This article first appeared in UC Advanced magazine issue #25.
While CRM platforms continue to encroach on the Contact Centre, the newly appointed 8×8 Vice President of Sales EMEA is more interested in meeting customer goals.
Chris Angus, 8×8’s VP of Sales EMEA, views contact centre AI as a natural evolution rather than a sudden disruption. As CRM platforms increasingly encroach on the customer experience market, 8×8 stays competitive by focusing on an outcome-based approach. AI is utilised to streamline mundane tasks alongside human agents, not replace them. Ultimately, 8×8 provides a comprehensive “one-stop shop” integrating unified communications and contact centre capabilities, empowering businesses to effectively retain customers in a challenging economy.
It seems like every day there is a new prediction, piece of research, warning, innovation, or opinion about the subject of the day: Artificial Intelligence.
Whether sincere or an attempt to stay relevant, it’s clearly so pervasive that I’m unable to start a feature without mentioning it!
“I think we’re just in a natural evolution as opposed to a standout tech,” said Chris Angus, the newly appointed Vice President of Sales in EMEA at 8×8. “We’re not switching from Beta Max to Blu-ray.”
Potentially the wisest words I’ve heard on the subject for some time from someone who has witnessed an entire digital transformation within the contact centre.
“A Contact Centre fifteen years ago was purely voice, and it was a cost centre. Difficult for organisations to find the budget to invest in because it was just seen as an expense. Now with the demand for customer experience being one of the main drivers, we’ve seen the multichannel, omnichannel with WhatsApp, SMS, email, chat, and bots to a degree.
“Machine learning was really the first part of AI. Intelligent decision-making and call routing within the contact centre that, from a simple phone number, identify the best person to answer the call. That was the first kind of evolution of AI before we got to where we are today.”
Merging Experience
Where we are today seems to be one of the most agile sectors in the technology market.
While the CEOs of other businesses are enamoured of the potential of artificial intelligence and the exhausted CTOs try to grasp how they are going to fulfil their wishes, the contact centre has already embraced artificial intelligence to the extent that a lot of us no longer mind speaking to a robot.
Largely past the challenge of Artificial Intelligence, the contact centre is now extending its reach into the service customers receive, even when there isn’t a problem. A challenge that 8×8 is mitigating by providing solutions based on outcomes rather than what the customer think they want.
“The customer experience market is converging,” said Angus. “Over the last few years, we’ve seen more of the traditional CRM vendors in the same opportunities that we would have been for as a UC and CC provider.
“Ultimately, the way businesses are run today is via a platform. As a customer experience platform, it allows us to completely delineate between UC, CC, CPaaS, AI, and approach things from an outcomes perspective.”
Angus added that the first question 8×8 asks is “What are you trying to achieve?” before working out how to generate the solution. He also added that, from a market perspective, we’re going to see many more, in his words, “strategic alignments”.
“It’s going to get super competitive. Every other day, there’s a new AI organisation specialising in a particular area of work that companies like 8×8 have to compete with on a regular basis.
“If we look at market trends, that’s not a surprise. Salesforce has attacked the AI agent, but we’re not entirely sure how successful it’s been. Depending on which report you will read, it’s great; others will tell you that they still need physical agents.
“That’s the way it’s going to go. We’re going to get far more digital virtual agents than we will human agents, but alongside a human as opposed to in place of them.”
Human After All
The idea that artificial intelligence is going to push humans out of the contact centre was one that Angus was sure to put down.
“We’re not going to do away with the human inside the contact centre or inside the organisation.
“The AI agent needs to be someone that can take away the heavy lifting, someone that can remove mundane tasks, and ultimately needs to solve a real problem, not just a bot for bot sake.
“But we’re not seeing huge amounts of downturn in physical agents in our customers today. That doesn’t mean it won’t get there eventually, depending on how advanced the technology becomes and how much it costs.
“That’s something which we’ll probably yet to see. But we’re certainly seeing more and more customers wanting to streamline complex but mundane tasks with Authentic AI.”
Meeting Customers
While the work continues on a completely automated contact centre, the customer experience is treated as one of the most important parts of the communication stack.
Skipping past the usual statistics about the cost of customer acquisition vs the cost of retaining customers, Angus said that the pervasive strategy at the moment is “meeting customers where they want to be met.”
“What we need to look at is where the consumer feels comfortable and how we make it as easy as possible for them to communicate in that method without leaving things on the table? Irrespective of how we describe it, whether it’s CX, CRM, or UC or CC, ultimately there’s so much pressure now on attracting new customers in the consumer market and then retaining them that businesses have to find ways to stay ahead.”
One Stop Shop
While the contact centre is having a moment in the sun, Angus was keen to emphasise that 8×8 can pull together a package that covers all bases.
“Voice isn’t going away,” said Angus. “We find our biggest strength is that we have that one-stop shop where you can buy the AI agents, look at core routing for the contact centre with machine learning and analytics, but also plug in the HR and finance teams who just want a dial tone.
“There’s still a high demand for unified communications. One of the largest deals we did last quarter was fundamentally UC-based, and I think that will continue.
“The value for us as a company is what we can build around UC.”
Comment from the Editor
Going into this interview, I was expecting the usual spiel about how AI is a transformative technology and how 8×8 is a leader in the space, or at least attempting to be.
What transpired was a refreshing perspective that, in reality, the AI agents that are sold to most businesses have already been successfully rolled out in the contact centre.
It’s clear that the customer experience is the focus of businesses the world over. Against a tough economic backdrop, to put it lightly, the prevailing sentiment is that maintaining customer numbers is the only way to guarantee survival for another year.
It is no surprise, therefore, that CRM platforms are now encroaching on the contact centre. Customer data is essentially priceless when it is made available to the agents who are providing support.
Yet 8×8 seems unfazed by this development, knowing that they have the end-to-end solution that can connect the business before it begins its CX revolution.
That way, they can focus on delivering outcomes.
