Reimagining Contact Centers for Better Business Outcomes

Enterprises are repositioning contact centers to generate new revenue opportunities by integrating customer service with business functions and personalizing customer interactions. Customer desire for quick resolution and proactive customer service is driving the adoption of omnichannel customer service. As a result, the global contact center outsourcing services industry grew by 20% between 2021 and 2022.

These emerging trends are covered in Avasant’s Contact Center Business Process Transformation 2022–2023 RadarView^™. The report gives organizations a view into the changing landscape of customer service. It highlights key enterprise and outsourcing trends and identifies service providers that can help clients reshape their customer service function.

Avasant evaluated 48 providers using three dimensions: practice maturity, domain ecosystem, and investments and innovation. Of those 48 providers, we recognized 28 who brought the most value to the market over the past 12 months.

The report recognizes service providers in four categories:

• • Leaders: Alorica, Concentrix, Sitel Group, Teleperformance, TELUS International, TTEC, and Webhelp
  • Innovators: Atento, Conduent, Genpact, Majorel, Sutherland, and Tech Mahindra
  • Disruptors: EXL, Firstsource, HCL, HGS, Startek, TCS, Transcom, VXI Global Solutions, and Wipro
  • Challengers: Cognizant, CSS Corp, ibex, Infosys, ResultsCX, and WNS

Figure 1 from the full report illustrates these categories:

“Businesses are being forced to transform their contact service centers to adapt to handle larger volumes and to meet with customer demand for faster resolution,” said Matthew Barlow, Avasant managing partner. “Building a 360-degree view of customers has become crucial to enhance the customer experience.”

The full report provides a number of recommendations, including the following:

1. 1. Enterprises must shift from strategies such as call deflection to viewing every interaction as an opportunity.

• • • Offer new revenue-generating products and services based on past queries and purchase history utilizing AI, data, and analytics.
    • Transition toward output- and outcome-based commercial engagement models and incorporate business outcomes-linked contact center outsourcing contracts.

1. 2. Enterprises must implement integrated technology solutions to provide agents with a 360-degree view of the customer.

• • • Integrate contact center systems with CRM, accounting, marketing, and supply chain systems to provide agents with a complete view of customer data in real-time.

1. 3. Leverage personas and the right mix of technical elements to offer a seamless omnichannel experience.

• • • Create customer personas that include attributes such as service score, customer intent, and past interactions for smart routing and to capture the voice of customers.

“Companies must adopt a unique combination of agent and digital support in order to drive key business outcomes,” said Avasant Research Leader Shwetank Saini. “Enterprises should embrace agent augmentation strategies and empower agents and customers with AI, automation, and cloud.”

The full report also features detailed profiles of 28 service providers, along with their solutions, offerings, and experience in assisting organizations in their customer service transformation.

This Research Byte is a brief overview of the Contact Center Business Process Transformation 2022–2023 RadarView™ (click for pricing).