Contact center adoption and support for first generation digital channels such as Email and Web Chat, including video chat and co-browsing, is growing very rapidly. Mobile Apps, while tightly tied to mainstream adoption of smartphones, have been around for a while and are gaining traction, even though contact center support has been lagging behind consumer adoption and expectations.
1st Gen digital channels are “alive and well”. Web chat still has the highest growth rate of all contact center channels, but is closely followed by voice self-service and digital messaging and SMS. Consumers today are rapidly moving beyond first-generation channels into Next Gen, including intelligent digital and voice self-service.
Next generation digital channels include social platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. as well as advanced messaging like WhatsApp, WeChat, Facebook Messenger, Apple Messages for Business, Discord and many others. Social, Messaging and Mobile Apps are well on their way to become mainstream contact center channels.