Contact center trend study 2024/2025: More efficiency with AI

For the sixth time in a row, the Contact Center Trend Study examines important components for successful customer dialog and current trends in the interaction between people, technology and processes. 323 customer service experts from various sectors took part in this year's survey. Striking this year:

• Although customer satisfaction is still at the top of the list of contact center goals at 83 percent, it is significantly below the previous year's figures: in 2020, for example, the topic still reached a peak value of over 90 percent. Since then, it has fallen in importance - and interestingly (spoiler alert!) is often not measured at all, even though it is considered important.

• Employee satisfaction currently stands at 44% and has lost a significant 9 percentage points.

• Instead, the big winner of the year is the topic of efficiency gains. With a value of now over 70 percent, this means an increase of 16 percentage points compared to the previous year. This trend is particularly pronounced among banks and insurance companies.

• In line with this, contact avoidance has also reached a high level of importance at 36%.

• When it comes to the use of technology and tools, bots, AI-based routing and GenAI are making steady progress: 71% state that their company is currently taking measures in this area.

• Chatbots are now used by 42% of respondents, voicebots by 44% and 27% report the use of generative AI.

“You can clearly see that interest in AI and the willingness to use it in customer service has increased noticeably. We also experience this every day in contact with our customers,” comments VIER CEO Rainer Holler on the results of the study. And: “The growing use of AI-based bots fits in perfectly with the topic of ‘contact avoidance’ and ”efficiency gains!”

Finally, a fun fact: the use of paper documents is not decreasing. On the contrary. It increased by 3 percentage points.