Have you thought about what your contact centre will look like in ten years?

Are you ready for the changes to come with your staff, your customers, technology, and more?

Here are five trends that have already begun to shape the way we serve our customers and will make a major impact on how service evolves over time.

Millennials – Millennials already make up a large percentage of the contact centre workforce. In the next decade, the majority of your employees will be either millennial or younger.

These new generations have different expectations of their employer, with greater demands for flexibility, meaningful work, modern systems, sense of belonging, and more.

Organisations will need to adapt to these new expectations to get the best performance out of their workforce.

Mobile – Our mobile devices are already almost attached to our hands at all times. We expect to be able to manage all aspects of our lives from these devices—and this expectation will only continue to grow.

How will you enable your customers, agents, supervisors and field agents to manage all of their interactions with your organisation on a mobile device?

Automation – Automation, machine learning and artificial intelligence are all improving at a dramatic pace.

Organisations that take advantage of these automation technologies will be at a distinct advantage when it comes to efficiency, accuracy and compliance of customer service interactions.

Self-service – has already become the most popular channel for service.

Over time, its usage will continue to grow, with more and more customer service issues being handled outside of the contact centre. As this trend continues, virtually all the simple questions and issues will be handled via self-service.

What does this mean?

Contact centres will only handle the most difficult questions, making the job of a contact center agent increasingly challenging.

Customer expectations – Just as most of your contact center agents will be millennials or younger, your customers will increasingly fall into these categories as well.

As each year goes by, our customers expect faster, more accurate service, on more channels. And if they don’t get what they want, customers are increasingly vocal about their feelings on social media.

Each interaction will be critical, not only to retain the individual customer, but to prevent the proliferation of negative feedback that could potentially affect your brand.

To keep pace with these changes, your contact centre should be equipped with the latest technology and best practices to meet the needs of your customers and your employees.

In an upcoming on demand webinar, I’ll discuss 3 Steps to Future-Proof Your Contact Centre.

Join me for a lively discussion about these trends and how top companies can stay on top of the competition now and in the future.

I’ll be joined by Matt Meehling, Director of Verint’s Global Demo Team, who will show live examples of our latest innovative solutions to meet these challenges head on.