2024 in Retrospect
2024 was a year of transition for most industries thanks to AI, and the contact center world was no exception. Changes in technology, customer expectations, and workforce dynamics forced businesses to rethink their operations. What emerged was a new way of working and a redefinition of what contact centers could and should be doing. My opinion: many businesses were providing bad customer service in 2024. They could have done better.
As I think about 2024 in the world of contact centers, here’s my take on the most significant challenges faced by contact centers and how they were addressed. In Part Two of this series, I’ll share my thoughts on how these lessons can be carried forward and addressed in 2025.
A learning year
The organizations that excelled at customer service didn’t just implement newer tools and technology. They understood the new landscape of contact center artificial intelligence, they selected carefully what to implement and why, and they supported customers and employees effectively when they moved forward.
Many companies weren’t nearly as effective and went backwards in four areas:
1. Prioritizing cost reduction over customer experience
In the race to implement contact center AI technology and reduce costs, they forgot about the customer experience. This is not a new lesson. Some organizations had already lived through this with self-service IVR implementations of the past 15 years. And many just did it again with digital assistants. Eliminating calls in favor of automation has a great cost profile, but it’s critical to remember this must be in the context of a holistic customer experience.
2. Misguided adoption of new terminology
They fell for new vocabulary but forgot the lessons of the past decade. Whether we call them bots, digital agents, digital assistants, Agent Assist, or your friend Alexa, the naming conventions didn’t change the functionality or ensure successful adoption. A bot without context and robust integration doesn’t solve problems, and customers will figure out a way to avoid them, even if it means switching brands.
3. Poorly structured knowledge bases
Customers that get bad information and bad customer service faster don’t appreciate it, and they definitely do talk about your brand to others. AI capabilities driven by partial, inaccurate, or contradictory information give poor solutions faster, so it’s still about the knowledge base. It might not be the knowledge base of the old days with highly structured information in a single database or platform, but the policies, processes, and information have to be knit together accurately and effectively for digital assistants to deliver the right information at the right time.
4. Workforce challenges and cultural upheaval
Cultural upheaval in the workplace continues as organizations struggle to learn what to communicate to whom about changes and what skills agents, managers, and others need to be successful in the rapidly changing environment.
Here are some of my observations around these four themes:
Mapping the customer journey and technology landscape
The big challenge in 2024 was understanding what’s underlying the end-to-end customer experience and the technology that supports this. Contact centers, especially in outsourced environments, haven’t fully grasped how important it is to get visibility into every interaction. Want proof? My last newsletter details a few customer service mishaps I encountered on a recent trip to Spain.
I’ve said it before and will continue to emphasize this: implementing AI for the sake of AI doesn’t help the customer experience without a holistic view. The need for customer experience and process work is not dead—it’s actually more alive than ever.
Call center best practice calls for having complete transparency into what’s happening during interactions with customers and being able to see what happens from when the customer first reaches out through resolution of the inquiry—whether it’s sales, service, technical support, or billing questions. However, companies that skipped this step wound up going backwards into siloed channels—something that many had spent the past decade integrating.
Buzzwords as buzz-kills
Adding to this challenge was the widespread misuse of terminology. Businesses used buzzwords like “digital agents,” “intelligent assistants,” and “AI-powered tools” to signal innovation without actually making any innovations or meaningful upgrades in functionality. These misnomers contributed to the smoke screen of excitement that led to disappointed customers and employees.
Here’s an example: Many companies just rebranded basic chatbots as “digital assistants.”. These so-called “intelligent” tools can use natural language to interact, making it easier to converse with them…but if they’re not set up with robust underlying processes - that is, if the companies deploying them don’t implement them differently than the bots of old,, they are still unable to answer questions with any level of complexity and struggled to route issues properly. So there is some new functionality - yes, you can place an order or check status - but only if it fits exactly the process the digital assistant is set up for, and if it’s slightly different or a special request, you wind up in a loop, just like the old days. So customers that need help exit out, more frustrated than ever, and land with employees that have to deal with conflict more than ever.
Ultimately, this functionality mismatch has only served to further erode confidence in the products and companies behind them. The result: customers feeling misled and employees feeling unsupported.
Understanding end-to-end interactions
For businesses to create better experiences, having just one silo of engagement is not good enough. Leaders need to take the time to map the technological topography of their companies and identify gaps and inefficiencies. It is so, so important and done so infrequently. Many times, what this exercise shows is that it’s not about ownership but rather the flow of information. For example, let’s think about what exactly it takes for a business to go from a customer call to resolution—be it sales, technical support, or a billing inquiry.
Technology as a patchwork: The LEGO analogy
Technology is like LEGO bricks. By 2024, various organizations were sitting on technological infrastructure that would range-from the relative Duplo block simplicity to incredibly intricate LEGO system designs. Each has merit, but the businesses that invested time in understanding their "LEGO set" found a better way to align their systems with their goals.
Companies realized that while technological upgrades were necessary, so were systems that integrated well and supported handling of customer calls efficiently, even in complex scenarios.
Workforce gaps: The bedrock of service is people and process
While technology took center stage, 2024 reminded leaders that no tool could solve deep-seated systemic problems. The differentiator between success and failure lay in the ability to update not only technology but the people and processes that go along with it.
Smoothing workflows: After a year of rushing to implement AI, center leaders were tasked with getting the people and processes better integrated. All the AI in the world won’t solve bad processes. You have got to understand your tech and workflows–many businesses just didn’t bother to do that. Working on process improvement would have paid dividends in 2024.
Adapting to a tech-enabled workforce: Automation shifted the type of talent needed to succeed in contact centers. Many organizations, especially customer service organizations, suddenly had new capabilities and automation that eliminated the “easy” work but left gaps for more complex tasks. This shift required agents with the ability to interpret vast amounts of data, solve problems with empathy, and focus on nuanced skills. Many businesses still haven’t caught on to this gap in their workforce.
Upskilling for success: Businesses failed to invest in training programs to advance workforce skills. Upskilling creates a workforce ready to adapt to changing technology. However, many companies failed to keep pace, leaving their teams struggling to meet the demands of 2024.
2024 could have been better in many ways. In my next piece, I’ll talk about how businesses can turn around all of these mistakes and deliver on their customer promises.
At Blue Orbit Consulting, we specialize in helping organizations navigate these complexities. Whether you’re rolling out a new platform, integrating new capabilities, or just trying to keep your existing technology running smoothly, we’re here to help. Let’s work together to create a support model that keeps your contact center operating at peak performance. Book a 15-minute meeting to talk about how you can optimize your contact center today.
If any of this resonates with you or your organization, take a moment to share this newsletter with your colleagues who may be struggling with similar challenges. Blue Orbit Consulting guides you through methods that will transform your contact center’s operations into a world-class customer experience.
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I founded Blue Orbit Consulting in 2014 after running staff organizations in contact centers and building consulting practices in customer service, process improvement, complex program management, and channel operations. My approach – and my firm’s approach – is fundamentally pragmatic, and our clients often achieve benefits in excess of 10x their investment. We develop and deliver world-class customer interactions for our clients, whether it is troubleshooting and optimizing what they already have in place or creating strategic transformations to deliver outstanding customer interactions every time.