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Customers expect more from the companies they do business with than ever before, making seamless service across all channels—including, increasingly, self-service channels—a priority across industries. When customers prefer to address their needs themselves, they want consistent, personalized self-service capabilities that make it easier for them to get the answers and resolution they expect.

Consumer demand for self-service has only intensified during the pandemic. Nearly two-thirds of CIOs (65%) have seen an increase in the use of self-service by customers or the general public, and 79% expect that usage to continue to grow, according to the Gartner CIO Agenda 2021. Already, some eight out of 10 enterprises today offer at least one self-service app, Forrester has found.

Shawn Smith, a system analyst at nonprofit health care company Cambia Health Solutions, works mainly with customer service teams. When he stepped into his role more than two years ago, Cambia’s quality evaluations were completed via a recording application and then documented in Word, Excel and OneNote. The organization’s quality program became an immediate focus for Smith, he said.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed organizations across industries, and perhaps nowhere are we seeing its transformative powers so clearly as in customer relationship management. AI is increasingly enabling organizations to improve customer service, improve customer loyalty and free customer service agents to focus on higher-value tasks. In doing so, AI unlocks a wide range of benefits, from reduced costs and improved employee retention to higher revenue and increased customer satisfaction.

Demand for self-service is soaring. Consumers expect more than ever, beginning with the 24/7, always-available convenience of finding solutions to their problems themselves. Though most businesses now offer at least one self-service app, a Gartner survey found that just one in 10 customers report resolving their issue using self-service entirely.

For many years, contact centers have strived to enable agents to manage their own performance and own their learning and development. As work-from-home and hybrid work models become the new norm, the business case for agent empowerment has become more compelling.

Today’s contact center analytics can give leaders unprecedented insights into operations and identify if they’re delivering the experiences customers expect and value. Artificial intelligence (AI) can take standard contact center data and transform it into actionable information about customer behavior, agent performance, and operational efficiency – key information that can’t be ignored for the modern contact center.