Customers are demanding more personalised services that are delivered in real-time. Internet of things data combined with artificial intelligence could help them achieve those experiences.

Organisations generally are finding themselves under pressure to deliver consistent customer experiences, rapidly and across a range of communication channels.

In response, contact centres worldwide are augmenting their operations with omni-channel communication, dynamic case management and AI-driven intelligent automation.

When these kinds of technologies are combined, it can provide contact centre agents with more intelligent recommendations to drive positive customer experiences.

Contact centre agents already face complexity, often having to interact with upwards of 20 systems and applications to serve customers, leading to inefficiencies and poor customer satisfaction.

In the immediate future, they are likely to have access to an even more vast array of data sources as businesses adopt the internet of things and use data collected by it as a key input into business processes.

This data will allow more complicated and higher-value transaction interactions to be funneled through the contact centre.

The future contact centre agent will have everything in front of them to help them “go the extra mile”.

Redefining the agent

Analyst firm Forrester predicts that in the next decade, cognitive contact centres will incorporate artificial intelligence to personalise agent/customer matching, augment agent capabilities, and offload management tasks.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that contact centres and the roles within them are already being redefined.

Some are augmenting the capabilities of human agents with AI, machine learning and internet of things data to help them respond to customers’ questions quickly and accurately.

In addition, a growing percentage of customer enquiries can be resolved without requiring human interaction at all, leaving agents more available to deal only with more complex or escalated matters.

McKinsey research suggests that robots will be able to fully resolve 30 to 50 percent of all requests in future.

By 2019, more than half of customer interactions will be in channels other than voice, according to recent research by Deloitte.

That means organisations will be supporting customers via chat, social media, voice, SMS, and other mediums in an omnichannel environment.

They will need help to manage this huge boost in transactional volumes - and that’s where the likes of the Appian Intelligent Contact Center Platform will help organisations reach their omnichannel service goals.

The Appian Intelligent Contact Center Platform makes it easy for organisations to build next generation contact center applications that accelerate customer experience, increase agent efficiency, and deliver business impact. With Appian, organisations can move fast, revolutionise customer engagement, deliver on strategic initiatives, and master global risk and compliance.

More revenue, better retention

Forrester Research found that the revenue impact of a one point improvement in customer experience (CX) index scores can help a company increase revenue by US$175 million ($243 million) annually.

On top of that, companies that provide consistent service quality across multiple channels retain 89 percent of their customers, compared to a 33 percent retention rate for companies that do not, according to Aberdeen Group.

The revenue generation and customer retention opportunities available in the space are enormous, and provide plenty of added impetus to get started in redefining your own contact centre operations.