Thinking How to Shift From a Contact Center to an Experience Center

For those on the bleeding edge of contact center development, the last decade has been a wild ride. Many of us in the industry shifted through a few different gears and we’re now barreling down the interstate at high speeds.

First it was implementing voice of the customer strategies with measurable CX results, then digital transformations to include omnichannel implementations, followed by customer sentiment and analytics deep dives. We finally saw ourselves round out the decade with the beginnings of some advanced artificial intelligence. Whether your organization is more profit-focused (efficiency), customer-focused (effectiveness), or a hybrid of both, you likely had some part in shifting the strategy across these efforts or projects.

What got us here will not get us to where we are going by 2030. Many intelligent contact center executives are aware that they may need to pump the brakes to see the roadmap for the way forward.
As ICMI’s practice leader for technology consulting, we have numerous projects in progress to help teams align their contact center executives with their other internal executives to define the path forward intelligently, and to save the most time or expense. What lies at the foundation of many of these projects right now is this emerging model of moving from a contact center to an experience center via AI and automation opportunities.

These types of engagements are requiring a much different approach from those we saw in the last decade. Some would argue it’s a whole new route that requires different driver skills for your contact center and IT teams. To move from a contact center to an experience center is a multi-year transition that requires deep thought and budget to determine the priorities for the future.

People and processes were the main focus to driving strong CX in the information age. Now that we’ve advanced to the automation age, we have to double down on the technology portion of the engine or get left behind. With so many different AI bells & whistles, it can be difficult to determine how to equip your contact center through 2025. Every customer base is so different that many times you’re trying to create a sales or service ecosystem that is all things to all customers. This means you’re bolting numerous systems together to deliver, causing more internal chaos.

If you’re still working on your CX vision or digital transformation, you’re likely pulling triple duty inside your organization. Taking a moment to gather the thought leaders across the business to get some industry insight on customers who are building their experience center optimally is easier said than done; however, it’s where we’re finding ourselves in day-to-day strategy discussions in 2021. You have to figure out where you’re going before you know how you’re going to get there.

Customer Benefits

With mergers/acquisitions, site consolidations, and the state of the business economy, we’re getting more requests for complex problem-solving ability that goes beyond a fancy PowerPoint to consider all of the moving pieces. That’s what contact center leaders are requiring right now, and what we’re delivering to a number of clients in pharma, trades, healthcare, and government contact centers. Finding a partner that can go along on the ride with you and not just hand you the roadmap creates an extra layer of accountability in getting to the right destination safely and on time.