Those of us working in the contact center industry know that our business, at its core, is a human endeavor. That’s why last week’s Customer Contact Week event was so awesome as our industry came together in Las Vegas for a human-to-human live event. Attendance was more than double our last CCW event, with more than 3,000 attendees!

CCW is the world’s largest customer contact event series where customer care, CX, and contact center leaders come together to discuss new ideas and opportunities.

The conference allowed our Zenarate team to meet with current customers and new prospects to demonstrate our Contact Center Training innovation, AI Conversation Simulation. We were honored to have our Zenarate AI Coach platform recognized as a runner-up in the Automation Solution of the Year category at the CCW Excellence Awards ceremony, demonstrating that AI Conversation Simulation is today’s standard in developing top performing contact center agents from home or office.

Zenarate AI Coach premier brand customers are driving higher CSAT, NPS, and First Call Resolution scores by developing confident prepared new hire agents before their first live call and closing tenured agent skill gaps. 

We asked our team for CCW conference feedback and they shared the following:

Was there good attendance with conferences returning to in-person? 

• • The Expo Hall was sold out with attendees from a variety of industries. People were very excited about networking in person again! 

 What were key conference themes?

• • Key conference themes were the use of AI in all aspects of contact center management and improving the customer experience by focusing on human led service vs. service automation such as chatbots. We met with contact center leaders in a variety of industries looking for innovative ways to help their agents delight their customers.

 What emerging technology trends did you see?

• • Human-in-the-loop AI is the dominant tech trend. The exhibit hall included dozens of call analysis and real time agent assistance providers. Zenarate stood out as the leading training technology provider with human-centered AI simulation training to develop top performing agents through immersive active learning experiences.
  • Contact center leaders were also discussing how soft skills and empathy training is a top priority. We shared how Zenarate clients are training agents to make empathy second nature by role-playing with their personal unbiased AI Coach simulating an upset customer. While simulating an upset customer, their AI Coach is also listening to what the agent is saying, and if the agent doesn’t use soft skill and empathetic best practices, their AI Coach will pause the AI training simulation, provide the agent in-the-moment best practice feedback, and ask the agent to try again. Agents repeat this process role-playing with their AI Coach from home or office, until they master soft skills integral to delivering personalized empathetic customer experiences. Zenarate AI Coach simulation training allows agents to learn through practicing, solving problems, and making mistakes to build confidence without live customer risk.

What were the top-of-mind issues you heard from contact center leaders?

• • We heard that the preferred communication for delivering personalized empathetic customer experiences is still human-to-human vs. chatbots.  And there is great interest in new approaches to train remote workers.

What was the biggest takeaway you got from CCW?

• • People are generally overwhelmed with AI talk.  Contact center leaders are having to sift through significant AI noise to find proven technology to help them excel.  We were able to share our premier client reference list so people can hear first-hand how their contact center and training leader peers are deploying their AI Coach experiencing immediate clear ROI lift as soon as  new hires take their first live call, and underperforming tenured agents return to live calls confident and proficient where they previously struggled. 

Anything else you want to share about CCW?

• • Agent staffing is a challenge right now as pandemic-impacted industries such as  travel and food are roaring back and competing for staff. Companies are struggling to staff, train, and retain customer-facing employees to meet their needs. Zenarate was one of the solutions to help solve this problem by developing confident prepared new hires through AI simulation training, improving agent performance, job satisfaction and retention.

Don’t hesitate to contact Mike Lewis  at mikel@zenarate.com for a demo if you would like to see Zenarate AI Coach in action.

If you missed us at CCW, come visit us at one of the following events this year:

• ACA International | Orlando, FL | July 20-22
• InsuranceTech Connect | Las Vegas, NV | September 20-22 
• Customer Contact Week | Nashville, TN | October 12-14
• Customer Contact West | Tuscon, AZ | October 16-19
• Customer Response Summit | Cornado, CA | October 24-26

We also hope to see you at CCW 2023!