Let’s get ready to rumble in customer service. Our boxing ring is the telecom industry. The challenger in the red corner: a modern contact center. In the blue corner we have the veteran, the call center. It has prepared itself for this fight through an upgrade in digital transformation. The question is: who wins? The condition for victory is to offer each customer generation the communication channel that suits them best. And the price is a leading position in the saturated telecommunications market.

Enthusiastic experts have no doubt at all that artificial intelligence will prevail. But leaving the rose-colored AI glasses aside and assuming the viewpoint of customers and employees, obstacles beyond the technology itself become evident: Currently, there are three problems preventing the widespread acceptance of artificial intelligence.

Many see the capability of chatbots to engage in dialog as their biggest potential in customer service applications. To this day, however, smooth communication with a machine via free text without loss of context is not possible. Nevertheless, bots already now provide added value for customers if their existing dialog skills are combined with technical processes carried out autonomously by the bots to solve customers’ issues. Telecommunication companies can benefit from this option to generate a positive customer experience outside of call center business hours.

The customer and their experiences with companies was the focus of attention on this sunny but cold Thursday. Cross-industry leaders from different countries gathered in the Rode Hoed in central Amsterdam for the Unleash Omnichannel & Digital Customer Experience Summit on April 11th & 12th 2019. Photo by Marit de la Vera.