Emerging trends shaping contact centers 

In today’s rapidly evolving technological landscape, where customer expectations are advancing even faster, companies must stay aware of emerging trends shaping service delivery. To remain competitive and meet these demands, organisations need to embrace the journey towards the contact center of the future. We have identified key trends, from three distinct perspectives, that are driving the evolution of customer service:

1) Customer trends strongly relate to addressing customer needs by transforming how companies engage and interact with their customers.

• Strategic focus on driving value and engagement: company leaders are viewing contact centers as strategic, recognising the increasing opportunity to drive proactive and human-centred engagement to deepen customer connections.
• Embracing the shift towards a digital-first customer service: The use of digital support channels like chat and message are in the rise and are replacing the more traditional ways of interaction.
• Moving from omni-channel to the right channel: Customers typically engage through two to three different channels during a single interaction. In response, leading organisations are placing greater emphasis on proactively guiding customers towards the most efficient and impactful channel tailored to their specific needs.

2) As trends show a larger dependency on technical and data-driven decisions to carry out successful operations, the management and enhancement of contact centers is crucial for their success

• The complexity of customer management is increasing: The nature of customer engagements is becoming more intricate and challenging to manage. A majority of executives report that complexity of contact center interactions will continue to grow over the next two years.
• AI is everywhere, but where is it best suited to provide meaningful support? While advancements in Natural Language Processing (NLP), Large Language Models, and Generative AI have achieved, and sometimes exceeded, human-level performance in many tasks, there is ongoing debate about AI’s tendency to overpromise. Rather than applying AI broadly, the focus should be on identifying the right AI solutions tailored to specific challenges—recognising that AI is not a one-size-fits-all answer.
• Analytics remain challenging but essential: While top organisations recognise analytics as a key driver of meaningful business growth, uncovering insights that fuel innovation and improve performance, analytics is not yet always an inherent capability within contact centers today.

3) New operating models that are adapted to new ways of working are emerging

• Growing demand for agile services: Service models must increasingly adapt to ongoing changes in the customer propositions and servicing context.
• Operating with a distributed workplace: The shift towards flexible, remote working has driven a growing need for effective virtual collaboration in the absence of physical interactions.
• Significant transformations are underway in the talent landscape: In a volatile talent landscape, leaders are redesigning hard-to-fill roles to attract more talent to the contact center environment.

Our point of view on contact center of the future

Contact centers are on the threshold of major changes. The contact center of the future is shaped by evolving trends that enhance both customer experience and enterprise performance while driving down operational costs. In order to make this happen, contact center enhancements require a more strategic and tactical focus from company leadership.

Unlike traditional call centers, the contact center of the future is an enterprise asset that strategically aligns experiences and values to deliver personalised, integrated, and customer-centric interactions. It combines self-service and live engagement through value-driven and integrated capabilities, enhancing both efficiency and customer satisfaction. Built on a scalable, multi-dimensional talent model, it prioritises employee engagement and enablement, reflecting the future of work.

Processes are highly automated and continuously improved to meet customer needs and support talent development. Real-time, proactive capabilities enable seamless omni-channel experiences for both customers and employees. Underpinning all this is a flexible, scalable engagement platform with integrated strategic and operational analytics, where robust data and platform capabilities are essential for success.