New Survey: AI Dominating Customer Engagement Automation Strategies, Necessitating a Pivot to Open Platforms for Contact Centers

A new Verint study reveals only 10 percent of contact center leaders believe telephony will have an impact on CX automation over the next 12 months while 53 percent indicated artificial intelligence (AI) and 23 percent said digital channels will be the driving forces behind their CX automation efforts.

The survey of 300 contact center leaders in the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand, was conducted by Verint and sheds light on current and emerging contact center challenges. The report specifically looks at the critical role of openness, automation and AI in addressing how brands need to do more with less while simultaneously elevating CX. It evaluates the use of Contact Center as a Service (CaaS) solutions and their effectiveness in an era where AI is playing a starring role in customer engagement transformation.

“Our research underscores the imperative for contact centers to embrace openness in their technology platforms”

The survey shows that first-generation, telephony centric CCaaS solutions are failing to create a more efficient contact center and under perform in three ways: 1) poor support for omnichannel engagement; 2) no effective mechanism for reducing administrative burdens on the contact center; and 3) engagement data isn’t leveraged or optimized.

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In addition, 75 percent of survey respondents said they leverage CCaaS solutions for customer engagement. However, the survey results show that many leaders are not satisfied with the performance of their CCaaS solutions. For example, 80 percent of those surveyed felt that using AI, automation and bots for self-service and agent-assisted tasks are important features but less than half (41%) are satisfied with their current solutions. Along the same lines, 82 percent feel easy integration into third-party systems is important, but only 46 percent are satisfied with this capability in their organization.

“Our research underscores the imperative for contact centers to embrace openness in their technology platforms,” says Verint’s Jenni Palocsik, vice president, marketing insights, experience and enablement. “The shift from telephony-first to AI-driven solutions is evident, and organizations that prioritize flexibility and innovation will lead the way in delivering exceptional customer experiences now and in the future.”

Verint delivers an open CX automation platform for agile, scalable omnichannel customer engagement with data and AI at its core. The platform enables businesses to choose applications based on their needs, access comprehensive engagement data, and augment their human workforce with specialized AI-powered bots. This approach enhances agent and customer experiences by unifying engagement data, ensuring continuous AI training, and augmenting the human workforce with specialized AI-powered bots.

Methodology

The survey was conducted from mid-October to mid-November 2023. Participants were selected from an invitation only, business-to-business research panel and were required to have a role of director, vice-president, senior vice president, executive vice-president or C-level executive. Their main job responsibilities had to be related to the contact center at organizations in the U.S., U.K. and Australia with contact centers having at least 500 employees.

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