What trends do you expect to see over the next 5 years in the contact centre space?

I think after a challenging last 3 years, with Covid and then an increased cost of living/ inflation and drop off in spend, plus an election in New Zealand, businesses are now starting to revisit the way forward in hopefully more positive years ahead, as they start to focus on their 3-5 year strategic roadmap.

I think we will see an increased spend by businesses over the next 3 years, on technology including core systems, telephony platforms, CX platforms, and investing in identified channels of opportunities (ie. Chat, WhatsApp), plus looking at AI/ Robotics. The focus will be on business growth, customer experience, and cost savings opportunities.

How is ongoing digitisation impacting the contact centre?

Ongoing digitisation is a huge positive for businesses and customers, as they are giving customers more channels to engage with, and options to do business with. Many of these channels are often managed out of the contact centre, as they have the expertise in the products and services, have a customer focus, and it provides staff with variety.

However, I am a big believer, that you will always have a need to support customers that wish to pick up the phone and call – it will always remain a large channel of choice, and it’s important you are there to continue to support these customers.

How can/are digital customer interactions integrated with the contact centre?

It depends on how you decide to progress with this, and the investment your business is willing to make. You could have stand alone options, or you could integrate into a CX platform. I have seen both, but my preference would be to have the fully integrated CX platform (it’s a lot easier for contact centre staff, and provides a better customer experience).

On the staffing front, I have seen businesses upskill contact centre staff to cover a number of channels or rotate them between channels, or I have seen contact centres create specialists.

I like the option to upskill and rotate.

How can you connect the contact centre with strategic business plans for growth?

Firstly you need to understand the overall Company Strategy, and identify those Strategic Pillars that your contact centre can connect into. This is critical, where you can add value to the business. If looking at business growth, again understand where you can add value to this area – it may be cross selling other products, upselling products, identifying and winning new customers, retaining customers, providing sale referrals.

Once you identify your opportunity and value – make sure you track it, tell the world about it, and celebrate your successes.

Where do technologies like cloud, automation and analytics fit in contact centre transformation?

Moving to the cloud makes good sense for many businesses, and many have moved, are moving or will move in the near future. This is business driven, not often Contact Centre driven. Contact Centres are the heart of the business, the face to the customer, and an undersold value is the data and analytics that Contact Centre’s collect, know and can produce.

A huge value add to a business, under the Customer Experience Strategic Pillar. As businesses look at Business Transformation, automation is normally a key part of this, and Contact Centre’s can add huge value from their knowledge, their understanding of processes and customers, and how things currently work versus how things could work. How can you transform the contact centre, on a budget.

What are the big win opportunities?

Transforming a Contact Centre can come in low cost changes, or it could be due to major investment ie a new telephony platform or a new CX platform – it comes down to how much your company is willing to invest, and what their strategic plan is. However, I know from past experiences it does not always take large investment to transform your contact centre, it can be many smaller changes that can have a large impact.

I once worked in a business, where over a 12 month period, 26 process improvements were made, that transformed the Contact Centre.