DECEMBER 2020CIOAPPLICATIONSEUROPE.COM8IN MYOPINIONew may remember articles from 2015 and 2016 of several technological multinationals forecasting the end of contact center agents by 2020. In particular, I am thinking of an article that I read together with my work colleagues while launching the first RFP (request for proposal ) of virtual assistants in my previous company: "[...] in 2020 these jobs will have been replaced entirely by smart chatbots" (1) We cannot say they were right--I am not sure about their motivation, if they were just guessing or they wanted to give a message to the market - but what we can be sure of is that the contact center industry is undergoing a major change closely linked to technology.Therefore, these annual double-digit growths in terms of contact center software market (*) are not surprising: "Contact Center software worldwide revenues are expected to reach USD 38.6 billion by 2024, rising at a market growth of 14.0 percent CAGR during the 2018-2025" (2) ; while the industry, excluding technology, will certainly remain stable for the following years growing slightly over the CPI (consumer Price Index) forecasted in 2.2% 2019-2025: "In 2018, the `Global Contact Center Market' size was USD 27.7 billion and it is expected to reach USD 40 billion by the end of 2025, with a CAGR of 4.7 percent during 2019-2025" (3). In my opinion, technology within operations always serves a purpose above it. This means that, in its implementation, the company should have a clear strategy, structured processes, and clear responsible (preferably one) for maintaining and exploiting it. If it has not, the company will have obtained, in the best of scenarios, a low ROI and, at worst, will have wasted a huge sum of money and have left the short straw to our substitute. Therefore, the application of technology in contact centers serves to structured processes and what the company's strategy requires of them.I especially enjoy when customer service is one of the main pillars of company differentiation ­ I have always been lucky working for this kind of companies. This greatly simplifies the objective, since it leads to serving a single purpose: maximizing customer satisfaction, but it makes the path to it complex and challenging. My vision is that we must transform the contact centers into revenue or investment centers as nowadays, most of them are cost centers, and, of course, with the maximum possible efficiency. Here there would be a nice debate: Is it better onshore vs. offshore and outsourced vs. in-house models to achieve this transformation?In this respect , the technology which is serving most for this purpose are robots, widely known in their chatbots version supporting the doubts of customers (and agents!!) and, also, in its Robot Process Automation (RPA) version carrying out repetitive tasks and/or those where many screens FHOW THE ADOPTION OF RECENT TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENTS HAS TRANSFORMED THE CONTACT CENTER SPACEJACOBO DOMINGUEZ-BLANCO FERNÁNDEZ, VP OF CUSTOMERS EX. & OPERATIONS, CABIFY
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