To keep pace with changing customer demands, call center technology is constantly evolving. The right tools, implemented correctly, can improve productivity, efficiency, analytics, and customer experience.
And while you can’t monitor 100% of all customer interactions manually, you can use technology to find and address issues before they impact your bottom line.
The key is to use the most up-to-date call center technology. Best-in-class contact centers utilize market-leading software to set themselves apart and deliver top-notch customer service.
So, what does this look like? Here are the 12 biggest call center technology trends to keep an eye on this year.
While it’s impossible to replace humans in the contact center, AI and automation are valuable tools to accomplish daily tasks. That’s why over 80% of contact centers are using AI-based tech to improve customer interactions.
And AI isn’t slowing down yet—it’s just getting more powerful. With options like 100% interaction analysis, virtual agents and chatbots, and AI-powered data analysis, we’re only now seeing how impactful AI can be on productivity and efficiency.
The key is to use AI to complement your human agents, not replace them. It should be implemented to simplify daily tasks that take up time and energy but don’t require a personal touch.
Make it easier for your agents to get the job done (and easier for your customers to get the help they need!), and you’ll reap the benefits of AI.
76% of consumers expect consistency across different departments when they reach out. Customers must be able to reach customer service how they want, when they want, and on the channel they want.
What customers really want is a consistent experience across all channels, meaning the customer doesn’t have to repeat themselves—even if they switch between platforms or support agents. They should be able to go from email to phone to chat seamlessly.
To provide omnichannel support, you need innovative call center technology that enables a unified approach to CX. There should be a central repository of all customer data that any agent can access at any time to give the customer the service and results they expect.
Personalized experiences are quickly becoming the new norm—47% of consumers expect fully (or mostly) personalized content when getting help with a product or service. And, with the amount of data the average call center collects, personalizing interactions is easier than ever.
Analytics tools spot patterns in customer behavior, preferences, and pain points, enabling your agents to tailor their responses in real-time. This allows you to improve both customer satisfaction and loyalty, so you stand out from the competition.
Additionally, analytics empower you to monitor KPIs and find areas for improvement within your call center. These tools help you to predict trends, proactively address challenges, and equip your team with the knowledge they need to perform at their best.
The internet isn’t getting any safer, with over 6 billion malware attacks in 2023 alone. Keeping your organization safe (including both company and customer data) is more important than ever, but it’s not exactly easy.
This becomes even more critical as companies adopt more AI tools within their workflows. While AI can be a powerful addition, it’s not without risk. Many large language models are still inaccurate, leading to incorrect or biased results.
Make sure you regularly review your LLMs and other AI tools to ensure both accurate outputs and ethical, responsible usage.
The use of voice biometrics is transforming call center security via advanced authentication solutions to improve security and CX. It uses the unique characteristics of a caller’s voice to verify their identity, reducing the need for less-secure options like PINs or passwords.
Implementing voice biometrics can improve efficiency by streamlining the verification process, which cuts down your average handle time. It also helps protect your customer base against fraudulent activities, which are growing more prevalent and sophisticated every year.
In 2023 alone, 29% of customers had an account taken over by a fraud actor—something that’s easier to prevent with voice biometrics.
Using predictive analytics, you can compare the performance of every agent in your call center against group benchmarks and develop predictive models for what makes a successful (and unsuccessful) customer interaction.
This will help you analyze past performance and come up with solutions for future problems. For example, you could analyze data from last February to inform your agent forecasting for this February based on metrics like:
Call volume
Service level
Average handle time
CSAT
This predictive approach is key to effectively planning and strategizing for the future.
Augmented reality (AR) is more accessible than ever, and helps support teams bridge the gap between agents and customers. Through AR, teams can provide step-by-step guidance in real-time, whether it’s troubleshooting a technical issue or showing off product features.
Customers can use their devices to see visual overlays or instructions, making complex problems easier to solve and reducing the need for follow-up calls. For example, using your phone’s camera + AR to overlay a new couch in your living room before purchase.
For call centers in particular, AR offers two important benefits:
Better customer satisfaction
Improved operational efficiency
By enabling quicker solutions, it reduces average handle times and lowers cost to serve. It also gives your agents tools to handle more complex issues with confidence by adding a new way for them to guide callers.
As customer expectations continue to rise, the agent experience has become an essential part to running a successful call center. When your agents feel supported, engaged, and equipped with the right tools, their ability to deliver exceptional service improves dramatically.
Modern call center technology offers solutions that:
Streamline their workflows
Gamify their daily work
Use QA for stronger engagement
Offer targeted training
Investing in the agent experience not only helps boost efficiency but also improves agent morale and retention.
Data analytics and reporting are essential for a well-run call center. But, with all the data that contact centers generate, trying to pin down information that actually matters can be tricky. It’s important work though. To really make the most of your data, you need to understand:
What KPIs to track
What stories your metrics are telling
What’s impacting agent performance the most
While manual observation and monitoring are useful, it’s difficult to dig through so much information with a purely manual approach. Thankfully, modern tools like AI-powered analytics, sentiment analysis, and custom QA scorecards can help pull stronger insights from your call center data.
Cloud technology has exploded in popularity since the pandemic—96% of companies use a public cloud, while 84% use a private one. Cloud technologies are not only more affordable, they also offer increased flexibility and security, without the need to set up your own hardware and infrastructure.
And, best of all, most modern tools can integrate with the rest of the technology you already use, enabling you to seamlessly connect all of your call center software.
With the cloud, your business can expand across geographical borders and time zones, making use of a larger talent pool without sacrificing service quality. This means expanding your operations to new areas (or transitioning to a virtual call center structure) has never been easier.
One of the biggest call center technology trends is that customers are becoming increasingly independent—so let them be! Over 67% of customers prefer to use some form of self-service option over talking to an agent.
Empowering your customers to find the answers and solutions they need without ever having to speak to an agent can dramatically improve the customer experience—and cut down on the workload for your agents.
Overhauling your FAQs and tutorials is an easy way to improve your self-service options, and they don’t require a significant investment of resources. Adding in more powerful AI-powered solutions like chatbots and virtual agents can also help give customers the answers they need.
Just as improving agent experience is essential, so is upskilling staff and giving them the opportunity to learn and grow. And, as AI becomes more prevalent, retaining institutional knowledge and training agents on how to use these new tools is more important than ever.
Using a rich and fully-featured learning management system is a key part of these call center technology trends. They allow you to help upskill agents and teach them how to get the most out of internal AI tools, and help guide them to grow into new roles as time goes on.
Call center technology trends change every year, but there’s one constant: maximizing your QA program is one of the best ways to keep your call center in tip-top shape. Quality assurance impacts everything from CX and agent morale to your brand’s overall reputation.
From omnichannel support to QA technology, scorecard builders, data analytics and reporting, cloud software, AI, and learning management systems, there are a ton of ways to improve call center performance.
And one of the best ways to level up your call center is with Scorebuddy. Through powerful AI analytics, 100% interaction coverage, and GenAI Auto Scoring, you can get a full view of how your call center is operating. Contact us for a demo today and see what you’re missing.
