Predictions | 08.24.2022

Hits and Misses From Our 2022 Tech Trends Predictions – Part 2 of 6

Our popular blog series, “Six Technology Predictions for 2022”  focused on trends around Cloud, Data, Cybersecurity, AI, and more. Part 1 of our Hits and Misses Blog took a look at “the havoc at ports showing no signs of abating and prices for a vast array of goods still rising.”

Most C-Suite executives spent 2021 adjusting to the radical changes prompted by the events of 2020. In the first half of this year, as global supply chain disruptions continue and inflation rises, CIOs must continue to find ways to overcome delays in shipping and increased pricing for IT hardware, services, and talent.

By rethinking strategies from on-prem to cloud, reprioritizing IT spend from OpEx to CapEx, and honing collaborative efficiencies, we earned high marks for accuracy on our first half predictions.

1H Predictions – Hit a Home Run

With the understanding that a digital transformation will only speed up for the remainder of the year, what did NWN Carousel experts correctly predict and where did we fall short?

Read on for how we scored on the hot – yet often controversial – topic of Artificial Intelligence in Part 2 of 2022 Recap Predictions. Stay tuned for future insights!

Applied Artificial Intelligence – Score A

Our Prediction

In the contact center, the transition from simple IVRs to intelligent virtual assistants, and AI, will be an upward trend in 2022. Consumers are comfortable with virtual assistants through home-use, and we’ll see a rapid adoption in the business world. Automation will also enable more Customer contact with the same staffing and same level of service. 2022 will be the first year of the contact center of the future, where data and experience blend to provide hyper-intelligent customer contact.

“Contact centers are very much about the customer experience and how to improve it. It’s very common that that an organization wants to implement automation or artificial intelligence for their customers, but they want to retain a personal experience. NWN Carousel helps improve self-service and automation without sacrificing the customer’s experience,”
Kevin Basden
Vice President – Contact Center, NWN Carousel

Organizations now understand they can save on training budgets while improving the customer experience by leveraging AI to augment their human staff. The concept of “Agent Intelligence” or “Super intelligent” agents has recently become popular.

Most will lean more on their technology partners to implement and maintain these complex solutions. They will concentrate more on being a “user.” With the complexity that’s on the horizon, it will be more important to have a strategic cloud contact center platform partner.

What Experts Say

According to Harvard Business Review, “Personalization now goes far beyond getting customers’ names right in advertising pitches, having complete data at the ready when someone calls customer service, or tailoring a web landing page with customer-relevant offers. It is the design target for every physical and virtual touch-point, and it is increasingly powered by AI.”

Our Score – A

Organizations now understand they can save on training budgets while improving the customer experience by leveraging AI to augment their human staff. The concept of “Agent Intelligence” or “Super intelligent” agents has recently become popular.

Read the PREVIOUS installment of “2022 Technology Predictions” focused on Visibility is Key to Digital Transformation.
Read the NEXT installment of “2022 Technology Predictions” focused on Cybersecurity Scrutiny.