Today, contact centers need to deliver superior customer experiences while minimizing operational costs. To deliver this vital customer service engine, you must design a business result aligned strategy, choose the right technology partners, and leverage customer data and analytics for decision making. Making these improvements involves a long list of hard choices and challenges.
This is where ISG steps in. Beyond identifying gaps in your current state and helping you align on the future state business case, we specialize in advising on selecting the right tools and partners and executing a future-proof transformation plan. The result is an AI-enabled contact center that drives real business results: lower time-to-resolution, higher satisfaction and NPS ratings, and an overall elevated customer experience.
Leverage our unparalleled research to navigate the complex contact center technology landscape, assess your tech stack and identify new opportunities. From service provider comparison reports to the latest technology trends, our research will keep you on the cutting edge.
Read our Buyer's Guides to best understand, assess, optimize and select Contact Center software providers.
Learn MoreHow does your IT spend measure up against your industry peers?
Find out for freeUtilizing our extensive data on cost, price, rates and performance metrics of global sourcing contracts, we offer bespoke benchmarking solutions that give you the context you need to design your contact center specific to your industry and business needs.
Leave the complexities to us. We help you design a tailored scope and services strategy aligned with your desired end-state architecture, and we guide you through the sourcing transaction process, including vendor research, RFI/RFP support and program delivery.
Sourcing, contracting and navigating the technology provider ecosystem.
Learn MoreWe give you the data and tools to realize the full potential of your strategic vision.
Learn MoreOur focus on change management and training ensures smooth process transition and technology adoption. To ensure you get value from your investments, we help you define key performance indicators (KPIs) and governance so you can measure and manage results. Alternatively, we can manage your governance and/or analytics and provide actionable insights to enhance decisioning and performance.
Improve
Operations
Implement Modern Technology
Increase
Resolution
Drive New Value from Data
ISG is a leader in proprietary research, advisory consulting and executive event services focused on market trends and disruptive technologies.
Get the insight and guidance you need to accelerate growth and create more value.
Learn MoreWithin the rapidly developing and changing realm of customer service, advanced enterprise contact centers delivering superlative CX play a crucial role in ensuring customer satisfaction and improving business outcomes. These centers serve as the central hub for customer interactions, utilizing a mix of technology and human interaction to efficiently address customer needs. The incorporation of advanced technologies such as AI, generative AI (GenAI), ML and cloud-based solutions has transformed the operations of contact centers, making them highly agile, adaptable and capable of providing appropriate and personalized CX.
Overall BPO growth, which includes customer experience and other back-office operations, remained flat at $5.6 billion in the first half of 2024 compared to 1H2023. Interestingly, the number of awards – 457 – was higher in 1H2024 than the 403 in 2023. This is a strong indicator that the demand in the market is intact. However, deal sizes have been reduced.
Self-service has changed immensely in recent years. It has gotten better, qualitatively, in delivering answers and resolutions to customers. But it has also gotten extremely complex, relying on a basket of new technologies to achieve results. It helps to look at it through the eyes of the three main constituencies that are affected by it: customers, contact centers and the businesses they sit in.
Field service operations are not often discussed as part of enterprise customer experience planning, but there is a strong argument that they should be seen as an important factor driving how customers perceive brands. Like contact centers, field service teams are dealing with the advance of startling new technologies that can be expensive and disruptive. The flip side of disruption, though, is that it presents interesting opportunities for improving customer-related outcomes.
With more B2B enterprises looking to provide access in a timely manner and when and where the customer chooses, digital commerce is a growing part of the overall customer experience. It is safe to say that in B2B commerce, the Amazon effect also applies, in that customers expect a similar level of frictionless automation, immediacy and simplicity in operation. But, as I will discuss, there are significant differences between B2B and B2C around individuality in pricing, more complex product sets and payment terms.
The environment around customer experience is being disrupted by a series of technical and organizational shifts ranging from artificial intelligence to work-from-home to deep customer analytics. When times change, it’s helpful for people to have a framework to organize their thinking and actions. I believe there are two dominant frameworks used to organize business approaches to customers. One is rooted in the efficiency of the contact center (let’s call it “CC thinking”), and the more marketing-centric framework is based on maximizing customer value (for argument’s sake, “CX thinking”).
By the late 2020s, Gen Alpha will move into the workforce, introducing a new dynamic. With the potential for up to five or six generations in the workplace, enterprises are often challenged to understand how to bridge the generation gap and create a cohesive workforce. The answer can be found within your technology stack.
