CONTACT

CENTER
OF THE
FUTURE
SMART, SELECTIVE HUMAN TOUCH IN
THE DIGITAL AGE
INTRODUCTION
 E-mail

HUMANS AT A
DISTANCE Mobile Phone

Is your financial firm prepared to deploy a contact

center of the future? CUSTOMER
Contact centers are moving from being a cost center to ENGAGEMENT
CHANNELS
a strategic asset. As customers move into an
omnichannel ecosystem, it is imperative that the Chat Physical
contact center seamlessly integrates across channels.
These interactions can be handled through automation
or humans at a distance, which is the contact center.
Social Media

Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 3

THE CONTACT CENTER OF THE FUTURE
IS A STRATEGIC ASSET
Contact centers are shifting from a cost center only model to a strategic asset,
with three pervasive themes driving this shift.
Smart
Automation
Critical Mass for Robotics
Secure message-based communication
volume and trust reaches critical mass,
allowing robotics to materially impact
transaction volumes.
Maturing Voice Analytics
Contact Center customer data and
insight generation will mature,
improving contact center coaching,
compliance and root cause
identification.
Selective
Human Touch
Humans for High Value
Human contact will be reserved for
higher value, relationship-based
interactions.
Workforce Bifurcation
Interaction segmentation will separate
“holdouts” from “high-value” to different
workforces with diverse skill sets,
career paths and compensation
schemes.
Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved.
Smart
Integration
Channel Assimilation
Individual channels will be assimilated
under a customer experience strategy
focused on customer’s desired
outcomes over individual channel goals.
Leverage Listening
Customer feedback from all channels
will now be used in both operations, to
anticipate and avoid service failures—
and innovation—to evolve the customer
experience.
Metrics Alignment
Metrics are tuned to the experience,
versus single point stand alone
applications.
4
AUTOMATION AND CHANGING CUSTOMER
NEEDS WILL DRIVE A NEW APPROACH
Automation, and identifying customer needs, will drive the contact center of the future’s role in delivering
a profitable and sustained relationship.

Automation & Customer Needs

Costs
Counter to individual
compensation, total labor
costs have potential to
drop significantly within
5 years from robotics and Understand customer history
transaction migration
investment; continued
customer digital trust could
accelerate benefits.
Agents Need More Skills Beyond Automation Workforce New Models
Diagnostic tools Holdouts will remain for Shifting role of the contact Migration towards a Chief
Diagnostic nature customer segments and center will require updated Customer Officer and long-
Sales targeted transactions, agent skills, which will term segment ownership to
Empathy and listening driving a divergent impact coaching, hiring, maximize outcomes for the
treatment method. success metrics and customer and financial
Complex problem-solving incentives, and will push services provider.
workforce liquidity beyond
traditional center
boundaries.

Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 5

DEFINING
YOUR
STRATEGY
A FRAMEWORK FOR CUSTOMER STRATEGY
AND CONTACT CENTER INTERACTION
Accenture has created a new customer strategy and contact center interaction design framework to
address changing customer engagement preferences and technology advancements. The next slides
cover each component in detail.

Customers & Segments

HIGHLY AUTOMATED Transactions HIGH TOUCH

Operational & Communication Channels Operating

Customer Data Model

HIGHLY AUTOMATED Customer Engagement HIGH TOUCH

Tools / Technology

Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 7

 CUSTOMERS
& SEGMENTS
Understanding how to efficiently interact and service your customer base is key. Customers can be segmented based
on their economic value, level of digital adoption and the way they view their provider.

Market Key Strategic

Trends Implications Decisions
Customers segmenting themselves How does your operation serve the Allow line of sight for traditional
based on varying levels of digital well-established customer that chooses customers to familiar products and
adoption. to avoid digital interactions? services.
Customers expect that you tailor How is your digital experience unique to Promote positive digital experience
products to their wants and needs. the power users and valuable to those channels benefitting the customer and
that experiment with digital channels? company.
Three consumer personas are
emerging from Accenture research: What is the level of service required to Let customers personalize products and
fulfill low value customers’ expectations customer journey via feedback and
QUALITY across channels? data.
NOMADS HUNTERS SEEKERS
Can you culturally and technically Align desired customer journeys to
separate the two types of service balance current and future value of
needs? each segment.
Highly digitally
active group, ready Searching for Looking for high
for a new model of the best deal quality, responsive
delivery on price service and data
protection

Source: Accenture Research – D&M Consumer Study (2017) Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 8
 CUSTOMERS
& SEGMENTS
By understanding the value that desired capabilities could bring to our customers, an optimal balance of cost to
customer experience can be targeted.
HIGHER VALUE TO CUSTOMER
Key Attributes

Efficient
EFFICIENT EXCELLENT Interface and interaction should be high-quality to align with customer expectations.

HIGHER VALUE TO COMPANY

LOWER VALUE TO COMPANY

High-quality interface Outcome-focused Largest opportunity for utilizing digital and robotics to minimize cost while delivering
driven by digital interactions aligned to desired experience.
segments Excellent
Increased value in blend of human, physical and digital channels for outcome-driven
interactions
Sharing data across channels is fundamental to finding and achieving desired customer
journeys.
Exact
Commoditized treatment acceptable to customers assuming the process is quick, easy
ELIMINATE EXACT and accurate.
Repeatable, automated Quick and easy Opportunity for leveraging robotics to deliver precision and consistency for the customer.
processes with robots interactions with robotics
for accuracy Eliminate
Investment focused on repeatable, tech-driven processes, with robotics as a low-cost,
accurate option.
Lowest opportunity to leveraging human interaction as a future state channel.
Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 9
LOWER VALUE TO CUSTOMER
 TRANSACTIONS
Transaction volume has increased substantially over the last five years. Companies should ensure that each
interaction drives positive feelings and brand loyalty. The contact center plays a large role in this, and overall strategy
should be reassessed given the trends around desired human interaction.

Market Key Strategic

Trends
Customers continue to be increasingly
channel agnostic, wanting ease of
access and accuracy that values their
time.
Customers who don’t prefer automated
transactions must be incented to use
those capabilities.
Focus will be on building and
maintaining relationships while the
market continues the shift to commodity
self-serve and bot interaction.
Implications
What self-service capabilities drive
service differentiation?
Have the easy self-service capabilities
already been rolled out to all applicable
business units?
What transactions provide the greatest
value from human interaction?
What policies and regulation will impact
the deployment of self-service? Self-
sales?
What technology, financial, and
organizational barriers require a new
approach to justify and implement?
Decisions
Value of internal and external education
on self-service utilization to drive
adoption.
Key transactions which improve and
differentiate the customer experience.
Optimal channels for each transaction
type, and even by customer segment.
Knowledge of the customers’
relationship to create new opportunity
for self-service across within and across
products.
Digital “Sherpas” in other channels to
help guide unaware but wiling
customers through positive, digital
experiences.

Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 10

 TRANSACTIONS: MAPPING INTERACTIONS
ALONG THE AUTOMATION LINE
Interactions of the future can be mapped along a value line, which defines the optimal level of human and bot
interaction to drive great customer experiences and efficient transactions.

HIGHLY AUTOMATED HIGH HUMAN INTERACTION

1 2 3 4 5
Transaction Building a Memorable
Types Customer Experience
1 Transaction-Based Focus on making interaction quick and easy for the customer

2 Low Value Automated for majority of customers and manual for users with minimal digital engagement

3 Situationally Viable Potential for automation depending on customer type. Build the relationship with memorable experience

4 Relationship Oriented Limited automation because of opportunity to invest in the relationship, add real value and retain customer

5 High Value Opportunity Unable to automate with an interaction highly personalized, because of regulation or risk concerns
Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 11
 COMMUNICATION
CHANNELS
Changing consumer expectations around interactions, driven by GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon), have
increased channel usage to include physical, digital, bots and contact center. Customers now dictate the channel and
expect additional non-voice capabilities when interacting with the contact center.

Market Key Strategic

Trends
Customers will engage in asynchronous
communications, across channels and
with time delay.
Customers will leverage the channel
based on ease and speed to outcome.
Increasing demand for warm-transfer
within the same day from other
channels into the contact center,
containing interaction and
communication history
Text based communications will
become critical to enabling the growth
of bots and expansion to other
transactions.
Implications
How standardized is the experience
across channels provided?
Is the customer data approach
designed for individual channels and for
migration across channels?
What is the ease of a customer to
change channels seamlessly?
Is the organization positioned for
emerging channels from external
influences (GAFA)?
Decisions
Role of individual channels is
diminished to target value in end-to-end
customer experience.
Desire to embrace messaging on
3rd party properties and even emerging
devices (Alexa, Siri, PoS machines,
etc.) as an additional channel to
communicate with customers.
Timing for expanded natural language
bot capabilities from text to language
based customer interactions
considering maturity.

Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 12

 COMMUNICATION CHANNELS:
TOMORROW’S DIGITAL COMMUNICATION
Customers increasingly transact across time and channels through physical, digital, bots and the contact center.
Engagement Channels
Yesterday’s Digital Communication
• Customers have a limited selection of
channels to engage with their provider.
• The company’s knowledge of their customer
was minimal and cross-channel contact
integration was scarce.
A B
New Channels Asynchronous Handling
Engagement Channels 3rd Party Ecosystem Data Management Platform
(DMP) 3rd Party Web
Tomorrow’s Digital Communication
• Asynchronous communication and robotics allow companies to use the strength of the enterprise
to support sophisticated products and services.
• Dynamic customization of content based on customer profile and behaviors
• The company attempts to enrich their customer knowledge at every transaction.
• Customers are less likely to care about the channel of access, more about the outcome and
ease to answer.
• Guides customer to the channel they can be best served instead of insisting on “omnichannel” support
across all processes.
Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 13
 CUSTOMER
ENGAGEMENT
Advances in technology, in the form of robotic process automation (RPA) and digital self-service, have large impacts
on service interactions. Reduced dependence on humans for transactional tasks and the rise of the “on-demand”
workforce can dramatically improve contact center efficiency and change agent expectations.

Market Key Strategic

Trends
As robotic advances continue, a
reduced dependence on humans for
transactional tasks will accelerate.
Human agents will be staffed in the
contact center with an on-demand
mindset, equipping leaders with
additional flexibility.
Consumers will slowly begin to increase
digital trust for advice and purchasing
decisions, but will demand easy access
to human assistance.
Financial institutions will begin to go
beyond the traditional boundaries and
into new products and spaces, which
needs operations to support these new
endeavors.
Implications
How can you decelerate recruiting and
supplant full-time equivalent (FTE)
budget with investments in robotic
agents?
How will you increase the skill-set of
customer service representatives
(CSRs) to handle more complex
interactions via hiring and upskilling?
How can you load balance across the
contact centers and potentially other
lines of business to share capacity in
times for high demand?
Can you adopt methods to flex your
enterprise workforce to deliver skilled
capacity when needed most?
Decisions
Different skill sets will be required from
traditional contact center CSRs:
• Majority of remote CSRs must to
become more relationship-oriented
• Sales background and listening skills
are crucial to appropriate cross-
selling expectations
• Increased digital interaction requires
CSRs to be confident multi-taskers
and writers
Human agents will become empathetic
advisors with new skill focus areas:
problem solving, analytical thinking,
sales and communications.

Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 14

 CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT:
ROBOTICS
RPA allows the contact center to shift its focus from low value transactional interactions to high value relationship
building interactions.

Contact Center
Technology Solutions
Examples
Human Persona as the first point of contact
Vision Virtual Agents
– examples: “AI Lisa”, Facebook chat bots

Robotic identification of relevant content

Audio Processing Identity Analytics
Sense (videos) building customer knowledge

Natural Language Task completion fully audited, without human

Cognitive Robotics
Processing intervention and tuned for outcomes

Knowledge Automate analysis of every discussion for

Speech Analytics
Robotics in Comprehend Representation compliance, data capture and coaching
Financial
Services Advanced presentation of treatments to
Machine Learning Next Best Action
agent or directly to customer based on data

Work across existing systems to reduce

Expert Systems Intelligent Automation
Act integration, search and manual data capture

Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 15

 CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT:
THE LIVING ORGANIZATION
The living organization—the liquid, on-demand workforce becomes possible.

What different skill sets

STAFFING MODEL OF will be required from a
Contractors / THE FUTURE traditional contact center
Freelancers and customer service
20% representatives (CSRs)?
Permanent Staff

50%
More relationship-oriented
Reduced dependence on humans
for transactional tasks Sales background and skills as cross selling
is important at every level.
Bots

30%
Confident multi-tasking for asynchronous
handling

Underused contact center capacity Empathetic advisors will require problem

can be used to supplement load for solving, analytical thinking and
communications skill. Above all, they need
chat and social empathy with customers at all times.

TYPICAL WORKFORCE IN 2025

Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 16
 TOOLS
& TECHNOLOGY
Target state for contact center technology is an integrated design providing bots, agents and, most importantly,
customers with the right knowledge, in the right context, in real-time.
Market
Trends
Investments in data aggregation and
analytics will increase bot effectiveness,
and provide targeted next best offers.
Robotics paired with advanced contact
routing will boost contact center ability
to get the right work to the right agent.
Customer Relationship Management
(CRM) solutions continue to be
leveraged and enhanced, build on a
complete data profile of customers.
Key
Implications
How are investments directed towards
enabling technology to be self-learning,
self-improving and proactive in
recommending the next best action?
What mechanisms are required to
sense the customer’s evolving
ecosystem and preferred engagement
channel?
How are data sources aggregated in an
MDM environment to enabling quick
learning and insight generation?
Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved.
Strategic
Decisions
Technology architecture should support:
• Agile test and learn methodology to
rolling out new technologies
• Ability for change quickly by
assigning the right decisions to the
right people
• Tracking operational metrics to
evaluate these elements
Next step for achieving desktops
integrated across all channels to share
customer data
17
 TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY: SATISFYING
ELEVATED CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS
Customer service representatives should have tools necessary to meet elevated customer expectations, giving a
cross-enterprise, holistic view of the customer while allowing for differentiated features based on role.

Employee experience
Activity Customer
Employee is a driver of cost and
Examples Interaction Modes
service
Customer Relationship Customers have new tools
Management and use them with contact
center employees at the
Communication & Remote CSR PC Voice Call Mobile same time
Collaboration
Easy and fast transactions
Sales
are addressed by self-service
and Leads
and with intelligent
Complaints CSR Tablet Voice Call automation (RPA) when
Management employee handled.
Face-to-Face Rep
Issue Region and territory
Management Face-to-Face CSR PC Cust Mobile boundaries are transcended
Customer Experience as customers use remote
Management channels for complex
situations.
Authentication
Support Agency Face-to-Face Mobile Employees have more
complex dialogues and tools,
Transactions which impact their role and
satisfaction significantly.

Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 18

 OPERATIONAL
& CUSTOMER DATA
Customer and operational data become even more important as analytics capabilities continue to mature. Financial
institutions should continue to look for ways to gather customer information to better understand and serve them.
Traditional methods for metric tracking, customer service rep KPIs, profit and loss calculations and management
guidance should change to match the new priorities in the contact center.

Market Key Strategic

Trends
Supplement customer profiles with
interests, trends, sentiment and
behaviors through mining customer
data and transaction metadata.
Challenges exist with converting data
across numerous, disjointed systems
due to complex architectures.
Financial service institutions must
increase cyber-security across all
channels, resulting from an increased
number of threats.
Implications
Is the customer effort measured at each
stage across the value chain?
What filters are leveraged to prioritize
customer effort reductions across
channels?
What is the ideal organizational
alignment for analytics resources
(whether centralized or in lines of
business)?
Is the AORCA (acquisition, onboarding,
retention, cross-sell, advocacy) model
used to analyze customer trends across
channels?
Decisions
Tracking and evaluating asynchronous
handling requires new thinking by
leadership.
Customer Relationship Management
systems will become an even more
critical backbone to the channel
ecosystem with increased data sharing
expectations.
Compete on the digitally-driven
experience by evolving IT infrastructure
and big data capabilities to help real-
time personalization.
Deepen customer trust through
enabling a secure, data-driven
relationship, and uncover opportunities
for increased security.

Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 19

 OPERATIONAL & CUSTOMER DATA:
COLLECTING CUSTOMER DATA
As technology develops to mine and translate social feeds into sentiment, trends and a complete customer 360,
understanding various forms of customer data is becoming increasingly important.

1.65Billion
13
Hours
166
Million
Active mobile Average person Companies need to be present in the
Daily active customer’s ecosystem to create a
social accounts spends a month
globally1
500 on Facebook1
700
Million
Snapchat users4
TRUSTED DIALOGUE
Million
Instagram
Daily tweets2
users3

It is necessary to Social networks contain

Collecting customer data by channel allows institutions to supplement their customer profiles COLLECT AND MANAGE PUBLIC DATA AND
with interests, trends, sentiment, and behaviors customer data while respecting INFORMATION that’s
privacy and adhering to pertinent to marketers
1. Source: comSCORE 2016 MOBILE APP REPORT, *WE ARE SOCIAL regulation
2. Source: STATISTA
3. Source: INSTAGRAM, 4/2017
4. Source: SNAP, INC, comSCORE 2016 MOBILE APP REPORT Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 20
 OPERATING
MODELS
New operating models, such as the on-demand workforce, create opportunities for companies with seasonal work
volume to seek efficiencies through shared workforces. A successful contact center requires the right combination of
organizational alignment, reporting structure and strategic vision.

Market Key Strategic

Trends
Coordination across channels for
capability investment becomes more
critical due to the diminishing the
individual channel’s role in decisions.
Maximizing experience across all
channels is unrealistically expensive.
Optimizing speed, cost and quality
becomes even more difficult.
Implications
Has contact center alignment changed
from Operations to the Sales
organization?
How is your contact center staffed to
function in a Test and Learn
environment?
Are FTE dedicated to driving
experience, continuous improvement
and voice of the customer?
Decisions
Align contact center in the CMO
organization to drive alignment in
mission, measurement, focus and
rewards.
Iterate on customer experience instead
of waiting for the ideal omni-channel
model to be developed.
Deploy a rapid prototyping platform for
get true test and learn speed into the
hands of channel leadership.

Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 21

 OPERATING MODELS:
AN ON-DEMAND WORKFORCE
The on-demand workforce can dramatically improve contact center efficiency and demand more from its agents.

Agents Agent as a
On Demand Problem Solver

Variable workforce—gain access to specialist Digital tools will provide the human agent with
skills and technology at times of peak data from multiple sources to resolve complex
demand. problems.

Uber surge pricing model—peak times and

seasonality can attract a higher hourly rate to Project management skills will be needed to
encourage agents to sign up for these shifts. control a variety of resources.

Perpetual part-time agents become more Recruiting, training, compensation, etc. will
valuable to the contact center to more need to adapt to develop and retain the
accurately match supply and demand. necessary skills.

Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 22

MOVING
FORWARD
DEFINING THE STRATEGIC VISION AND
ALIGNMENT OF THE CONTACT CENTER
While a contact center begins to standardize its operations and technology, a holistic enterprise strategic
vision is needed for the future of the contact center.

1 2
Develop the model of channels
for meeting customer
expectations and the
cost/benefit implications
Analyze customer base and their
current and future channel
propensities to determine areas
of opportunity in the existing
channels to compliment each
other and fulfill overall
expectations.
Understand customer segment
expectations for those service
and acquisition interactions
Examine the propensity for
customer adoption based on the
existing and desired customer
segments to validate the strategy
and help to shape concepts for
operations, education/marketing
and investment need.
3 4
Develop hypotheses for the Build the path to deliver
new capabilities required to against the strategy
support the future customer
Shape the approach based on
strategy
the impact and ability to deliver:
Develop and refine hypotheses customer readiness,
across experience delivery, investment/benefit urgency,
marketing, customer education, delivery dependencies, critical
policy, technology leverage, decision making, etc.
organizational barriers, and
process to change service,
deepening, and acquisition
interaction mix.

Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 24

ACCENTURE
CONTACTS
For more information, please contact us or read our blog post series on Contact Center of the Future.

John McNally Andrew Systma Follow us on LinkedIn

Managing Director Senior Manager www.linkedin.com/
Financial Services, North America Financial Services, North America showcase/16181827
Chicago Charlotte
john.f.mcnally@accenture.com andrew.sytsma@accenture.com
Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 25
ABOUT
ACCENTURE
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Accenture drives innovation to improve the way the
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DISCLAIMER
This presentation is intended for general informational
purposes only and does not take into account the
reader’s specific circumstances, and may not reflect
the most current developments. Accenture disclaims,
to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, any
and all liability for the accuracy and completeness of
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Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 26