Mar 09, 2021

COVID-led disruption is driving explosive growth in Managed Services for the contact center. Here’s what to consider.

Ninety percent of executives polled by McKinsey say they believe the pandemic will fundamentally change the way they do business over the next five years. What does this mean for the contact center? More change, more technology, and more complexity, which requires a greater hand in managing it all.

Before we get into the need for managed services for the contact center, let’s look at the changes research suggests we’ll see over the next five years due to the disruption of 2020:

• Permanency of remote work: By April 2020, 66% of knowledge workers were working from home - an increase from 27% pre-pandemic - with many wishing to continue remote work. One year later, management is warming up to the idea of long-term remote work for the undeniable cost and productivity benefits it brings. This is signaling a shift towards cloud-based contact center tools that create meaningful experiences for employees regardless of location: enabling seamless access to, and collaboration with, experts across the organization, a more modernized and intuitive agent desktop, and the implementation of AI and automation solutions like conversational AI and agent assist.
• Shift to cloud-first networking: Organizations rushed their move to cloud contact center solutions as a result of COVID-19. Now with thousands of agents working from home, accessing data and using bandwidth-intensive collaboration applications including video conferencing, management must confidently address potential cloud networking and security challenges while gaining deeper visibility into network performance.
• Communications Platform-as-a-Service (CPaaS): By 2023, Gartner predicts that 90% of global enterprises will leverage API-enabled CPaaS offerings to enhance their digital competitiveness - up from 20% in 2020. CPaaS is the driving force behind organizations that are challenging the norm and finding unique new ways to delight customers.
• Customer-led self-service automation: Leading firms like Gartner agree that the future of self-service is customer-led automation. Like so much else, this has only been accelerated by COVID-19. Research from KPMG found that the number of companies investigating automated self-service technologies increased by 15% since February 2020 when the pandemic first hit. By 2025, customer-led self-service automation solutions such as conversational AI, intelligent knowledge databases, and self-authentication via voice biometrics will be the norm.

How do you plan to manage and maintain all of this in-house?

There are a lot of changes expected for the contact center in the years to come. Even if your internal team can manage all of your organization’s strategic contact center planning and infrastructure initiatives, the cost and time savings of a managed service provider (MSP) make the decision a no-brainer.

MSPs help you stay flexible when it comes to resources and can accommodate quick changes that an in-house team may not respond to efficiently. An MSP handles everything from routine user management and changes to platform monitoring and upkeep to application and business rules management, typically at a lower and more predictable cost while helping your internal IT team refocus on core business-related activities for your organization.

As an end-to-end technology specialist, Servion’s managed services go beyond traditional support. We help our customers architect and implement contact center solutions to deliver on the future of customer experience - using the best available technologies while maximizing their existing investments - and then manage those solutions for them, helping them focus on innovation and future ways to transform. From reactive break-fix services to proactive and predictive analytics, we offer a complete suite of 24x7 managed services - on-premises and in the cloud.

Learn more about managed contact center services from Servion.