Digital channels have grown exponentially in the last fifteen years. Customers are keen to use well structured digital solutions that are convenient and save time. The growth of on-line shopping and on-line sales and service is accelerating and customers clearly like it when it works well. Many pure digital businesses like Amazon, Google and Ebay have some of the highest net promoter and customer satisfaction scores. As digital solutions have grown many organisations are providing chat solutions to support these channels, particularly complex sales processes like insurance or home loans. Chat bots are emerging as a way of automating simple responses and triaging complex requests. In addition, the latest forms of robotic automation are starting to automate data based repetitive tasks.

What we have observed is not all companies are ready for some of the consequences of these changes and have customer support models that haven’t yet adapted to these new modes of interaction. In this paper, we’ll explore the predictable impact on contacts and operations. We’ll cover how queries change, the impact on contact complexity and the potential impact on offshore solutions.