CCW 2023: Despite AI automation After a two-year Corona break, the CCW trade fair took place again this year in Berlin (February 27th – March 2nd). At Europe’s largest industry meeting, everything revolved around the latest achievements and trends in the contact center and customer dialogue industry. The yuutel sales team was also there – in this blog post, yuutel Sales Manager and Managing Director Markus Buchner writes about his assessments.
Post-pandemic: Finally a live trade fair with “real” conversations again
Probably the biggest benefit of the CCW 2023 for me personally: It was great to be able to be a guest at the CCW again in Berlin’s Estrel Hotel after a two-year pandemic-related break and to have “real” dialogues there without headphones, microphones and screens ! In personal exchanges, it was nice to hear that all of our conversation partners have successfully overcome the pandemic. The health of the individual is the most important thing in business life too!
The CCW itself, Europe’s largest congress trade fair for innovative customer dialogue, has also visibly and noticeably changed in its “comeback” – and in my opinion, this is definitely positive. Fewer exhibitors and correspondingly fewer visitors also meant less crowding and pushing through the halls and aisles. The big plus point: much more time for detailed discussions at the individual stands or over lunch and coffee.
Digital contact initiation as a hybrid trade fair concept
This year, the CCW tried to establish new hybrid trade fair concepts. I personally felt that the digital accompaniment of the event in the form of a website poland phone number library with exhibitor search, lecture program overview and personal presentation and networking options was well-intentioned, but not optimally implemented. Handling the smartphone browser was too cumbersome and the “digital contact initiation” in the physical location was too unnatural. It will be interesting to see what the CCW 2024 brings in this regard.
Top topic: Artificial intelligence as a “miracle weapon” for contact centers
The structural change in the call – no, sorry – contact center industry was also evident at this “leading event”. Formerly classic telecommunications infrastructure providers such as Avaya and Deutsche Telekom have left the event.
In return, many software providers are entering the market with classic SaaS (“Software-as-a-Service”) models . They all promise the industry the same thing: machines increase your efficiency, reduce your costs and at the same time satisfy the customer’s desire for the respective request to be dealt with as quickly as possible. Of course, this is best achieved by using the new “CC wonder weapon” called AI in general and ChatGPT in particular. At the end of the day, there are only winners.
The yuutel sales team at the CCW trade fair 2023 in Berlin: Eduard Blöchl, Johannes Klaus and Markus Buchner (from left to right). Photo: yuutel
Increasing efficiency through software as a “noble goal”
The guiding star of the contact center industry will continue to be “efficiency” in 2023. Special software for each value creation sub-process is intended to world offers tons of free mockup files in psd help companies find and conquer this “holy grail” in customer contact. The possible applications range from employee. Training to the real-time delivery of solution suggestions to the contact center agents in customer contact to the complete. Case-closing processing of a customer request by “bots” (the favorite example of the various exhibitors: the change of address). The end customer determines whether it should be a voice or text bot by choosing the contact channel. So far, so technologically expected.
Conclusion: People remain the most important factor for valuable customer relationships
What I miss in all of this in the providers’ marketing communications is the. Human service provider and their high value for real customer satisfaction . The focus of the technology promises is not to relieve the burden on contact center employees through australia data machine-based, AI-based support so that they have more time for the really important work – namely, building and maintaining relationship-oriented customer relationships . I am already expressing doubts that this will succeed.