WHITE PAPER

Transforming Contact
Centers into Customer
Engagement Hubs
Abstract
In this era of disruptive technological changes, customer
expectations have increased exponentially. Most customers
prefer self-service, personalized dealings and connected
experiences across multichannel. Businesses need to
understand customer requirements and ensure a seamless
anywhere, anytime, personalized, and engaging interaction
to enhance customer satisfaction. However, traditional call
centers often face several challenges in terms of high call
volumes and the inability to provide cloud-based offerings.
Contact centers are now rapidly transforming themselves
with cloud-based platforms to deliver critical functionality
and advantages such as quick setup, easy customization,
high availability and performance, scalability and security.

Typically, a cloud-hosted, conversational AI driven, truly

omnichannel contact center is the solution to this
everchanging customer requirements. An ideal contact
center platform must also enable ‘work-from-anywhere’ for
the agents, complementing their capabilities through
automation initiatives, and reducing total cost of
operations through pay-per-use pricing and on-demand
scalability. Implementing features like speech and
sentiment analytics, agent productivity improvement
strategies and analytics driven proactive communications
are some of the key enablers that can help these contact
centers become true customer engagement hubs, driving
business growth and customer loyalty through a superior
customer experience.
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The Changing Face of Customer Expectations

Customer experience is a key differentiator for most businesses today.
Almost 80% of customers say the experience a company provides is as
important as its products and services.

70 % 63 % 81 %

customer interactions will involve customers expect companies customers attempt to take care of
emerging technologies such as machine to offer customer service matters themselves before
learning (ML) applications, chatbots and through social media channels reaching out to a live
mobile messaging by 2022 representative

I want my experience with any I want to choose the I don’t want to call and wait
business to be as simple and channel through which I in queue. I want to resolve
intuitive as the experience with interact with the company. the issue myself
‘digital native’ businesses The company must
recognize me and I want to be notified in
I expect the business to know remember my previous advance in case of an
my needs and preferences and interactions across all interruption in service
provide relevant offers and channels
information

Figure 1: Customer expectations from contact centers

Customers have always preferred a friendly, helpful and reliable service,

but with emerging technologies, their expectations have risen
exponentially. Customers want to be self-reliant, while expecting
companies to be proactive and being able to provide relevant, timely and
personalized services.

Apart from increasing customer expectations, other trends that make it

imperative for companies to evaluate their contact center technology
stack are the growing importance of cloud-based stacks and the
competitive technology landscape.

The impact of COVID-19, while severe on contact centers across the globe,
has also accelerated the digital transformation process for these contact
centers.

Evolving Technology Landscape and Competitors

An ideal contact center technology stack should not only provide the
desired customer satisfaction and optimization of cost, it should also be
easy to implement and maintain and must allow the flexibility to build a
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solution to meet the customer requirements. Cloud-based contact center

platforms meet these criteria. By 2024, it is expected that cloud-based

contact centers will be the preferred deployment model in 70% of contact

centers.

The many advantages of cloud contact center platforms can be divided into
four broad categories (see Figure 2). Apart from these specific advantages,
other typical advantages of cloud platforms such as high availability and
performance, scalability, security and default availability of latest platform
updates, are all inherently offered.

Optimize total cost of No upfront Don’t pay for Scalability for peaks
operation costs or lock-ins unused and troughs in
capacity business demand

Work From Conversational

Enable key Omnichannel Home AI for
functionalities capability enablement automation

Ease of
Easy Wider
Faster maintenance availability of
implementation
deployment and upgrades technical skills
and maintenance

Open platform -
Build a solution Customizable and Modular
specific to
easy integration
requirements with innovative features architecture
Conversational AI
and others

Figure 2: The advantages of a cloud-based contact center

Companies are taking different routes to build their contact center

technology stack. Some established contact center players are moving
toward cloud solutions through acquisitions and in-house feature
developments. New competitors, on the other hand, are attempting to
leverage innovative ideas to build out a complete stack. Each competitor has
a unique existing strength or capability, which they leverage and expand
their technology platform into a complete cloud contact center solution (see
Figure 3). Companies thus have a wider range of options to choose from,
each with its own merits. The right approach would vary, based on the
specific requirements and business goals for the enterprise.
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Contact center technology stacks are evolving to become –

cloud hosted, conversational AI-driven and truly omnichannel

Cloud Communication Providers -

build a contact center solution with
cloud communication APIs

Cloud CRMs - provide

Unified voice/telephony capabilities
Legacy through partners, enabling CRM as
Multi-channel Hosted core agent desktop via CTI
Telephony Solution or
Solutions Contact Cloud-hosted,
(PBX) Center CCaaS Conversational Cloud AI vendors - use strength
AI-enabled, truly in Conversational AI to provide
(On-Premise) automation and analytical
omnichannel
contact center capabilities, building a CC
platform around it

Evolution of traditional CC Players -

Niche Players - Build a CC solution by
organic + acquisitions
leveraging a specific capability -
collaboration tool, WFO/WFM, ITSM tool

System Integrators – assemble a best-of-breed

solution from multiple solution components

Figure 3: Different approaches to digitalizing the technology stack of contact centers

Impact of Covid-19
As businesses had to accelerate enablement of work-from-home (WFH) for
contact center agents to keep their centers running, characteristics of the
ideal contact center stack has become ever more important.

Pay-per-use pricing and scalability: Most companies are going through a

period of business uncertainty and the situation is likely to remain the same
for the foreseeable future. Companies want to be prepared to face such a
situation by having flexibility in pricing and capacity of their contact centers.
In case of demand surge, they would want to scale up quickly and vice versa.

WFH enablement: With WFH expected to be the new normal, businesses

would want their contact center to extend support in the most efficient and
optimal way possible.

Growth of non-voice channels: As companies are finding it difficult to

provide an infrastructure that can support their agents to answer voice calls
from home, chat channels seem to be an ideal replacement. The chat channel
offers both productivity and customer satisfaction, prompting many
companies to consider expanding the scope of chat-based query resolution.
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Blueprint for Building a Customer Engagement Hub

While the product or platform choices could be different, the fundamental
structure of a future contact center stack remains the same. This end state can
be achieved through multiple product and platform combinations, based on
the requirements and preferences of a specific business. Figure 4 describes
how an engagement hub functions and each stage is detailed below.

Enhanced interaction 8
video chat, co-browse, AR

Supporting
Systems

3 Customer profile
1 Machine-based and context 9
deflection and 2b Handover management
routing
Machine-based Analytical engine–
triage NBO, NBA, 10
Omnichannel Machine-based Agent experience personalization
2a
voice, chat, SMS, enhancement 4
email, social media Resolution 2c
voice bots, chatbots, call transcription,
NLP IVR unified desktop, Knowledge
base 11
translation, live
Machine FirstTM 2 assistant bot

WFM/WFO QM
Authentication 7 collaboration 12
Speech and
6
sentiment analytics CRM, ERP, Others……
Predictive and proactive notifications 5

Figure 4: The technology stack of a customer engagement hub

1 and 9 Customers should be able to choose the channel through which

they interact with the contact center, as well as switch between the
channels.

Asynchronous chat: A customer should be able to initiate a chat

message, irrespective of whether a human agent is free to respond
immediately or not. Asynchronous chats do not have to be replied to
in real-time and can be answered by an agent when they are
available. The customer also has the choice of responding only when
they are available, but the conversation does not have to be restarted
– even in cases where a new agent takes over.

Voice chat: Customers have the choice of speaking instead of typing.

Speech-to-text engine converts the voice into a text chat and posts it
in the live chat channel for the agent each time. It combines the
convenience of chat (asynchronous and at your time of convenience)
and the speed of a voice call (no typing by customer).
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Direct messaging and public posts on social media: The contact

center should be able to accept both direct messages (private
messages) through social channels, as well as public posts on social
pages or directed at social handles of the brand. Social listening on
key topics and trending themes (and responding where necessary) is
important to monitor and maintain brand health.

Context management: As customers switch between channels, the

company must be able to recognize and retrieve their previous
interaction history over all channels. The contact center should track
all interactions from a customer and store them as a unified customer
profile or ‘golden record’ (Point 9 on Figure 4).

2 TCS believes in a Machine First approach, where all interactions are first
handled by a bot or machine, before being handed over to a human
agent, as necessary. However, not all interactions can be managed by a
machine. A typical process follows these steps (see Figure 4):

All incoming interactions (irrespective of the channel) are first

managed by the machine to redirect and assign to the appropriate
channel (2a).

User queries that can be handled by a chatbot or voice bot are sent to
the machine for resolution (2c).

User queries that cannot be handled by a bot are either intelligently

routed to an agent or deflected to an alternate channel (2b). Voice is a
high-cost channel and being able to shift customers from voice to
non-voice digital channels improves operational efficiency.

3 When a bot is unable to provide the necessary resolution, the interaction

is handed over to the human agent. The transcript of the conversation
between the bot and the customer is also transferred to the agent. This
achieves the optimal mix of machine and human working to complement
each other – low complexity, high frequency queries are handled by the
machine, whereas complex scenarios receive human intervention.

4 Agent productivity and efficiency can be improved by using a variety of

solutions:

Real-time call transcription: Many agents have difficulty in

understanding when the conversation occurs in the customer’s mother
tongue. A real-time transcription of the call helps the agents overcome
any difficulty in deciphering accents. The agents can complete the
after-call work and call summary faster, thereby improving efficiency.

Real-time translation: Call can be translated in real-time and transcript

provided to the agents. When an agent is handling a chat session, they
can chat in a language of their choice, irrespective of the customer’s
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language, while the real-time translation runs in the background as an

intermediary.

Unified agent desktop: A single pane of glass view for the agent to
handle all queries from the customer across all channels, as well as
retrieve information from back-end systems, update customer records
and other actions.

Live listening bot: The call or chat between customer and agent is
constantly monitored by a bot, which detects key words or themes
being discussed and necessary knowledge articles or decision trees are
proactively populated on the agent desktop - retrieved from the
knowledge base (11).

5 Proactive notifications can both delight the customer as well as reduce

the load on the contact center. The contact center platform integrates
with analytical engines within the enterprise (10) to identify and send out
appropriate notifications on offers or service status updates at the right
time. Customer activity on the company website or app can be tracked
and a bot can proactively engage the customer.

6 Speech, text and sentiment analytics can be performed on both voice and
non-voice channels. Historical sentiment analysis can identify customer
conversations with negative sentiment scores and flag them for review by
the supervisor. Real-time sentiment analytics can be used to flag
conversations which are not being handled well, giving the supervisor an
opportunity to intervene in real-time. Speech and text analytics is also a
key enabler for automated quality management. From a paradigm of
sample-based quality control, the contact center can move to 100%
quality control, as every interaction is analyzed through automation.

7 Voice biometrics (for voice channel) and face recognition (for non-voice
digital channels) make it easier for the customers to authenticate
themselves - customer does not have to remember a password or keep
changing it on a regular basis. Biometrics based authentication also
provides a more secure way of authentication compared to traditional
means.

8 There are interactions where an agent is not able to support a customer

without some additional visual aids. In these scenarios, the agent can
initiate a co-browse session or a video chat supported with AR-enabled
screen annotations to solve the customer’s problem.

10 The contact center platform integrates with an analytical engine within

the company – to intervene in real-time during customer interactions
(with bot or agent) with cross-sell/up-sell opportunities and next best
action recommendations for agents.
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11 The information in the knowledge base can be retrieved by the bot to

complete customer interactions.

12 Workforce optimization/workforce management (WFO/WFM) tools are

critical to ensure operational efficiency. Quality management (QM) tools
help in agent training and quality control, while collaboration tools
enable agents to interact with other agents or supervisors during a
customer interaction and get additional help as needed to resolve the
customer query.

A Structured Approach to Transform Contact Centers

The following three-pronged approach is designed to help stabilize, optimize
and rapidly transform contact center capabilities, giving contact centers the
ability to fluidly evolve and respond to changing conditions, such as the
COVID-19 pandemic (see Figure 5).

Stabilize Optimize Transform

Basic cloud contact center in Point solutions to improve Migration to cloud

parallel with existing CC stack for efficiency, with future contact center
immediate relief expandability factored in

Figure 5: Steps to Transform a Contact Center

Stabilize

In the immediate aftermath of COVID-19, companies need to stabilize their

contact center operations. Companies need to set up a swift response to the
crisis through cloud contact center solutions.

Set up a parallel cloud contact center in less than a week.

Divert/transfer calls from the existing contact center to a newer one.

Ensure that not all calls have to be necessarily transferred – companies can
pick a specific business process, business team or IVR tree option to be
handled on the new cloud contact center platform.

Enable cloud contact center to become an extension of the existing

contact center – increasing the capacity and reducing call wait times
immediately, as both operate simultaneously.
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Optimize

In the medium term, contact centers must optimize their operations as there
will be pressure to reduce costs and do more with less. Companies should
also keep an eye on the future while selecting technology interventions in
this phase, so that maximum reusability is ensured in the future.

Adopt the X/Y Principle: Most contact centers will have at least X%* of
customer queries which are in the high-frequency, low-complexity
category. These interactions are the ideal candidates for end-to-end
automation. But contact centers should also look to automate Y%* of the
conversation turns in each customer interaction – most interactions will
have an initial phase of data collection, identity verification and other
simple questions, which can be handled by a bot, before handing off the
interaction to an agent for completion. The combined impact of this
approach could lead to up to 25% of customer service operations being
serviced using virtual customer assistants.

Start with one IVR tree option: Identifying an IVR tree option that can be
automated with conversational NLP IVR avoids the risks of all incoming
calls being exposed to the bot in early stages of maturity.

Identify the technology products/platforms for transform phase: Being

mindful and having a plan for the transform phase is important. A view of
the future contact center stack will help in identifying the appropriate NLP
engine and other solutions to enable future reusability.

Transform

Build a business case for cloud migration factoring in cost of operations,

customer experience impact and other factors.

Adopt a modular plug-and-play architecture to future proof the stack.

Reuse and extend components already built in the optimize phase.

Conclusion
As customer expectations change, contact centers also need to evolve to
keep pace. Contact centers can engage the customer by sending offers,
proactive notifications and being readily available in their channel of choice.
The engagement and interactions should be instantaneous, personalized,
timely and relevant. Cloud contact center platforms, along with
conversational AI technologies and analytical capabilities, offer the ability to
businesses to turn their call centers into true customer engagement hubs.

* The actual numbers will vary for each contact center, based on the specific customer queries being handled
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References
[1] State of the Connected Customer, Salesforce, Accessed May 22 2020
https://www.salesforce.com/content/dam/web/en_us/www/documents/e-books/state-of-the-connected-
customer-report-second-edition2018.pdf

[2] Top CX Trends for CIOs to Watch, Gartner, Accessed May 22 2020
https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/top-cx-trends-for-cios-to-watch/

[3] The Rise of Social Media Customer Care, Smart Insights, Accessed May 22 2020
https://www.smartinsights.com/customer-relationship-management/customer-service-and-support/rise-s
ocial-media-customer-care/

[4] Kick-Ass Customer Service, Harvard Business Review, Accessed May 22 2020
https://hbr.org/2017/01/kick-ass-customer-service

[5] How to Choose Your Best-Fit Vendor for Contact Centre as a Service, Gartner, Accessed May 22 2020
https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/3981861/how-to-choose-your-best-fit-vendor-for-contact-center
-as

[6] Press Release, Gartner, Accessed July 31 2020

https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2018-02-19-gartner-says-25-percent-of-customer-
service-operations-will-use-virtual-customer-assistants-by-2020
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About The Author

Blesson Gregory
Blesson Gregory leads the Conversational
Experiences service line for Australia and
New Zealand. He is responsible for sales,
solution design and consulting for
Conversational AI and cloud contact
center technologies. He has experience
across multiple sectors and functions in
digital domain roles, including strategy,
venture capital, program management,
consulting, marketing, sales and business
development. Blesson holds an MBA from
IIM Bangalore and belongs to the cadre
of Tata Administrative Services (TAS) - the
flagship leadership program of Tata
Group. As a part of TAS, he has worked
across Tata Group companies such as
Tata Sons (Tata Industries), Tata
Communications, Tata Motors, Titan,
Tata Trusts, Tata International and TCS.

Contact

Visit the Conversational Experiences page on www.tcs.com

Email: CE.Marketing@tcs.com

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