Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

Chatbots, Personalization, Self-Service Are Growing Trends

December 07, 2016

The year is coming to a close. That marker of time, of course, prompts many of us to look back to assess the past year and prognosticate about what we might see in the year ahead.

Maddy Hubbard of Aspect Software did just that in a blog posted earlier this week. In the piece, the marketing program manager offers up four trends you should consider when developing your 2017 customer experience strategy.


That includes the expansion of contact centers to include a broader range of channels/customer touchpoints, the move by more customers to employ self-service options, the rise of natural language understanding-powered chatbots, and the loyalty building benefits of personalization.

“In an effort to stay ahead of the customer experience curve, companies can no longer stand on voice alone,” notes Hubbard. “Customer service trends in 2017 will be driven by the need to meet consumer expectations. Companies will need to engage customers with self-service and cutting-edge technologies that provide fast, accurate service on the communication channels customers want to use.”

Chatbots were also noted as an area of growing interest in customer service by Sharpen CEO Cameron Weeks.

"In 2017, the Holy Grail customer service scenario will be when AI helps create a coherent bond between a human agent and a chatbot,” said Weeks. “When chatbots are deeply integrated into a contact center platform, they will become powerful sidekicks who can handle multiple mundane tasks that allow their agent partner to give more complex support issues adequate attention.”

Meanwhile, ShoreTel Senior Vice President of Product Eugenia Corrales in providing 2017 predictions says the mobile workstyle will dominate the enterprise, businesses will start integrating Generation Z, there will be digital assistants and bots in the workplace, we’ll see increased integration of the collaboration stack, and there will be greater relevance of global markets for UCaaS.




Edited by Maurice Nagle



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