“The low-hanging fruit is no longer there on the tree” – new CCMA research highlights the ongoing challenges of integrating people and technology in the contact centre
Contact centre leaders continue to grapple with their people strategies and evolving the skills of their teams amidst rapidly evolving technological advancements. These are just some of the findings from the new research report Future-Proofing Your People Strategy released today by the CCMA (Contact Centre Management Association), supported by Zoom, the contact centre CCaaS platform.
The research assesses the three core pillars of future-proofing people strategy that every contact centre must address – integrating people and technology, evolving skills and roles, and successfully delivering change.
Based on focused discussions with a group of UK contact centre leaders from a diverse mix of vertical markets and contact centre types, Future-Proofing Your People Strategy reveals an industry that is having to manage a number of concurrent people challenges. These include – meeting rising customer contact demand without extra headcount, a new urgency to find efficiencies given wage and National Insurance (NI) inflation, and how to complement frontline reductions with growth in support roles.
Some of the key comments from the study’s participants highlight the complexity of creating people strategies to suit a modern contact centre environment:
• “I’m now having to think about extra skills that my team need, because the low-hanging fruit is no longer there on the tree.”
• “My strategy is to offset the rising cost of people with automation, because in today’s world budgets don’t tend to increase year on year.”
• “AI doesn’t always know how to do the right thing. A human always knows how to do the right thing, and what the right thing to do is.”
Leigh Hopwood, CEO for CCMA says the research identifies the unique demands on contact centres as leaders of change within organisations:
“Salary costs and customer expectations are growing faster than budgets can keep up. AI promises to get more done with less resource, but we still need people to design, implement and look after the AI systems. And I’m sure there will always be situations where customers still want to talk to people.”
“In addition to asking how robotic agents can do the job of human advisors, we must ask how robotic contact centre agents can augment and support human colleagues to do a better job. Forging into unknown territory requires a readiness to do things in completely new ways, and it also obliges us to go back to first principles in treating our colleagues with openness, respect and inclusivity.”
“This report shows that today’s contact centre leaders need to meld left-brained foresight and technical ability with right-brained compassion and recognition of the needs of others.”
The report also highlights that the ability to ‘dial up’ cognitive skills in team members is an imperative for leaders and their people strategies. This includes identifying vulnerability in customer contact, working with data and analytics, and industry knowledge.
The Future-Proofing Your People Strategy report is supported by Zoom.
Ben Neo, Head of CX Sales EMEA, Zoom says the findings are a clear indication that successfully integrating people and technology remains as vital as ever:
“In today’s fast-moving digital landscape, meaningful business transformation isn’t just about deploying new technology – it’s about empowering people. ”
“By aligning people strategy with innovations like omnichannel contact centres, artificial intelligence, and self-service capabilities, we create environments where teams can thrive and deliver exceptional customer experience. These advancements are not only reshaping the tools we use, but also how we enable our people to lead in the contact centre of the future.”
To access the full research report from CCMA & Zoom Click Here
For more than 30 years, the CCMA has been absolutely dedicated to supporting contact centre professionals. We’re constantly pushing ourselves to do more for our thriving community, which happens to be the largest community of contact centre professionals in the UK. The CCMA was founded with the goal of sharing best practice and networking to improve skills and knowledge in order to progress contact centre operations – and we live by that to this day.
For additional information on CCMA view their Company Profile
