Autonomous Customers & Super AgentsThe Future of the Contact Centre

Dr Nicola J. Millard, Head of Customer Insight & Futures,

BT Global Innovation Team,

nicola.millard@bt.com @DocNicola

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Our research and development activities.

largest investor in R&D in the UK over past five years

3rdlargest fixed line telecoms R&D investor in the world over past five years

3rd

invested in R&D in 2014/15

£502m spent on R&D over the last five years

£2.8 billion

scientists and technologists employed worldwide

14,000 patents in our portfolio

4560

©British Telecommunications plc

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Facing Autonomous, Omnichannel, Mobile, Social Customers.

Source: Davies/Hickman (2015), The Autonomous Customer, BT/Avaya

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Changing usage of channels by consumers

Web-chat and social media fastest growing, as the traditional channels fall away in terms of customers contacting organisations

Source: Davies/Hickman (2015), The Autonomous Customer, BT/Avaya

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© British Telecommunications plc

Email PhoneWebsit

eFace-

to-faceFAQs Post

Facebook

IVRText/S

MSWebch

atOverseas CC

AppsWhats

AppForum Twitter Skype

Belgium 71 59 57 55 44 29 18 35 17 15 35 9 4 13 4 6

Spain 56 65 47 51 25 15 24 19 11 12 10 12 21 8 9 8

Germany 77 65 51 48 37 44 13 27 11 7 10 6 8 12 3 6

Global 63 62 51 46 32 27 24 24 21 18 16 15 15 13 10 10

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

Spain is more enthusiastic about technology than much of Europe.

Global variations in usage of channels.

Which of these methods of contacting organisations do you use currently?

Source: Davies/Hickman (2015), The Autonomous Customer, BT/Avaya

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Cartoon: Rinat Baibekov http: www.rinat-baibekov.com

The Call Factory : The “Cat in the Box” Dilemma

“Service delivery has been crafted into an engineering model where tasks have been simplified, services must conform to predetermined design specifications and the production process has been constructed

to minimise labour costs”. Deery & Kinnie, 2002.

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New models for contact centres: SuperAgent 2000!

7

8

24

54

4

6

8

4

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Inbound, transactional

complex problem solving

cross sell/upsell

proactive outbound

complaint handling

Other

Primary Function of Contact Centres

20

48

22

1

7

2

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Product/service expertise

Communication skills

Analytical/problemsolving

resilience

empathy

other

Agent Skills

28

9

25

3

34

1

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40

Easy/effort

Net promoter

Right first time

call handling time

customer satisfaction

other

Primary Measures

36

4

40

7

11

2

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45

Phone

Email

webchat

video

social media

other

Core Channels

SuperAgent 2020: The Future of the Contact Centre.

Source: SuperAgent 2020: The Future of the Contact Centre (2014), Millard & Alcock, BT White Paper. Copyright BT Global Services, 2016

9Copyright: BT Global Services, 2015

Source: SuperAgent 2020: The Future of the Contact Centre (2014), Millard & Alcock, BT White Paper.

Location of centre 2020.

“Whilst customer contact will certainly move to a more devolved model - infrastructure investment will dictate that the change will not happen by 2020”, Manager, CCMA UK.

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Key technologies 2020.

Source: SuperAgent 2020: The Future of the Contact Centre (2014), Millard & Alcock, BT White Paper.

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The Rise of the Droid…why your next employee may be a robot.

IoT

“Hollowing out” & “Uberisation” of work

Pattern matching &

unstructured problem solving,

e.g. Watson.

Autonomous mobility, fine

motor control, e.g. Baxter,

autonomous cars, computer

vision

Language & complex comms,

e.g. Siri, Narrative Science,

Lionsbridge.

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44%Would share social media profile to get better service

4 in 5Like orgs using technology to listen to calls if the agent is rude or a problem arises

71%Like it when organisations notice consumers have problems on their website and try to help

55%Might share location with organisation for a better service

The emerging “ego” system:

62%Find dealing with customer service issues exhausting

55%I put a lot of effort into safeguarding my rights

54%

Give feedback to companies but they don’t change

The more information I give, the better customer service I expect

48%China

63%UAE

75%India

62%Singapore

66%USA

69%Indonesia

63%UK

56%Belgium

57%Germany

74%Spain

Creating smart customer service: it’s all about me!

Source: Davies/Hickman (2015), The Autonomous Customer, BT/Avaya

13Copyright: BT Global Services, 2015

“The skilled manager will become an even scarcer commodity for contact centres. This means that to

manage successfully, you will have to move past standard people management practices”,

Call Centre Helper.

Principal role of the “super manager” 2020.

Thank You.Dr Nicola J. MillardHead of Customer Insight & FuturesBT Global Innovation Teamnicola.millard@bt.com@DocNicola