated the need for on-premises infrastructure, allowing businesses to leverage a pay-as-you-go model and easily scale up or down based on demand.

Integrated Communication Channels: Modern CCaaS platforms integrated various communication channels, including voice, email, chat, social media, and SMS, into a unified interface. This omnichannel approach ensures a consistent and seamless customer experience across multiple touchpoints. For example, a customer might start a conversation via chat and transition to a voice call without losing context.

Advanced Features and Analytics: CCaaS platforms offer advanced features and analytics capabilities that enable businesses to gain insights into customer interactions, agent performance, and overall contact center operations. These insights can be used to optimize processes, improve agent training, and enhance customer satisfaction. For instance, speech analytics tools can analyze customer conversations to identify trends, sentiment, and areas for improvement.

The Age of Integration

Seamless Integration with CRM and Business Systems: CCaaS platforms are designed to seamlessly integrate with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and other business applications. This integration enables agents to access customer information, history, and context in real-time, allowing for personalized and efficient interactions. It also facilitates data sharing across departments, enhancing collaboration and driving better outcomes.

Scalability and Global Reach: CCaaS platforms offer unparalleled scalability, allowing businesses to expand their contact center operations globally without significant upfront investments. With cloud-based solutions, companies can quickly deploy new contact centers in different geographical locations and connect remote agents, facilitating 24/7 support and serving customers from various time zones.

Adding (Smart) Intelligence

AI-Powered Automation: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation have played a crucial role in transforming contact centers into CCaaS enterprises. Intelligent virtual agents, chatbots, and natural language processing (NLP) capabilities are increasingly integrated into CCaaS platforms. These AI-powered tools handle routine inquiries, assist agents with information retrieval, and provide self-service options to customers, reducing wait times and improving efficiency.

What should a modern, AI-empowered CCaaS operation look like – right now?

Overall, an AI-empowered CCaaS system provides enterprise brands with enhanced customer insights, personalized experiences, and improved service delivery. By leveraging AI capabilities, businesses can optimize their customer service operations, drive customer satisfaction, and ultimately strengthen their brand reputation in the market.

Advanced Analytics and Reporting: AI algorithms can analyze large volumes of customer interactions, such as voice calls, chat transcripts, and social media conversations, to extract valuable insights. These insights can be used to identify customer trends, sentiment analysis, and areas for improvement. By understanding customer preferences and pain points, enterprise brands can make data-driven decisions to enhance their products, services, and customer experiences.

Real-time Customer Sentiment Analysis: AI-powered CCaaS systems can analyze customer sentiment in real-time during interactions. Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques enable the system to identify positive, negative, or neutral sentiment from customer conversations. This allows brands to gauge customer satisfaction immediately, enabling agents to take appropriate actions to address concerns, offer personalized solutions, or escalate issues when necessary.

Intelligent Routing and Personalization: AI algorithms can intelligently route customer inquiries to the most appropriate agents based on various factors such as skills, knowledge, and historical data. This ensures that customers are connected to the right agent who can provide personalized assistance promptly. By leveraging AI, enterprise brands can optimize the customer journey, reduce wait times, and increase first-call resolutions, resulting in improved customer satisfaction.

Virtual Agents and Chatbots: AI-powered virtual agents and chatbots can handle routine inquiries, provide self-service options, and assist customers 24/7. These intelligent systems can understand natural language, interpret customer queries, and provide accurate and relevant responses. By offloading simple tasks to virtual agents, human agents can focus on more complex and value-added interactions, leading to increased efficiency and productivity.

Predictive Analytics and Next-Best-Action: AI algorithms can analyze historical customer data, combined with real-time contextual information, to make predictions and recommend the next best action for agents. For instance, based on customer preferences and past interactions, the system can suggest upselling or cross-selling opportunities, personalized recommendations, or even identify potential churn risks. This empowers agents to proactively engage with customers and provide tailored solutions, enhancing customer loyalty and revenue generation.

Self-Learning and Continuous Improvement: AI-powered CCaaS systems can continuously learn and improve over time. By analyzing customer feedback, agent performance, and outcomes, the system can identify patterns, trends, and best practices. This feedback loop enables the system to enhance its performance, refine recommendations, and provide more accurate insights over time, resulting in better customer service and operational efficiency.

The Future of CCaaS: Opening it Up

A recent look at Verint’s newly-minted Open CCaaS product provides a clear view to how CCaaS in particular, but also customer service in general, are about to evolve.  Powered by their proprietary DaVinci AI engine, Open CCaaS is less a platform and more of a tightly integrated suite of smart products that all feed into – and off-of the other components.  And as such, that suite can be broken up into a bespoke series of services that 1) don’t require investment in the entire platform to be effective, and 2) can operate and integrate into virtually any existing CCaaS environment – outside of Verint.

The strategy is clear – by offering an ala carte menu of world-class components, companies are not forced to retire their current technologies in order to take advantage of Verint’s cutting-edge services.  Companies can hold on to existing tech, integrate whichever of Verint’s components they need, and ultimately, on their own terms, budgets and schedules invest in more of Verint’s componentry as needed.  

I asked several of Verint’s product leaders about the downsides of this strategy and their responses echoed the same market strategy.  By creating each component as its own best-in-class solution, Verint can out-compete other market players by not requiring a full tech stack reinvestment.  Further, as companies CX efforts and budgets mature, they can take advantage of more of the components as well as benefit from deeper integrations & insights, on their own terms.  The downside risk would be greater if the Open CCaaS components were anything less than best-in-class.

Traditional CCaaS solutions were built around the voice channel. These companies started with an ACD solution and added additional channels over time as these channels gained popularity.

While the phone will always be an important channel for your customers, digital channels are now just as critical. Since consumer behavior has fundamentally changed, telephony should no longer be the primary driver of a contact center’s purchase decisions. Great CX at a lower cost must be at the center of this decision. Previously it may have been enough to select an ACD and then supplement it with point solutions. A better option is to select an open platform with best-of-breed CX solutions, omnichannel routing and UI, and bring-your-own-telephony capabilities.

Find more information on Verint and Open CCaaS here.

• _{According to a report by Kayako. Photo by Google DeepMind on Unsplash.}