The CC/CX Update - Sabio Disrupt 2024 Edition

Hi Everyone,

As you'll probably know I attended Sabio Disrupt 2024 in London yesterday which is one of the most recognised events in the UK CC/CX event calendar and always interesting. As usual with my event special editions I'm not giving you a blow by blow account or even really a review, its more a summary of the topics and themes of discussion from the day so you can be aware of what's being discussed out there if you couldn't attend in person. I cant help but drop a few of my own opinions in though as you'll notice!

Lets dive in.

A Bold Future Vs. A Bland Today

The event was introduced by Steve Jobs and Barack Obama was interviewed at the end of the opening presentation. We also had a floating head which spoke in the downtime segments during the second half of the day (was it meant to also do this in the morning?). Based on all of this you know that AI was going to take its now customary lions share of the conversation throughout the day albeit presented in a more eye catching manner than at many of these types of events.

In a probably unplanned coincidence both the opening speaker and the closing key note gave us a history of the growth of computer power, data gathering and the recent history of AI, LLMs etc. Nothing is passing the Turing test at the moment, as evidenced live at the event, but we should be preparing for a very near future when it may and we need to strategize today for how our businesses will be disrupted (see what I did there) by this AI evolution.

It's an interesting juxtaposition between the academic thinking and blue sky possibilities presented by professional speakers and thought leaders and the practical capabilities and deliverables of the technology vendors at events like Disrupt. Whilst we are shown a future of personal AI assistants that can help us plan our every day lives from wearable tech, today a majority of CCs don't even have conversational analytics properly installed to get the data to make the most of the AI tools when they arrive!

CX Professionals and Specialisation

As a recruiter I view industry events through my professional lens and I think about how people shape and prepare their careers for the future possible.

I'm left more convinced than ever that with AI being implemented in multiple areas of CX and for various outcomes, set against the financial challenges we're all experiencing including our employers, that people working in CX need to become more recognised and specialised professionals. The societal view of working in a contact centre needs to change to start with! We can address attrition through professionalising the sector and creating broader career opportunities where knowledge of the customer and CX is valued throughout the whole of a business.

We've had the Klarna announcement which will probably be the first of many companies to openly acknowledge that they have introduced AI to cut headcount costs. If we don't prepare for a smaller operational CX workforce then many people will be left out in the cold by the pace of change.

There were several digital first organisations interviewed as part of a panel discussion and their CX is excellent based on the usual metrics. However their agent/advisor teams are small in number and highly skilled. This will be the model for the future that we need to plan for today, if you're are in the first half of your career.

Employee Engagement & Empowerment

Overall I felt there was a very earnest, well meaning tone to this years Disrupt and that was shown by the continued mention of employee engagement by various speakers. Balancing against the utilisation of AI and data to improve CX was the value of these tools to empower the advisors/colleagues themselves. It's good to hear and hopefully thought provoking for the industry audience. Talent acquisition, retention, personal development, ROI, better CX and cost management are all effected by the level of connectedness your agents feel with the business purpose.

Proactive Agents

On several occasions, making our advisors more proactive for customers rather than reactive was mentioned. I think this is one of the hardest things to get right from a technology point of view and therefore can probably yield some of the best results as many things that are truly hard are the most worth doing!

The benefits to CX are obvious and therefore employee wellbeing too. This will be an interesting tech space to keep an eye on.

Hey, listen. We're great!

In the tough midday slot we were "treated" to 1.5 hours of sales pitch that largely felt like something that belonged in an internal town hall meeting.

The sessions were largely received with polite patience, although a lot of people did drift away, because we expect to be pitched too at some point but this went way too long and didn't resonate with anyone I spoke too afterwards. There are better ways to get the message across to potential customers.

Faster, Shorter, Cheaper Projects

Due to low/no-code solutions we are going to see reduced PS costs as projects become faster to implement and therefore shorter and cheaper. What do partners and vendors need to provide in future to retain margins?

The Retail Trust

I'm mentioning The Retail Trust specifically because the presenter brought some interesting data on the effect of employee wellbeing on the bottom line of retail organisations. Personally I like the presentation that comes from a little left field at these events and I thought this was really interesting and certainly disrupted the pattern of the day. This is a different way of looking at offering solutions to organisations who may currently see investment in these areas as hard to define ROI for or just "fluffy CSR stuff". I'd recommend people check out their website or LinkedIn page for more info.

The Retail Trust

Vulnerability & Personalisation

As I said earlier in this article, and as partly evidenced above, the tone of the day was earnest and thoughtful (1.5 hour sales pitch anyone?) and the panel discussion on vulnerable customers continued this tone.

It's a valuable discussion because it highlighted the differences between permanent vulnerability and situational vulnerability and how perhaps all customers need to be treated as if they are in a potentially vulnerable situation because we don't truly know them?

This is also reflected within the CC teams, the people we hire to provide our human CX element who may themselves be vulnerable.

Personalisation, provides vulnerable people with the support they need but it is also a service characteristic that we associate with higher quality service generally and so here data and AI can come together for the greater good when supporting and enabling agents with the data they need to be aware of that customers situation. There is definitely a vertical business case for in depth personalisation in the NFP sector.

We're We Disrupted?

I definitely found the event thought provoking although they probably were not always the thoughts that were intended, such as "how long has that person been talking without a break?", "why is the fish on the fish and chips so small?" and "why were the chairs so far apart?".

I think there was the potential to create a buzz amongst the audience of 400-500 guests and for them to go away knowing they need to strategize today for the world that is coming but I'm not sure everyone got that.

The agent is clearly playing a key role and they need to be reshaped as CX professionals in more specialist, high profile roles to thrive in this coming future. Personalisation, wellbeing, awareness of vulnerability inside and outside the CC, cost management and proactivity are the messages for today. That's plenty of opportunities for companies to offer services and solutions to organisations that will need support so the career landscape for the next 5-10 years looks good albeit with a great deal of change.

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James