How to make your customer service stand out in a fast-growing market
Verified Market Reports has recently released a report, stating that the contact center industry is expexted to grow, a lot. Accoring to their findings, the expected annual growth rate (CAGR) will be 14.75%, reaching USD 92.54 billion by 2030. This growth reflects an increasing demand for customer service solutions.
It’s exciting to see our industry grow, and the development of technology creates oportunities, but also brings some new challenges along with it.
As companies invest in technology such as automation to streamline their operations, it’s important to find the balance between automation and human touch. Because an increased demand for customer service solutions, doesn’t necessarily mean that your customers want more customer service tools.
AI is a key player, but not the whole game
AI has proven to be a powerful tool, allowing you to save time and money by automating certain tasks. This works especially well for transactional tasks such as answering frequently asked questions, completing bookings, and handling payments. However, while AI is great for scaling your operations, it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution.
The rise in contact center investments suggests that businesses recognize the importance of having robust, multi-layered customer service infrastructures. But technology alone will not define the future of customer experience.
Technology is exciting, but we can’t forget that we’re in a human-centered industry. Meaning we have to consider the customer journey at every touchpoint, ensuring that AI is used strategically and that a human steps in when empathy and deeper problem-solving are required.
How to stand out from the crowd
We believe that one of the defining factors of success will be how a contact center integrates AI with the human experience. As automation becomes more wide-spread, the need for smooth handoffs between technology and humans will become the defining factor in terms of how your customers experience your service.
Having to repeat yourself is a frustrating experience. No one wants to tell the same story over and over, regardless if they’re talking to two people or if they talk to a bot and then a person.
We would even go so far as to argue that it’s more frustrating to repeat yourself when a bot has handled your case first, because we know that the information has been registered somewhere in a system.
A seamless customer experience means not only transferring a ticket to a real person, but also ensuring that all the information provided is included to the next stage of the interaction.
The companies that stand out and succeed will be those that create a unified system and a seamless experience, where automation and artificial intelligence has a supportive role, without being a barrier, to excellent customer service.
Scaling with AI, but keeping the human touch
With explosive growth, the need for solutions and tools that let you quickly scale your operations becomes even more crucial. With the rising amount of customer conversations, it might not be possible to solely rely on a physical team to handle every case.
AI-driven solutions has the benefit of being able to handle a higher volume of tickets, offering no wait times and quick repsonses, even outside of regular business hours.
However, as we’ve seen in the Gartner report, many customers still prefer human interaction for more complex or sensitive issues. As we’ve talked about before, this hybrid approach balancing automation with human touch will be a defining factor in the future of customer service.
Balancing technology and empathy
As the contact center market expands, you need to consider how to invest your resources. A heavy focus on technology without investing in your team could backfire.
Customers expect a high-quality experience, and while AI can handle many tasks, it can’t replace human empathy.
The most successful companies will invest not only in tools and technology, but also in training their team. People will need to become more like customer experience specialists, using AI tools to enhance their ability to solve problems quickly and empathetically. As AI takes on routine tasks, human agents will have more bandwidth to focus on high-value, complex issues that require their expertise.
