Our biennial contact centre research is here, and with the collaboration of some of our top global partners, our trends report outlines where contact centres stand today and what can be expected within the next 5 years.  With the growing usage of AI but also the scepticism around it, businesses will have to find the balance between speed, effectiveness, and the vital importance of human to human connections. Our trends report will equip you with the insights and advice to future-proof your contact centre operations.

Crisis management is a fact of life for social media marketing teams. But that doesn’t make it any easier to handle. To help you out, we hosted a panel session on handling crises, navigating customer dissatisfaction, and responding to negative sentiment on social platforms, featuring insights from:

Rachel Karten, Social Media Consultant

Katie Yun, Director of Social Media Enablement at Nationwide

Companies are using AI-powered tools to reduce wait times, improve response times, analyze customer data, and offer personalized solutions. For organizations to harness the full potential of AI for customer service, they must make a concerted effort to understand their organization’s needs, capabilities and limitations and to evaluate the offerings available. Download the Harvard Business Review Pulse Survey to explore how companies are currently using AI solutions to improve customer experience (CX), what value they’re realizing and how they’re addressing the challenges they’re encountering, plus more:

Is delivering exceptional CX feeling too complex these days? Given the rise in customer expectations, new hyper-advanced technology, and ever-evolving metrics, consistently delivering exceptional customer experiences (CX) has only become more complicated. How do companies rise to meet the intensified needs of customers without buckling under the weight of sophisticated and advanced systems and operations?

Generative AI is transforming industries, with eCommerce set for some of its most significant changes this decade. One popular application of the emerging technology is in content creation, with over 80% of marketers using GenAI for social media copy and images. Within eCommerce merchandising specifically, GenAI is streamlining content creation by allowing teams to automatically enrich product attributes, improve data hygiene, enhance product descriptions, and more — all at the speed of AI.

Social media has become the preferred channel for B2B brands and customers to communicate and engage with one another. After all, having meaningful conversations on social media is what connects people and brands. Whether it’s to feel more connected, access quick responses to questions, or feel part of a community, social media’s casual and convenient nature usually offers a more personalized and familiar experience for B2B buyers looking to connect. But even on a good day where social engagement is meaningful, social media itself can be chaotic.

2024 stands as the year of significant transformation as 70% of CX leaders reconsider their entire customer journey, reflecting the paradigm shift in customer service from human-driven to a Human + AI ecosystem in today’s digital and AI-centric business landscape. From a customer’s lens, Generative AI (Gen AI) can be both a delight and a spur for more demanding expectations. From the customer service leader’s perspective, it can be a source of both possibilities and challenges. Drawing the delicate balance between the hyper-efficiency of digitized customer care and the hyper-personalized responsiveness customers crave is an exciting and challenging code to crack.

Most people are looking for effortless customer service. According to historical figures given by Donald E Wetmore from the Productivity Institute, the average person gets one interruption every 8 minutes which equates to 50-60 for every working day. If people are constantly interrupted they will increasingly want and expect their own issues and concerns to be resolved rapidly and without hassle.