Text-based communication plays a growing role in customer service. There are several big questions around how it will evolve. The most important one, in my mind, is how text should work alongside voice. What is the ideal arrangement between typing and talking?
The second big question is: What channel will carry the messages? We have four broad categories: Web-based chat, SMS, social media (e.g. Twitter DMs), and proprietary networks (e.g. Facebook Messenger, Apple Chat). I know that other people divide things differently, but this structure makes sense to me. On that second question, there’s been quite a bit of news in recent months. Let’s go through it.
The cloud has radically transformed the call center industry. The shift, now firmly in its second decade, is accepted as conventional wisdom. You rarely find people arguing the merits of premise-based call centers. But there’s no denying the fact that many premise-based systems are still sold and deployed, especially for larger call centers. It seems companies are fearful of touting any non-cloud successes because the knee-jerk reaction is to label that as anti-progress.
It’s been a while since we did a report round-up post. It’s not for lack of material! Our inboxes here at Fonolo HQ are full of great reports covering call center technology and trends. The steady pace of industry news has simply made it hard to find a quiet week to slip in a post like this.![Demystifying AI and NLP [Slideshare]](https://fonolo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Demystifying-AI-and-NLP-Live-Discussion-200x200.jpg)
