Author: Franz Malten Buemann

Contact center technology has come a long way since its early years as a jury-rigged air traffic control system.
The pandemic has hastened many call center trends and compounded technological developments. We’re expecting many more exciting innovations in the next few months.
Contact Center Trends 2021
Here are the latest and greatest call center technologies:
AI-Powered Voice Biometrics & Analysis
The last year demonstrated that the voice channel isn’t going anywhere. Yes, digital channels, live chat, and email have their place, but people will always pick up the phone when they have a complex and urgent issue.
Voice-biometrics and AI-powered real-time analysis are both technologies we expect to blossom in the coming years. Amazon announced that their highly lauded ‘Contact Lens’ sentiment analysis would now be available in real-time, alongside tiered biometric identification inbuilt.
Voice isn’t going anywhere; it’s just going to get better.
Scheduled Conversations
Many contact center managers have heard of call-backs, but they don’t realize that they’ve come a long way from the basic virtual queueing of yesteryear.
Advanced call-backs are now programmable in multiple ways, including offering customers the option of receiving a call-back later, at a time algorithmically chosen to help spread out call volume and reduce call volume spikes.
If you’re using standard voice call-backs, but you haven’t turned on the option to schedule conversations, you’re missing out on the most potent tool in your toolbox. You can learn more about the power of Conversation Scheduling here.
Voice-to-Text
Although the last time you picked up a voicemail message was mid-noughties, the technology itself is being rapidly brought into the present.
We spoke with a couple of exciting companies — most notably the start-up Telbee, who believe that voicemail’s future is all ahead. This voice-to-text solution defers callers by recording their message, transcribing it to text, and then forwarding it to the best agent to resolve it.
The Full List of Contact Center Technology
The agent then finds and answers and responds to the customer via email or chat, moving them from the expensive voice channel to cheaper digital channels without disrupting the customer experience.
Real-Time Learning & Knowledge Management Systems
The shift to digital presented a massive problem for call center hiring managers, who were already pretty stressed out due to ever-increasing agent attrition issues.
While knowledge management systems have been growing ever more intelligent, many companies still don’t appreciate how much money they’re hemorrhaging by letting tacit knowledge disappear when staff move on.

AI-powered Learning Management Systems for call centers will become increasingly popular in the next few years. Watch this space for some really interesting developments in call center tech. #cctr #cctrtech cctrtrendsClick To Tweet

Learning Management Systems for call centers will become increasingly popular, with several custom solutions already on the market. The most advanced of these will incorporate live tracking for real-time training, assessment, and smart prompts for agents to record and recall knowledge and training in-call.
Intelligent Visual Support for Call Centers
Although it’s unlikely that customers will ever want two-way video conversations (where they can see the agent and the agent can see them), there is a growing need for agents to see what customers see, particularly SaaS or software products.
Expect to see new companies providing Intelligent Visual Support for call centers, allowing agents to see customers’ screens, and use augmented reality overlays to guide them through the solution.
Agent Monitoring & Motivation Software
Another consequence of remote working is the distance it creates between managers and their agents. 2021 will see more and better agent performance monitoring technology designed to lean on positive gamification concepts instead of relying on draconian intensive monitoring.
8 Simple Ways to Improve Agent Satisfaction in the Call Center
Platforms that increase agent engagement through gamification, healthy competition, AI-powered analysis, and real-time feedback or praise will be standard in the contact center by 2025.
Gig Working Platforms
Contact centers are one of the last industries to hold out against the gig economy for several reasons.
Gig economies only work if the task being ‘gigged’ is simple enough to be completed by anyone, with some support from an app. But customer support calls are not a simple journey from A-B. Resolving a complex inquiry requires active listening, empathy, patience, and a good understanding of the product and company procedures. These are skilled roles that cannot be standardized to the point where anyone can be dropped into any call.
However, as AI and machine learning become more advanced, smart knowledge management systems will make gig working feasible for the first time. That said, we are not sure we’d want ‘just anyone’ to handle calls for our company. Not all brands are as discerning about the quality of their support, and gig working will provide a cost-effective way to resolve issues like excess overflow and out-of-our service.
Watch this space!The post Blog first appeared on Fonolo.

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Hi guys, I know some of you have been here before and it’s eating me up. It took me a couple of years to finally figure out what I want to pursue long-term but now, I spend all my time looking for pointers to the “how to get there”. I have been in retail banking since November 2014 and beyond my passion to help people save, invest, plan for retirement and debt management, I ensure that whichever part I am responsible for in the customer journey is immaculate. Sometimes, I doubt myself on the job and friends tell me it’s just impostor syndrome but one aspect I have never been found wanting is customer service and relationship management. I have done it across board within the bank; small business, the rich, professionals, immigrants with language barrier and the list goes on. Having done customer service at micro-level based on my previous and current roles, I have become fascinated and interested in having input at enterprise level. The problem I face now is how to get started. I’ve read a few stories of how people got into doing related duties but my current role is a full investment and credit position which leave me with almost no option than to quit and get something that would align to an area of CX. I have also been thinking of school but all I’ve found are courses. I have my bachelors but I’m looking for a relevant one or two year part-time program (preferably a diploma or certificate) that can arm with knowledge and tools applicable to in CX work environment. I have held off school for a while because I wasn’t sure of what I wanted but now that I know, it will be unwise and a complete waste of time and money to jump into just any program. I know I’ve typed out a lot here but it’s due to how overwhelming it has been for me. I’m not happy in my current job and I’ve considered quitting a lot time but the bills won’t pay themselves. How would you recommend I approach this career change? Jobs? What kind of roles (even if it’s going to be transitionary). School? what kind of programs should I look for that’ll give me ready tools to start functioning in the CX space? P.S. I live in Canada. Help me 🙁
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In 2021, digital transformation will accelerate at even greater speed than in 2020 as organizations move from band-aid remote work solutions to a new operate from anywhere standard. In its top strategic technology trends report for 2021, Gartner confirms that this new standard is more than just working from home or interacting with customers virtually. A successful “”operate from anywhere”” model supports customers and enables employees everywhere: no matter how, when or where they interact and engage. So, as we kick off 2021, we are excited to share an update on our latest release, which brings enhanced Customer Experience capabilities, improved Microsoft Teams functionality, exciting Video Meetings updates, new compliance features, and expanded integrations and partnerships so that you can Engage, Work, and Manage every interaction between your employees and customers. Full article: https://www.8×8.com/blog/2021-winter-release-highlights
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(There are some fractions here, please persist. It’s worth it.)

Imagine that you have a daily drive. Half of it by distance is on dirt roads where your car can drive 10 miles an hour. And half of it is on a good road where you can drive 50 miles an hour.

Which is a better choice: Trading your car in for one that can drive 22 miles an hour on the dirt road but no better on the highway? Or one that can do no better on the dirt road but 200 miles an hour on the highway?

OR!

Imagine that your factory has two kinds of machines, all fully busy. Half of them can process steel with an accuracy rate of 2 in 10. The other half can do it with 80% accuracy. Which is a better investment: Tuning the lousy machines into 30% accuracy or making the newer machines perfect, with no errors at all?

And finally, what’s the best way to improve fleet mileage? To get the 14 mile per gallon Hummers to upgrade to Toyota Camrys, or to get the Camrys to convert to infinite mileage electric cars?

In all three cases, because you can’t average averages, the answer is to improve the laggards.

Here’s the arithmetic if you’re curious.

And we should be curious. Because it feels safer, more productive and easier to go after the devices or systems or people that seem to be so close to getting it right. But it’s the laggards that cost us the most.

March is the perfect time to go on a world tour from your living room. In the Northern Hemisphere, early March offers perfect weather for shipping, and a blissful shortage of Hallmark holidays and cheap chocolate.

Megan Giller and I have put together a series of interviews (and tastings!) of dark chocolate and we’re inviting you to tune in.

Find out all the details here.

The short version:

In March 2021, on my Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram pages, I’ll be posting live interviews and tastings with some of the greatest chocolate makers of our time. And you can pre-order the bars and taste along if you like. If you’ve got chocolate in hand, feel free to join in with comments or live feedback as we go.

Dark chocolate, made by hand, by artisans who start with the bean and take it all the way to the finished product–it’s special. There are tones and notes and flavors that you can learn to taste. It’s fun to share. It’s an affordable luxury–you can buy the equivalent of a $500 bottle of wine in chocolate form for $11 or so. You can even get snobby and talk about trinitario and porcelana beans…

And the people who grow the beans, the farmers, are some of the poorest people in the world, often at the mercy of a heartless industrial food chain. The bars we’ll be tasting are all from producers who pay their farmers significantly more than the clearing price. If we can spread the word about this craft, they’ll all do better.

Thanks to Megan for helping me make this happen, and thanks to everyone who makes things a little more delicious, bringing care and dignity to the world at the same time.