The Future of Contact Center Software and the need for speed!

‘I feel the need! The need for speed….’

If you’re picturing Maverick and Goose walking across the tarmac at the now-famous Top Gun Academy at US Naval Air Station Miramar, take a bow! I’m not talking (much) about Tony Scott’s 1986 all-time-classic movie today though.

I recently argued in a different blogpost that the COVID-19 situation sped-up Government and Public Sector adoption of Cloud Technologies in the UK. Since writing that, it’s struck me that there’s a perfect storm of reasons why the secular tailwind from the Pandemic has accelerated the scale and rate of transformation for all sectors in virtually every single country. Customers and the businesses that serve them are adapting to seismic changes and digital transformation initiatives have been expedited on both sides. It really is survival of the quickest.

"You're not going to be happy unless you're going mach 2 with your hair on fire."

Hybrid working appears to be a permanent feature of this new landscape, which in my mind at least, sounds the death-knell for the legacy and on-prem CX solutions that have provided the Technological backbone of the Customer Contact Centre for so long. Five9 CEO Rowan Trollope heralded this new era of Five9 and cloud technology growth as far back May 2021 during an interview with CNBC. Companies now find themselves having to rapidly address quality of service, systems reliability and access, functionality, security and health and safety auditing of remote sites as Hybrid working becomes a permanent feature. At speed!

"Let's turn and burn!"  

Customer expectations have also sped into a new paradigm, increasingly embracing digital channels for certain interactions. For many, the isolation and pent-up desire for face-to-face interaction has led to a resurgence in ‘voice’ traffic for certain brand interactions, which can be seen graphically and categorically in a fantastic new white paper from UK-based Five9 partner Connect. As I was reading it myself it struck me that the organizations who can embrace conversational AI via a digital workforce the quickest, as well as fuse the customer touchpoints into one integrated journey, will prevail.

The new Connect /Five9 white paper ‘Future of the Contact Centre’

The Connect whitepaper opens with: ‘Seen through the achievements of recent award winners and conference keynotes, it is clear just how rapidly UK contact centres are transforming. Enabled by technology, the very best organisations are re-imagining how they interact with customers and deliver memorable outcomes.’

These ‘Top Guns’ of customer service are pushing the boundaries to Reimagine CX and their own internal business structures to provide the seamless interactions demanded by today’s consumer. If you’d like to find out more about how Five9 and our partners (like Connect) can provide you with the technology required to join the game with this elite group, feel free to ‘buzz the Tower here’ and find the perfect ‘Wingman’ or find me directly on Twitter to talk further. Some companies, with our partners’ help, have managed the final switch from a legacy call center to a cloud-based one in 24 hours or less.  

In the meantime, the new research ‘Future of the Contact Centre’ is a must-read for anyone in the customer contact centre game. Get your hands on a copy today and hurry, it’s survival of the quickest right now and the afterburners are glowing.