The global contact centre (CC) and CC conversational AI and virtual assistant end-user spending are projected to be about $18.6 billion in 2023, showing an increase of 16.2 per cent over the last year’s figure, according to research and consulting company Gartner, Inc.
It expects general economic and geopolitical uncertainty to create budget restrictions in 2023, resulting in a slowdown of premises-based contact centre replacements and upgrade projects. However, customer-facing projects are important to revenue retention and generation strategies.
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“Near-term investment growth rates for CC and CC conversational AI and virtual assistants are expected to dip as business volatility creates a lengthening of decision cycles,” Megan Marek Fernandez, Director Analyst at Gartner, said.
In the long-term, generative AI and the growing maturity of conversational AI would accelerate contact centre platform replacement as customer experience (CX) leaders look to simultaneously improve the efficiency of customer service operations and the overall customer experience.
The global conversational AI and virtual assistant market represent the fastest-growing segment in the contact centre forecast, helping to spur growth of 24 per cent in 2024.
Gartner estimates about 3 per cent of interactions will be handled via CC AI in 2023. This could be up to 14 per cent of interactions in 2027.
Conversational AI capabilities are receiving greater investment as contact centre decision-makers look to incorporate conversational AI as part of a long-term strategy to reduce reliance on live agents.
While the number of customer service interactions that AI touches continues to increase, most interactions are augmented with CC AI instead of fully offloaded to a virtual agent.
“While many IT investment areas will be weakened as budgets tighten, customer service and support initiatives that have the potential to differentiate the customer experience or streamline customer service operations could receive easier investment ‘buy-in,” said Marek Fernandez. “These factors will help contact centre as a service (CCaaS) projects receive funding associated with broader corporate digital transformation budgets.”