It’s not conjecture to state that as e-commerce continues and the enormous pressure that employers are facing to increase, the retail footprint will continue its associated in attracting and retaining talent, including contact decline. As a result, retailers will need to make constant center agents. Lastly, by sharing ownership of the adjustments to support the rapid evolution of their customer experience with a broader base of employees, industry. In 2021, there were seminal case studies and organizations can solve issues faster, offer wider channel articles written about brick-and-mortar retail store availability and support, and deliver more consistent employees being set up to respond to customer inquiries customer experiences. and interactions via voice and digital channels. It’s an interesting, visionary approach, and I believe we will see Longer-term, we need to consider further advances more of this customer engagement model in the coming in AI, including predictive and proactive outbound years because it solves for a number of issues. communications (as we highlighted in the previous prediction), the Internet of Things (IoT), and robotics, First, it addresses the pandemic-driven rise in digital- to name a few. Shared ownership of the customer will first consumers and the corresponding decline in retail cross every stage of the buyer journey, and experiences foot traffic, while at the same time balancing the cost/ will be fueled by an organization-wide commitment to benefit equation. Secondly, it addresses the staffing issues fulfilling a customer’s unique requirements at each stage associated with events such as The Great Resignation of that journey. Contact Center Predictions for 2023 and Beyond 17