Contact centers have always been at the forefront of technological advancements.
They were among the first to develop interactive voice response (IVR) systems in the 1980s, answering basic questions for callers and routing customers to the right agent or department.
As the internet became a dominant channel for customer service in the late 1990s and early 2000s, contact centers were early adopters of the first chatbots, which were harbingers of advancements to come.
In 2022, OpenAI introduced ChatGPT and showed the world what large-language models and generative AI could do. Once again, contact centers were center-stage, showing their ingenuity by identifying ways to harness AI for the benefit of their agents and customers.
As AI becomes more embedded in customer support models, ethical and legal implications are shaping the regulatory world.