Author: Franz Malten Buemann

Few branches of medicine have created as much comfort, solace and relief.

When we realize that traditional Western medicine is not going to be able to cure a life-threatening illness, the palliative care team is able to help. Instead of torturing and bankrupting patients, they can offer connection, humanity and closure.

Too often, we view the fight as an unalloyed virtue. Instead of sharing our preferences and desires before we get ill (as though it’s some sort of bad luck charm), we simply hope for the best and then wait far too long (and create too much family stress) before embracing the next step in our journey.

And, since I often look for metaphors, it’s probably worth noting that the same approach works for projects, companies and even relationships. We might all come out ahead if we focus on a productive and comfortable way to wrap things up, instead of fighting to the last moment.

A placebo is a human intervention that changes the story we tell ourselves. And those stories are powerful. They can alleviate pain, make wine taste better, improve our golf swing and even grow hair.

Because the placebo is so powerful, we spend a lot of time and money on it. Entire industries (like fashion) are built on bringing people something that changes the way they interact with themselves and the world. If you think that copper bracelet is going to relieve your arthritis, it might.

But in the last few generations, we’ve built more and more of our world on a foundation of measured, consistent engineering. There’s nothing you can add to your gas tank that will make your car mileage go up. It doesn’t matter whether you believe the car is running more efficiently–it either is or it isn’t, and it isn’t.

If you’re a maker of placebos, then, it helps to recognize that what you do is change the story. The more a market is based on mutually agreed upon measurements, the less appealing it is to the maker of a placebo.

It’s autumn in North America, and that means that homeowners and contractors are busy removing suburban leaves. It’s almost impossible to avoid the deafening roar of gas-powered leaf blowers.

Here’s what we know, without doubt:

Using a leaf blower is bad for the hearing and respiration of the user, often a low-paid worker with no real options.

They’re annoyingly loud, and can be heard from blocks away.

There are much quieter, safer and cleaner alternatives, easily available. In the long run, they’re also cheaper.

We also know that:

In one hour, a gas-powered leaf blower will emit as much carbon dioxide as driving a typical internal combustion engine car 3,000 miles. (That’s not a typo). The details are here.

The competitive nature of commodity garden care pushes gardeners to choose the fastest, cheapest option, regardless of the costs to the workers, the neighborhood or the climate.

The technology to replace gas leaf blowers is proven, inexpensive and readily available. And yet… They’re still here. And the reason is that they’re convenient, a sunk cost and a short-term profit hack.

The solution, if we’re serious, is to ban gas leaf blowers. The replacements will pay for themselves in a few weeks. Once the competitive playing field is re-set, gardeners will come out ahead. Employee well-being will increase, and the leaves will still get blown.

So what’s the problem?

We’re not serious enough about making change happen. If we cared enough to get two dozen friends and neighbors to show up at the village hall, the regulations could be changed in a few meetings.

But sometimes it’s easier to do nothing.

Contact centers are dynamic, evolving workplaces, which makes industry trend spotting an exciting sport — sometimes prone to error — but always full of discovery! Like many industries, contact centers have seen the pace of change accelerate during the COVID pandemic. Last year was no exception.  

READ THE FULL GUIDE:
Contact Center Trends 2023
(It doesn’t cost a cent, we promise!)

2022 was a wild ride as people continued emerging from COVID lockdowns but retained many of the new behaviors and norms established during the pandemic. This includes an expectation for flexibility in the workplace, the option to work from home and a desire for sophisticated tech tools that support more personalized digital interactions. Set against the backdrop of global labor shortages and increased importance placed on customer service, call center agents find their status rising.  
It’s one of several positive trends we’ve seen emerge from the cultural change wrought by COVID. Bigger, faster data also continues to change how we work and communicate with each other. And its impact is felt in the contact center too. You can check out all of our predictions for the upcoming year in our newest in-depth resource: Contact Center Trends 2023. Since you’re here, you can enjoy an appetizer before the main event. Let’s dig in! 
2023 Trends:
A New Focus on Agent Well-Being  
Call center agents drive sales growth, create happy customers, and gather data that’s essential to innovation — and this is the year we think they’ll be recognized and rewarded for it. It’s not just us: Businesswire reports that 90% of business decision-makers say they’re focusing on improving their contact center agent and employee experience. 
The facts paint a compelling, and troubling, picture. Agent churn is at a staggering high in the contact center industry. At the same time, call center agents are central to the sales process in product-led growth companies where they convert freeware users into paying customers with their excellent customer service. In this business model, no customer support means no sales.  
These factors add up to a new industry focus on keeping agents engaged, healthy and happy. Did we say happy? Yep. The Harvard Business Review reminds us that happy employees are the key to happy customers. 
 Here are some of the improvements we expect agents to see in 2023:    

Higher wages and sales commissions 
Improved tools and technology
Flexible work arrangements 
On-going training and advancement opportunities 
Employee health and wellness recognized as a KPI   

IVR and Self-Service Step Up 
Explosive growth in raw computing power is transforming self-service tools like Interactive Voice Response (IVR), making them smarter and more powerful — and customers are noticing. 
But IVR is not new, you say! And you’re right. IVR was one of the first automation trends in call centers, but the technology is even more relevant today. In fact, in the past three years, 40% of companies say they’ve dramatically increased their use of IVR, and one in three companies adopted IVR for the first time.  
What’s changed? AI-powered advanced speech recognition and natural language processing (NLP) allows IVR and chatbots to handle much, MUCH more sophisticated conversations and transactions.  
We’re sure that 2023 will see widespread adoption of even more IVR applications.  
Proactive Self-Service  
Smarter self-service tools are powering this adjacent trend: pro-active self-service. Gartner says proactive or outbound customer engagement interactions will outnumber reactive interactions by 2025. Uber’s live delivery tracker is an excellent example of proactively giving customers the self-service tools to answer their questions — “when will my food arrive?” — so human customer service can be used for more pressing concerns.  Analytics will be key to this process and will help call center leaders know what’s working, what’s not, and where adjustments are needed.  
The Data Domination Continues 
Data still rules and the impact the data explosion is having on the contact center industry is profound.   
Cheaper data processing and storage capabilities are fueling artificial intelligence, natural language processing and machine learning — which means companies can now distill customer understanding drawn from millions of data points. Faster than you can say “quantum computers” (they’re real; they’re here), you’ll be able to offer your customer an experience as unique as their own fingerprint.  
This data processing power will be fueling self-service tools, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Here are more ways AI capabilities are starting to improve contact center operations:  

Predictive analytics help with staffing and can track and record how things like product rollouts affect call volume.  
Speech analytics identify tone and emotion in customers’ voices, tagging and analyzing them to find shortcomings in customer service scripts, and correcting them with more effective versions.  
Text analytics do a similar deep dive on written interactions, mining conversations for emotions and patterns so businesses can understand how customers feel about the service they’ve received.  

A word of caution: Explosive data growth and computing at this level consumes massive amounts of energy and is not environmentally sustainable. Without practices like shared data pools and hardware certification, AI will consume more energy than the entire human workforce in a few short years. Regulatory oversight and swift development of best practices is a must.  
Full Speed Ahead for 2023! 
We predict that 2023 will be a full-speed-ahead kind of year, where some of the trends we’ve seen simmering away for a while begin to reach the boiling point. More than ever, call center agents are at the center of the conversation — driving growth, supporting sales, and providing expert CX with the support of state-of-the-art self-service tools. Their stock is going up and it’s a welcome change!    

READ THE FULL GUIDE:
Contact Center Trends 2023
(It doesn’t cost a cent, we promise!)
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