In 1998, the U.S. economy was booming at $9 trillion, a little startup called Google was just emerging, and contact centers were tracking metrics like average handle time, agent turnover, abandon rate, and first-call resolution. Fast forward to 2024 – the U.S. GDP has skyrocketed to $26 trillion, Google’s market cap exceeds $2 trillion, and AI is permeating every industry. Yet, when it comes to contact center performance, many organizations are stuck in the past, measuring the same metrics from 26 years ago.
I recently had a conversation with a contact center industry veteran who has managed some of the most recognizable brands. When he showed me a 1998 contact center assessment he developed, I was shocked. Not by the metrics, but by the fact that these same metrics are still being used today. It’s not AI hallucinating; it’s the people who think these measures are enough to drive meaningful change.
There’s an old definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. If we continue relying on the same outdated metrics, we’ll never achieve the breakthroughs needed in customer experience. AI is not some magical solution that will eliminate the need for human agents. In fact, claims that AI will bring a future of frictionless service, and no agents are misleading at best.
At SparkCX, we take a different approach. We leverage AI to enhance human interactions, not replace them. The contact center should be the brain of your customer experience program, continuously learning and adapting to customer needs. Unfortunately, most organizations are only scratching the surface of what’s possible with the wealth of data stored in their contact centers.
We don’t start with the technology and try to figure out how to replace humans. We start with the best human interaction and work backwards to leverage technology to create the space for amazing human to human interactions.
Innovations in AI enable us to measure more important and meaningful metrics. How about week over week changes in customer sentiment both at the start and end of each customer interaction? How about measuring agent performance on 100% of their interactions, and not a sample of 1%? How about proactively monitoring agent well-being so team leads can engage to prevent churn? How about providing product and/or service issue trends back to your product teams so they can fix the problems your customers are complaining about?
All of this can be implemented in a matter of hours. Today. The Qualtrics 2025 Consumer Trends Report was just released. If you make changes in your contact center that move a 1-star or 2-star experience to a 3-star experience, you get a 1.6x increase in likelihood to purchase more, a 2x increase in likelihood to recommend, and a 2x increase in trust!
What are you waiting for??? Let’s go on this journey together!
