Customer Perspectives on Contact Center Trends Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic

Frost & Sullivan surveyed 661 IT decision-makers around the globe to IT/Communications to gain a deeper understanding of the impact of COVID-19 and their plans to exceed CX expectations as the world recovers from the pandemic.

COVID-19 accelerated the move towards self-service, allowing many companies to invest in technology that deflects calls/live chat but still improves the customer experience (CX). Voice continues to lead, but self-service channels such as virtual agents and IVR will be heavily supported over the next year. restructure their organizations to take advantage of new resource pools and longer tenures. COVID-19 forced organizations to reallocate resources quickly, revealing another aspect of contact center operations that needs attention. Employees had to be trained on new tasks quickly, and some companies did not have the solutions in place to do so.

In an industry accustomed to attrition, many companies realize the value of agent retention. They are investing in tools that allow younger generations, gig workers, “retirees,” along with those enlightened by the new COVID-driven work-at-home culture to attain the flexible schedules they want. Companies across sectors recognized that agent performance improved when they moved to work from home.

Conversational AI and virtual assistants became a top priority. As businesses quicken their pace towards self-service, they are hindered by customers unwilling to adopt new contact channels. The need to collaborate between departments continues to gain importance as the need to differentiate becomes increasingly crucial. More than -50% of respondents say the top two benefits they have seen from integrating UC and CC solutions include improved customer journey and better agent experience. The top priorities for technology investments point to improving agent performance and operations. Companies are ramping up investments in performance management, quality monitoring, and collaboration to make it easier to share information across departments.

For almost half of the respondents, the social media channel became the highest priority during the pandemic. The convenience of using these channels to complete transactions and the ease of divulging information to the masses will continue to help this channel thrive.

CSAT and NPS scores improved during the pandemic, revealing that customers were more emphatic with a "we're all in this together" manner.

This study provides data for the following industries:

- IT/Communications (50)
- Financial Services & Banking
- Healthcare
- Public Administration
- Manufacturing
- Retail
- Travel & Hospitality

Channels covered: voice, email/web form, social media messaging apps, social media apps, mobile apps, SMS, Chat with live agents, virtual agents, video chat, video teller/kiosk, and IVR.

Technologies covered: conversational AI & virtual assistants/bots, quality monitoring, collaboration tools, performance management, flexible APIs/CPaaS, eLearning for agents, proactive customer care, gamification, and augmented reality.

CSAT and NPS scores are provided for each industry.

This study is valuable for solution providers to better understand what each industry seeks in delivering excellent CX, and end-user businesses to benchmark themselves against the competition and other industries.