Predictive artificial intelligence has powered insights and next-best actions for a decade. Last year, generative AI came into its own in the contact center, increasing agent productivity by summarizing customer interactions and tickets and creating content. Hot on its heels emerged AI agents that can actually do work, like changing an order or following a simple service process. Couple this with all the automation technologies that are already available and in a few years we will truly shift to AI-led customer service. Agents will take a back-seat to AI. This means AI will be in the foreground interacting with customers. Agents will be in the background, supporting AI and addressing escalations.
Once the shift to AI-led customer service happens, everything in customer service will change. Contact center cubicle farms will be a thing of the past; roles and skill sets in the contact center will evolve. Here are some thoughts about this future that is probably closer than we anticipate:
- Contact center technology pricing will change. Yes, this is already happening. Seat-based pricing does not make sense in an AI-first world. Already vendors have pivoted to consumption-based pricing, which we see in how genAI and early incarnations of AI agents are priced today. Ultimately, pricing must reflect the true value that software generates, and outcome pricing will become more pervasive.
- Metrics will change to be business outcome-focused. At long last, contact centers will put the decades-long average handle time (AHT) and occupancy tyranny to rest, since the contact center will no longer scale based on butts in seats. New customer service roles will be tasked at optimizing the AI-led customer service program based on concrete business outcomes like strength of customer relationship, retention, and enrichment.
- Workforces will look different (and so will workforce management). With AI leading customer interactions, companies will have a much smaller need for workforce management solutions to forecast and schedule agent workforces. Sure, WFM isn't going to disappear anytime soon, but in the near to mid term, WFM solutions will need to adapt to manage scheduling needs for the agents who manage escalations from self-service.
- Outsourcers will take on a new identity. The era of labor arbitrage in customer service will ultimately end as there will be less demand for agents to manage escalations as AI matures. Outsourcers can morph into providing all the AI that powers customer service operations and offer specialized agents who are highly skilled or have deep relationship skills.
- New organizational structures will emerge. As companies focus on the business outcomes of customer service, the lines between inbound customer service and revenue-contributing functions will blur. We will see more growth officers who own customer service as part of a broader customer engagement function, like what companies with product-led growth (PLG) strategies have today. Perhaps siloed front-office operations are finally put to rest.
Kate Leggett is a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research.