Research highlights trends for the future and helps leaders assess the maturity and risks of customer service and support technologies
Gartner, a world reference in research and advice for companies, analyzes that there are four pillars that drive technological innovation in customer service and support organizations (CSS – from Customer Service and Support, in English). According to the latest Gartner research, the pillars are: connection, process orchestration, knowledge and insight, and resource management.
The search 2022 Gartner Hype Cycle for CSS Technologies highlights the most important solutions for this segment, providing insight into the evolution of capabilities, as well as insights to manage the implementation of these new technologies in the context of a specific business goal. The report also allows customers to be informed about the promise of an emerging technology in the context of their industry.
Drew Kraus, Analyst and Vice President at Gartner
"Efforts to increase the use of digital channels and improve automation rates using analytics are driving investments in fulfillment solutions despite economic headwinds," said Drew Kraus, Analyst and Vice President, Gartner. "This year's Hype Cycle technologies are aimed at improving customer service, creating a more seamless customer journey, and improving the design and direction of future journeys."
According to Gartner, the pillars are:
Connection - This innovation category focuses on providing channel design directly architected to create independent service journeys, including intelligent self-service. For example: the CCaaS (acronym for Contact Center as a Service) is a cloud-based application platform with services that enable organizations to holistically manage multi-channel interactions with pre-packaged applications to support customer and employee engagement. Creating a seamless customer journey across assisted and self-service channels is a top priority for service leaders in 2022, and accelerating the adoption of this capability advances the effort.
“The Cloud allows organizations to focus on transforming the customer experience (CX – from Consumer Experience in English), instead of managing the daily technological needs of users, which will drive the growth of 22% of the CCaaS market to US$ 10.9 billion in 2023”, says Kraus. He said additional solutions featured in this category by the Hype Cycle report on customer service and support include augmented reality for support, consumer messaging apps, proactive communication software and services, and video contact center.
Process Orchestration – Technologies in the process orchestration pillar support increasingly complex and personalized engagements, often through automation. For example, it is expected that chatbots, a form of virtual customer service assistant (VCAs – from Virtual Customer Assistants in English), become the primary customer service channel for a quarter of organizations within five years as they evolve to handle more involved requests. Additional process orchestration profiles in Hype Cycle include Customer Engagement Centers (CECs – Customer Engagement Center, in English), technology and multi-experience platforms.
“The automation of interactions in the enterprise has a tremendous impact on the business that cannot be underestimated”, reinforces the Vice President of Gartner. "The emergence of sophisticated voice resources with Artificial Intelligence made large-scale call center automation feasible, with enormous potential for savings and the generation of more positive experiences".
Knowledge and discernment – Innovations in this category are centered on delivering operational and customer relationship personalization insights and recommending next best actions across functional groups. Key Hype Cycle technologies here include service analytics, journey, voice solutions and knowledge management. As making better use of assessment and AI remains a top three priority for CSS leaders in 2022, many of the solutions in this category can help. One example is consumer data platforms, CDPs (Customer Data Platforms in English), or software applications that support marketing and customer experience use cases by unifying a company's customer data from multiple channels. CDPs optimize the timing and targeting of messages, offers and engagement activities and allow the analysis of consumer behavior at the individual level over time.
Resource management - This category consists of technologies that engage and empower employees, resulting in a stronger CX. For example, employee engagement management solutions (WEM – from Workforce Engagement Management, in English) expand in the already mature WFO (Workforce Optimisation) market by accommodating complementary technologies — in addition, there are the interaction assistance tools and voice analysis of employees, VoE (Voice of the Employee), which help to boost team engagement. They are expected to have a high impact on service organizations within two to five years.
“WEM brings a much-needed added dimension to managing contact center workers,” Kraus points out. “The rise of temp and freelance workers is putting pressure on customer service departments to ensure a high awareness of the employee experience, without which securing their engagement will be increasingly challenging.”
Other technologies in the Hype Cycle within this pillar include mobile field service management and field service workforce optimization.
