Gartner: Conversational AI Boosts Revenues in the Call Centre Market
Call centre operators are investing in AI and chatbots to reduce dependence on live agents.
The global market for conversational AI and chatbots represents the fastest growing segment in the contact centre forecast. It is expected to grow 24 per cent by 2024, according to Gartner. AI will complement customer service interactions, but will not completely replace agents. Overall, Gartner estimates that about 3 per cent of interactions will be handled via AI in 2023, and this will increase to 14 per cent by 2027.
Improving CX provides investment incentive
Gartner predicts that general economic and geopolitical uncertainty will lead to some budget constraints in 2023, resulting in a slowdown in the replacement and upgrade of location-based contact centres. “This means that while many IT investment areas will be weakened in the face of tighter budgets, customer service and support initiatives that have the potential to improve the customer experience or streamline customer service operations may receive more investment incentives,” says Gartner analyst Marek Fernandez. “These factors will help fund contact centre as a service (CCaaS) projects in conjunction with enterprise digital transformation budgets.”
Cloud-based contact centre capabilities
Gartner expects CCaaS investment growth to accelerate as decision makers implement cloud-based contact centre capabilities to modernise their customer service operations. This includes call centres with many thousands of agents that have been slow to adopt CCaaS. Modernisation projects are implementing CCaaS solutions to support a broader mix of communication channels. And advanced dashboards, analytics, routing, workforce optimisation (WFO), knowledge and insights, and AI capabilities for conversations are increasingly being deployed.
