The democratisation of contact centre technology means that the CX technologies that were traditionally built for contact centre operations are now becoming standard communication tools far beyond their original remits. Rather than being restricted to the contact centre, all knowledge workers across an organisation will benefit from advanced communication tools and features.

So, what are the benefits of the democratisation of contact centre technologies and what are the obstacles that organisations face along the way?

We’re seeing a merge between Contact Centre Communications as a Service (CCaaS) and Unified Communications as a Service (UCaas), meaning these technologies are going mainstream and will become a critical part of communications across any knowledge-based sector.

As an example, we understand the need for compliance automation in contact centres, but what about the sales team that is selling financial products and relies on a different calling technology? There are clear CX and business benefits in having the ability to break these silos, enabling conversational data mining across all customer conversations, no matter the technology.

We’re seeing increased demand for connecting Microsoft Teams with the likes of Genesys, CISCO or Nice CXone, and Microsoft, Google and AWS all have made contact centre a strategic focus, creating their own contact centre offering. The technologies, and the benefits they bring already exist, but organisations need to navigate the connectivity and interoperability friction. The good news is that there are ways to make the transformation easier.

What to look out for

As more enterprises speed up their digital transformation journeys, many are challenged with connecting current and future CX technology, from contact centre to unified communications, speech analytics, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI) technology solutions. Organisations need a frictionless way to orchestrate and connect their voice technology ecosystem to ensure CX agility and enable effective digital transformation.

Organisations, especially contact centres, have invested a lot of money in their existing CX infrastructure but much of this isn’t easily compatible with new technology. This is where interoperability becomes critical.

Organisations need to look for tech that maximises their existing investments by easily integrating with existing service providers such as carriers, network management, voice infrastructure and call-centre systems.

Otherwise, any kind of traditional transformation project will come with endless headaches, heavy investments and won't offer the agility needed to position CX transformation as an ongoing strategic workstream, rather than a one-off piece of work.

To ensure business agility and competitiveness, organisations need carrier and technology provider independence, empowering them with the flexibility to transform and evolve wherever and whenever it is needed.

For example, with cloud opening up a plethora of voice channels, organisations need the ability to orchestrate and consume calls that are exchanged between unified communication, contact centre, compliance automation and intelligent virtual agent solutions.

Cloud technology has enabled the democratisation of a plethora of technologies across unexpected industries, and we’re now seeing this unfold with UCaaS. Whilst there are plenty of challenges involved when integrating systems, those that invest now will reap the benefits, providing unmatched CX to their customers and ultimately improving both their business model and competitiveness.