The evolution of call centers has been nothing short of monumental, from the days of private branch exchange (PBX) phone systems to cloud-based, omnichannel contact centers that seamlessly connect experiences across a growing number of communication channels. And now AI is poised to make the most sweeping advancements in contact centers yet—with the potential to revolutionize both customer and employee experiences. We’re in the early stages of a transformation that, along with other advancements in analytics and unified platforms, will propel the need to rethink both customer experience (CX) strategies and the exploding amounts of structured and unstructured CX-related data that they will generate.
Setting Direction for Enterprise AI Infrastructure
The Rise of CCaaS
Prior to the pandemic, many enterprises were reluctant to fully move to contact center as-a-service (CCaaS) environments, despite the availability of the technology. The top barriers to cloud migration were centered on existing, on-premises contact center investments and security concerns, as well as a resistance to change. But these misgivings quickly went out the window once cloud connectivity became table stakes for supporting remote sales, service, and support teams. In other words, cloud became the way forward to keep the proverbial lights on. Since the rapid adoption of CCaaS, it has become clear that deploying a CCaaS offers a tremendous range of business benefits:
- Reduced costs and greater scalability
- Newfound access to disruptive solutions to improve customer service
- Simplified integrations with other as-a-service tools and technologies, including AI and even the internet of things (IoT)
- Greater levels of personalization and simplicity for customers from real-time analytics
But these benefits of the cloud are only the tip of the iceberg. With the development of generative AI, AI-powered technologies within the contact center have moved from understanding natural language into being able to generate it. This paradigm shift is shaping up to have far-reaching effects on the future of CX.
AI Takes Center Stage
AI has been used for years to help route customers to agents, analyze data, and even create team schedules. However, the next step in AI for CX is more of a leap—using large language models (LLMs) to summarize conversations, generate coaching notes, help agents query knowledge bases, and extract insights, including sentiment analysis for calls. And we’ve now hit the point where AI can solve problems and complete transactions with multi-turn conversations. It is now even becoming possible to move away from traditional interactive voice response systems (IVRs) to AI technology that enables generative multi-language voices that can be instantly localized to mirror the language and dialect of the customer.
Contact Center Data Management Challenges
But all of these advancements come with challenges—especially when you consider the sheer volume of data being produced, and that much of it can be subject to strict compliance regulations. The modern contact center has become a key generator of business data garnered through interactions, transactions, and journeys. But collecting, organizing, analyzing, and acting on all this data is no simple feat.
The Vulnerability of Customer Data
There’s yet another challenge when it comes to the mountains of data being collected by cloud-based contact centers—security. Because contact centers manage personally identifiable information (PII), including social security numbers, credit card information, and home addresses, they’re a primary target for cybercrime. Data breaches from internal and external sources, as well as technology vulnerabilities, can harm a company’s customers, damage its reputation, and result in a flurry of fines and penalties from regulators.
CCaaS systems are particularly vulnerable to attack given the number of internal employees and external customers that have access to them, requiring a proactive approach to minimize the impact of bad actors and help maintain business continuity.
The Value of a Modern Data Platform
For companies deploying CCaaS, these challenges are very real, propelling the need to carefully evaluate existing data storage. With both data volumes and cybercrime threats rising, a next-generation data management platform like Pure Storage® is the way forward. It can mean the difference between struggling to transform and being able to leverage all the benefits of a cloud-based contact center.
Robust, simple, and primed for modern technologies, the Pure Storage platform delivers the innovation necessary to help provide deep, rich understanding of consumers and their habits, improve service satisfaction, and deliver a security infrastructure to bounce back quickly from cyber threats. Support is AI-driven, so issues can be resolved before they become outages. And with the Pure Storage Evergreen® portfolio of subscriptions, there’s flexibility to quickly scale up or down to meet evolving needs.
CX has become far more than the sum of interactions employees have with consumers. It’s about the products sold, the services offered, and the technologies used to make experiences more memorable and satisfying. By combining CCaaS with the right cloud storage solution, companies gain the internal efficiencies to make the best impression on consumers and the right business decisions.
Learn more about how Pure Storage solutions can help maximize the benefits of your cloud contact center.
