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♪Oh, the weather outside is frightful♪… and so are the wait times for customers in the contact center! The snow has started falling and decorations are popping up in storefronts around town. This can mean only one thing…’tis the season for e-commerce mayhem! With customers choosing to do their shopping online instead of braving the crowds of shoppers, the human element of shopping at a brick-and-mortar store has largely disappeared. Speaking with a contact center agent might be the only time a customer ever deals with a real person, replacing the traditional salesperson and customer service interactions. CXone makes sure that these experiences remain genuine and personalized no matter which channel they are on.

For all the challenges the workforce has faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been a few shifts that are actually good news for employees. In early 2020, millions of employees became full-time remote workers, a first for many of them—and for many contact centers as well. In an industry that has typically been reliant on in-person facilities, nearly 75% of contact centers now allow employees to work from home, with nearly four in 10 saying they will definitely continue agent work-from-home programs for agents and another third say they probably will continue them.

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.

The holiday shopping season can make or break a retailer’s entire year. Contact centers are used to the holiday spike in transaction volume, but this year may be even more challenging for retail businesses and contact center agents to navigate.

In the world of contact centers and card payments, a day of reckoning is near. The Payment Card Data Security Standard has existed in some iteration since 2004. But PCI-DSS 4.0 is coming in early 2022 – which is months after it was initially expected, since given these complex times, this version requires still more rounds of feedback. What does that mean for your contact center? It means stock up, fortify, and brace yourself – 4.0 is going to be big.

Use of multi-factor authentication (MFA) is on the rise due to an increasing number of cybersecurity attacks, evolving work-from-home policies during the pandemic and new authentication standards. A security enhancement that verifies a user’s identity by requiring two or more pieces of evidence when logging into or accessing an account, MFA was the top security technology to be adopted due to COVID-19.

It’s the small details and the experience of being cared for that ultimately drives a customer to stay with your company for life. So, give your customers something to be thankful for this year, and you’ll find they will pay you back tenfold.