Q & A with Contact Center Industry Expert Sheila McGee-Smith [Part 2]
February 1, 2017
Last week Sheila McGee-Smith presented at the Five9 2017 Sales Kickoff discussing her insights about the contact center industry and the upcoming forecast for this year. After her presentation we had a quick conversation, diving a little deeper into the contact center.
In case you missed it, click here to read Part 1 of this interview.
Q: By what year do you think 50% of customer experiences will be happening on mobile?
A: For certain demographic groups, that shift may have already occurred. Today's 20-somethings are undoubtedly already there.
Q: What predictions do you have regarding Artificial Intelligence and bots when it comes to contact centers?
A: I think in 2016 that the hype began for Artificial Intelligence and bots. 2017 will continue the hype but we will likely have the inevitable disillusionment as companies realize it's not as easy as turning on an application, but collection and integration of a variety of data sources will be required. Artificial Intelligence is going to take time. We've seen the beginning with IBM Watson and Salesforce Einstein but I believe we're still at the pure technology phase. It will take time before real applications are deployed at real companies.
Q: What do you see as Five9's biggest strengths in the contact center space?
1.Five9 has made major headway in cloud infrastructure, globalization, product and marketing in the last year.
2.Three months after the latest Gartner Contact Center as a Service Magic Quadrant was published, Five9 remains the only independent market leader.
3.A big differentiator for Five9 is that the customer journey is tightly integrated into the agent desktop. This empowers agents with context they need to better understand the steps customers have already taken before speaking to the agent.
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