The 2020 NICE inContact Customer Experience (CX) Transformation Benchmark highlights shifting trends in customer support channels.
Around 43% of businesses now prefer to provide self-service channels such as chatbots, a 15-percentage point increase from 28% in 2019. 72% of companies also identified their usage of social media for customer support. Additionally, agent-assisted channels such as phone went down from 72% per cent to 57%.
Because of the pandemic, the majority of businesses reported accelerating their move to cloud technologies. There was also a significant growth in contact centres offering chat services (73%) and mobile apps (56%).
Around 66% of contact centres mentioned they use at least one AI channel, 16-percentage point increase from 2019. They further plan to invest in websites (58%), access to new channels (43%), new contact centre technology (42%) and improving seamless communication (35%) to enhance the customer experience.
[4 minute read]