Another year of great customer experiences is in the books and another year ahead! We’ve seen plenty of change in what it means to serve customers and exceed their expectations, and we anticipate that this coming year will cement many of those changes. Here’s what we think will be the hot CX topics of 2024.
AI-Powered Solutions
2023 was the year that AI landed on everyone’s radar. While machine-learning and automation-based tools have been around for years, they’ve now reached a level with a powerful business case for them. Chatbots, automated routing, and sentiment analysis are just some areas where AI has helped drive improvements for contact centers – and will continue to do so. But AI isn’t infallible: organizations must view it as an iterative product and seek ways to augment and improve its offerings.
Enhanced CS Agents
Customer service agents are all about providing quality customer care. But in 2024 and beyond, those reps will be expected to become almost superhuman in their abilities. That’s because most customers today will exhaust most avenues – troubleshooting, browsing FAQs, and so on – before calling a rep for help. This, combined with troubleshooting tech such as chatbots, means that the questions that reps tend to field are more complex and require deeper knowledge and problem-solving skills. Organizations should invest in staff training and support accordingly.
Forever Omnichannel
Omnichannel is here to stay. Today’s customers expect a seamless brand experience across multiple channels and expect to pick up where they left off without losing transaction details or repeating information. Organizations that haven’t invested in a powerful omnichannel solution should prioritize it for 2024 – or risk losing customers.
Cloud-Based is the New Normal
The days of on-premise contact centers are numbered. Not only are they more expensive to start up and run, but they’re difficult to scale up and down. In contrast, cloud-based contact center solutions provide an all-in-one solution that minimizes infrastructure investment, facilitates staff scaling, and keeps the interconnected parts of your sales, marketing, and customer service all in one place. A cloud-based system also makes it easy to onboard new reps in times of heightened demand.
Being Nimble Matters
The only thing that’s constant is change. We’ve seen that customers gravitate towards chat, which means that video chat might be the next thing on the horizon. And while there’s a clear preference towards mobile, exactly what we mean by mobile will change as devices evolve. Even preferred channels will evolve and shift over time. Being able to identify and adapt to changes will help organizations stay ahead in the customer experience game – and one way to do that is with a SaaS solution that’s always being updated.
Contact Centers Mean Money
Contact Centers aren’t just a place to field calls and handle questions. In many ways, they’re the heartbeat of your business – they reveal trends, identify gaps and opportunities, and highlight areas for improvement or streamlining. Instead of seeing contact centers purely as a “service” function, organizations should use them to inform their larger business development, product development, and marketing functions.
Make Contact Centers Part of your 2024 Plan with ACD
Are you ready to leap into 2024 with a customer experience solution primed for the new year? Talk to the team at ACD. Our multi-pronged, cloud-based customer contact solution brings together everything you need to deliver a powerful customer experience. We’ll work with you to design, develop, and implement a tailor-made solution to meet your customer service goals – no matter your size or sector.
