As the omnichannel world of CX continues to grow, and it is easier than ever for customers to engage with the brands and services they rely on, more data than ever is being generated that can be harnessed to truly understand behavioral patterns and the relationship of actions to outcomes.

Given the effectiveness of customer self-service, chatbots, and the growing field of Robotic Process Automation (RPA), live human support is becoming increasingly focused on high-impact, high-value conversations, generally triggered by a problem encountered by a consumer.

The Customer Care Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry is predicted to grow steadily and substantially over the next several years, yet for many of the world’s largest organizations, profitable revenue is becoming more challenging as new competitors emerge with less technical debt, access to less expensive but sophisticated hardware and virtualized platforms, and punch above their weight as young, agile companies winning away coveted “Fortune 500” clients.

Along the hype cycle in the world of CX, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its cousins Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Deep Machine Learning (DLM) continue to surface in more and more conversations and strategic plans for 2020 and beyond.

Let’s not get carried away with the notion that corporations can save billions of dollars by replacing human beings with machines. While there is, of course, huge opportunity to create efficiencies through robotics in factories, “co-botting” in distribution centers, and self-checkout in next generation fast food restaurants and grocery stores, when it comes delivering high value service to go along with high value offerings – nothing will ever be better than a human to human conversation.

The vision for healthcare delivered more efficiently via virtual visits (using voice, video and online collaboration) is becoming a reality, and this is great news for consumers, providers, and insurance companies.