"Not at all!! but it will reduce the need for human capital tremendously."
- Karl Graham, Vice President - regional and Telecommunications Markets, Xerox, Jamaica

"No I feel it will replace and enhance certain aspects of processes but with such a diverse set of users great technology coupled with great human support is the best match. It would be like asking will supermarkets ever replace great restaurants both sell food !"
- Trevor Geraghty, Business Development Director, Difference Corporation, United Kingdom

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"If that day ever does come, it is a long way off. For the foreseeable future, only live contact center agents will be able to fully understand and address some of the more complex problems that callers need help with. Technology (including speech) should not be viewed as the solution to all contact center needs; rather, it is an indispensible tool to empower callers and agents to resolve problems."
- Tom Smith, Senior manager for contact center solutions product marketing, Verizon, United States

"There is a fair chance of this."
- Andrew Kay, Director, Jersey

"No. I believe humans will always have the need to interact with other humans. And although self service will increase and improve leveraging speech technologies, there will always be complex interactions that will require human intervention with a live agent."
- D. Daniel Ziv, VP Voice of the Customer Analytics, Verint, United States

"No, there will always be a need for some type of human interaction between companies and customers."
- Jeff Schlueter, VP, Marketing & Business Development, Nexidia, United States

"While many of the contact centre functions can be replaced by speech processing and computer applications there are many times when "real person" is more important. People sometimes require people for socialising."
- Rupert Utteridge, Director - Sales & Marketing, Digital Techniques, Australia

"Absolutely not. As lower value transactions are being automated, more and more work is being shifted into the contact centre. Even during the recent economically difficult times we saw significant growth in the Australian contact centre industry."
- Steve Pels, Director, Contact Centre Action, Australia

"Never, as customers become more in tune to utilizing virtual agent and speech related applications, IVR containment will continue to grow allowing contact centers the ability to have thier agents focus on more strategic customer facing initiatives, as we know companies cannot automate everything, there will always be a need for good live agents."
- Ross Krisel, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development, IntelePeer, Inc., United States

"I do hope not, though less customers will need an agent and less transactions will need an agent."
- Nigel Sedgwick, Director, Cambridge Algorithmica Limited, United Kingdom

""Absolutely not, and it never should. Speech has its benefits in routing, ID&V (Identity & verification) and simple self-service, but this should be used to complement and assist contact centre agents in providing callers with an excellent customer experience. As soon as it’s more appropriate for an interaction to take place with a live agent, the call should be seamlessly transferred, with all the necessary information going with it.""
- Brett Feldon, General Manager, EMEA, Salmat, United Kingdom

"No, Humans have a basic need to interact with each other on some level, therefore there will always be a customer need to speak with someone. Contact Centre agents will be utilised in a more specialised, highly skilled way and offer an expert status of information transference to the customer, when they want it."
- Sarah-Jane Heber-Hall, Operations Director, Computertel Ltd., United Kingdom

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Published: Friday, March 19, 2010

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