The document discusses the contact center of the future and how it will shift from a cost center to a strategic asset. There will be three key themes driving this shift: smart automation to handle routine inquiries, selective human touch for complex issues that require empathy, and smart integration across channels. Contact centers will need to provide excellent customer service across channels while reducing costs through automation. Agents will require new skills like sales, problem solving, and understanding customer needs. The optimal balance of automation and human agents will depend on the type of interaction and customer segments.

1. CONTACT
CENTER
OF THE
FUTURE
SMART AND
SELECTIVE
HUMAN TOUCH IN
THE DIGITAL AGE

2. INTRODUCTION

3. HUMANS AT
A DISTANCE
Is your financial firm prepared to deploy
a contact center of the future?
Contact centers are moving from being a
cost center to a strategic asset. As
customers move into an omnichannel
ecosystem, it is imperative that the contact
center seamlessly integrates across
channels. These interactions can be
handled through automation or humans at
a distance, which is the contact center.
E-mail
Social Media
Mobile
Chat
CUSTOMER
ENGAGEMENT
CHANNELS
Phone
Physical
Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 3

4. THE CONTACT CENTER OF THE FUTURE
IS A STRATEGIC ASSET
Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 4
Smart
Automation
Selective
Human Touch
Smart
Integration
Contact centers are shifting from a cost center only model to a strategic asset,
with three pervasive themes driving this shift.
Critical Mass for Robotics
Secure message-based
communication volume and trust
reaches critical mass, allowing
robotics to materially impact
transaction volumes.
Maturing Voice Analytics
Contact Center customer data
and insight generation will
mature, improving contact
center coaching, compliance
and root cause identification.
Humans for High Value
Human contact will be reserved
for higher value, relationship-
based interactions.
Workforce Bifurcation
Interaction segmentation will
separate “holdouts” from “high-
value” to different workforces
with diverse skill sets, career
paths and compensation
schemes.
Channel Assimilation
Individual channels will be
assimilated under a customer
experience strategy focused on
customer’s desired outcomes
over individual channel goals.
Leverage Listening
Customer feedback from all
channels will now be used in
both operations, to anticipate
and avoid service failures—and
innovation—to evolve the
customer experience.
Metrics Alignment
Metrics are tuned to the
experience, versus single point
stand alone applications.

5. AUTOMATION AND CHANGING CUSTOMER
NEEDS WILL DRIVE A NEW APPROACH
Costs
Counter to individual
compensation, total labor
costs have potential to
drop significantly within
5 years from robotics and
transaction migration
investment; continued
customer digital trust
could accelerate benefits.
Automation, and identifying customer needs, will drive the contact center of the future’s role in
delivering a profitable and sustained relationship.
Agents Need More Skills
Diagnostic tools
Diagnostic nature
Sales
Empathy and listening
Understand customer
history
Complex problem-solving
Beyond Automation
Holdouts will remain for
customer segments and
targeted transactions,
driving a divergent
treatment method.
Workforce
Shifting role of the contact
center will require
updated agent skills,
which will impact
coaching, hiring, success
metrics and incentives,
and will push workforce
liquidity beyond traditional
center boundaries.
New Models
Migration towards a Chief
Customer Officer and
long-term segment
ownership to maximize
outcomes for the
customer and financial
services provider.
Automation & Customer Needs
Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 5

6. DEFINING
YOUR
STRATEGY

7. A FRAMEWORK FOR CUSTOMER
STRATEGY AND CONTACT CENTER
INTERACTION
Accenture has created a new customer strategy and contact center interaction design
framework to address changing customer engagement preferences and technology
advancements. The next slides cover each component in detail.
Operational &
Customer Data
Customers & Segments
Transactions
Communication Channels
Customer Engagement
Tools / Technology
Operating
Model
HIGHLY AUTOMATED HIGH TOUCH
HIGHLY AUTOMATED HIGH TOUCH
Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 7

8. CUSTOMERS
& SEGMENTS
Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 8
Market
Trends
Key
Implications
Strategic
Decisions
Customers segmenting
themselves based on varying
levels of digital adoption.
Customers expect that you tailor
products to their wants and
needs.
Three consumer personas are
emerging from Accenture
research:
How does your operation serve
the well-established customer
that chooses to avoid digital
interactions?
How is your digital experience
unique to the power users and
valuable to those that
experiment with digital
channels?
What is the level of service
required to fulfill low value
customers’ expectations across
channels?
Can you culturally and
technically separate the two
types of service needs?
Allow line of sight for traditional
customers to familiar products
and services.
Promote positive digital
experience channels benefitting
the customer and company.
Let customers personalize
products and customer journey
via feedback and data.
Align desired customer journeys
to balance current and future
value of each segment.
NOMADS HUNTERS
QUALITY
SEEKERS
Highly digitally
active group,
ready for a new
model of delivery
Searching for
the best deal
on price
Looking for high
quality, responsive
service and data
protection
Understanding how to efficiently interact and service your customer base is key. Customers
can be segmented based on their economic value, level of digital adoption and the way they
view their provider.
Source: Accenture Research – D&M Consumer Study (2017)

9. CUSTOMERS
& SEGMENTS
Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 9
By understanding the value that desired capabilities could bring to our customers, an optimal
balance of cost to customer experience can be targeted.
ELIMINATE
Repeatable,
automated processes
with robots
EXACT
Quick and easy
interactions with
robotics for accuracy
EXCELLENT
Outcome-focused
interactions aligned to
segments
Key Attributes
Efficient
Interface and interaction should be high-quality to align with customer
expectations.
Largest opportunity for utilizing digital and robotics to minimize cost while
delivering desired experience.
Excellent
Increased value in blend of human, physical and digital channels for
outcome-driven interactions
Sharing data across channels is fundamental to finding and achieving
desired customer journeys.
Exact
Commoditized treatment acceptable to customers assuming the process
is quick, easy and accurate.
Opportunity for leveraging robotics to deliver precision and consistency
for the customer.
Eliminate
Investment focused on repeatable, tech-driven processes, with robotics
as a low-cost, accurate option.
Lowest opportunity to leveraging human interaction as a future state
channel.
EFFICIENT
High-quality interface
driven by digital
LOWERVALUETOCOMPANY
HIGHERVALUETOCOMPANY
LOWER VALUE TO CUSTOMER
HIGHER VALUE TO CUSTOMER

10. TRANSACTIONS
Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 10
Market
Trends
Key
Implications
Strategic
Decisions
Customers continue to be
increasingly channel agnostic,
wanting ease of access and
accuracy that values their time.
Customers who don’t prefer
automated transactions must be
incented to use those
capabilities.
Focus will be on building and
maintaining relationships while
the market continues the shift to
commodity self-serve and bot
interaction.
What self-service capabilities
drive service differentiation?
Have the easy self-service
capabilities already been rolled
out to all applicable business
units?
What transactions provide the
greatest value from human
interaction?
What policies and regulation will
impact the deployment of self-
service? Self-sales?
What technology, financial, and
organizational barriers require a
new approach to justify and
implement?
Value of internal and external
education on self-service
utilization to drive adoption.
Key transactions which improve
and differentiate the customer
experience.
Optimal channels for each
transaction type, and even by
customer segment.
Knowledge of the customers’
relationship to create new
opportunity for self-service
across within and across
products.
Digital “Sherpas” in other
channels to help guide unaware
but wiling customers through
positive, digital experiences.
Transaction volume has increased substantially over the last five years. Companies should
ensure that each interaction drives positive feelings and brand loyalty. The contact center
plays a large role in this, and overall strategy should be reassessed given the trends around
desired human interaction.

11. TRANSACTIONS: MAPPING
INTERACTIONS ALONG THE
AUTOMATION LINE
Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 11
Interactions of the future can be mapped along a value line, which defines the optimal level of
human and bot interaction to drive great customer experiences and efficient transactions.
Building a Memorable
Customer Experience
Focus on making interaction quick and easy for the customer
Automated for majority of customers and manual for users with minimal digital engagement
Potential for automation depending on customer type. Build the relationship with memorable
experience
Limited automation because of opportunity to invest in the relationship, add real value and
retain customer
Unable to automate with an interaction highly personalized, because of regulation or risk
concerns
1 2 3 4 5
HIGHLY AUTOMATED HIGH HUMAN INTERACTION
Transaction
Types
Transaction-Based
Low Value
Situationally Viable
Relationship Oriented
High Value Opportunity
1
2
3
4
5

12. COMMUNICATION
CHANNELS
Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 12
Market
Trends
Key
Implications
Strategic
Decisions
Customers will engage in
asynchronous communications,
across channels and with time
delay.
Customers will leverage the
channel based on ease and
speed to outcome.
Increasing demand for warm-
transfer within the same day
from other channels into the
contact center, containing
interaction and communication
history
Text based communications will
become critical to enabling the
growth of bots and expansion to
other transactions.
How standardized is the
experience across channels
provided?
Is the customer data approach
designed for individual channels
and for migration across
channels?
What is the ease of a customer
to change channels
seamlessly?
Is the organization positioned for
emerging channels from
external influences (GAFA)?
Role of individual channels is
diminished to target value in
end-to-end customer
experience.
Desire to embrace messaging
on 3rd party properties and
even emerging devices (Alexa,
Siri, PoS machines, etc.) as an
additional channel to
communicate with customers.
Timing for expanded natural
language bot capabilities from
text to language based customer
interactions considering
maturity.
Changing consumer expectations around interactions, driven by GAFA (Google, Apple,
Facebook, Amazon), have increased channel usage to include physical, digital, bots and
contact center. Customers now dictate the channel and expect additional non-voice
capabilities when interacting with the contact center.

13. COMMUNICATION CHANNELS:
TOMORROW’S DIGITAL
COMMUNICATION
Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 13
Customers increasingly transact across time and channels through physical,
digital, bots and the contact center.
Yesterday’s Digital Communication
• Customers have a limited selection of
channels to engage with their
provider.
• The company’s knowledge of their
customer was minimal and cross-
channel contact integration was
scarce.
Tomorrow’s Digital Communication
• Asynchronous communication and robotics allow companies to use the
strength of the enterprise to support sophisticated products and services.
• Dynamic customization of content based on customer profile and behaviors
• The company attempts to enrich their customer knowledge at every transaction.
• Customers are less likely to care about the channel of access, more about the
outcome and
ease to answer.
• Guides customer to the channel they can be best served instead of insisting on
“omnichannel” support across all processes.
Engagement Channels 3rd Party Ecosystem Data Management Platform
(DMP) 3rd Party Web
Engagement Channels
A B
New Channels Asynchronous Handling

14. CUSTOMER
ENGAGEMENT
Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 14
Market
Trends
Key
Implications
Strategic
Decisions
As robotic advances continue, a
reduced dependence on
humans for transactional tasks
will accelerate.
Human agents will be staffed in
the contact center with an on-
demand mindset, equipping
leaders with additional flexibility.
Consumers will slowly begin to
increase digital trust for advice
and purchasing decisions, but
will demand easy access to
human assistance.
Financial institutions will begin
to go beyond the traditional
boundaries and into new
products and spaces, which
needs operations to support
these new endeavors.
How can you decelerate
recruiting and supplant full-time
equivalent (FTE) budget with
investments in robotic agents?
How will you increase the skill-
set of customer service
representatives (CSRs) to
handle more complex
interactions via hiring and
upskilling?
How can you load balance
across the contact centers and
potentially other lines of
business to share capacity in
times for high demand?
Can you adopt methods to flex
your enterprise workforce to
deliver skilled capacity when
needed most?
Different skill sets will be
required from traditional contact
center CSRs:
• Majority of remote CSRs
must to become more
relationship-oriented
• Sales background and
listening skills are crucial to
appropriate cross-selling
expectations
• Increased digital interaction
requires CSRs to be
confident multi-taskers and
writers
Human agents will become
empathetic advisors with new
skill focus areas: problem
solving, analytical thinking, sales
and communications.
Advances in technology, in the form of robotic process automation (RPA) and digital self-
service, have large impacts on service interactions. Reduced dependence on humans for
transactional tasks and the rise of the “on-demand” workforce can dramatically improve
contact center efficiency and change agent expectations.

15. CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT:
ROBOTICS
Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 15
RPA allows the contact center to shift its focus from low value transactional interactions to
high value relationship building interactions.
Contact Center
Examples
Human Persona as the first point of
contact – examples: “AI Lisa”,
Facebook chat bots
Robotic identification of relevant
content (videos) building customer
knowledge
Task completion fully audited,
without human intervention and
tuned for outcomes
Automate analysis of every
discussion for compliance, data
capture and coaching
Advanced presentation of
treatments to agent or directly to
customer based on data
Work across existing systems to
reduce integration, search and
manual data capture
Solutions
Virtual
Agents
Identity
Analytics
Cognitive
Robotics
Speech Analytics
Next Best
Action
Intelligent
Automation
Technology
Vision
Audio Processing
Natural Language
Processing
Knowledge
Representation
Machine Learning
Expert Systems
Sense
Comprehend
Act
Robotics in
Financial
Services

16. CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT:
THE LIVING ORGANIZATION
Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 16
The living organization—the liquid, on-demand workforce becomes possible.
Permanent Staff
50%Bots
30%
Contractors /
Freelancers
20%
TYPICAL WORKFORCE IN 2025
What different skill sets
will be required from a
traditional contact
center and customer
service representatives
(CSRs)?
More relationship-oriented
Sales background and skills as
cross selling is important at every
level.
Confident multi-tasking for
asynchronous handling
Empathetic advisors will require
problem solving, analytical thinking
and communications skill. Above all,
they need empathy with customers
at all times.
STAFFING MODEL OF
THE FUTURE
Reduced dependence on
humans for transactional tasks
Underused contact center capacity
can be used to supplement load
for chat and social

17. TOOLS
& TECHNOLOGY
Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 17
Market
Trends
Key
Implications
Strategic
Decisions
Investments in data aggregation
and analytics will increase bot
effectiveness, and provide
targeted next best offers.
Robotics paired with advanced
contact routing will boost contact
center ability to get the right
work to the right agent.
Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) solutions
continue to be leveraged and
enhanced, build on a complete
data profile of customers.
How are investments directed
towards enabling technology to
be self-learning, self-improving
and proactive in recommending
the next best action?
What mechanisms are required
to sense the customer’s evolving
ecosystem and preferred
engagement channel?
How are data sources
aggregated in an MDM
environment to enabling quick
learning and insight generation?
Technology architecture should
support:
• Agile test and learn
methodology to rolling out
new technologies
• Ability for change quickly by
assigning the right decisions
to the right people
• Tracking operational metrics
to evaluate these elements
Next step for achieving desktops
integrated across all channels to
share customer data.
Target state for contact center technology is an integrated design providing bots, agents and,
most importantly, customers with the right knowledge, in the right context, in real-time.

18. TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY: SATISFYING
ELEVATED CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS
Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 18
Customer service representatives should have tools necessary to meet elevated customer
expectations, giving a cross-enterprise, holistic view of the customer while allowing for
differentiated features based on role.
Activity
Examples
Customer Relationship
Management
Communication &
Collaboration
Sales
and Leads
Complaints
Management
Issue
Management
Customer Experience
Management
Authentication
Support
Transactions
Employee
Customer
Interaction Modes
Employee experience
is a driver of cost
and service
Customers have
new tools and use them
with contact center
employees at the same
time
Easy and fast
transactions are
addressed by self-service
and with intelligent
automation (RPA) when
employee handled.
Region and territory
boundaries are
transcended as
customers use remote
channels for complex
situations.
Employees have more
complex dialogues and
tools, which impact their
role and satisfaction
significantly.
PC Voice Call MobileRemote CSR
Face-to-Face Rep
Agency
CSR Tablet
Face-to-Face
Voice Call
CSR PC Cust Mobile
Face-to-Face Mobile

19. OPERATIONAL
& CUSTOMER DATA
Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 19
Market
Trends
Key
Implications
Strategic
Decisions
Supplement customer profiles
with interests, trends, sentiment
and behaviors through mining
customer data and transaction
metadata.
Challenges exist with converting
data across numerous,
disjointed systems due to
complex architectures.
Financial service institutions
must increase cyber-security
across all channels, resulting
from an increased number of
threats.
Is the customer effort measured
at each stage across the value
chain?
What filters are leveraged to
prioritize customer effort
reductions across channels?
What is the ideal organizational
alignment for analytics
resources (whether centralized
or in lines of business)?
Is the AORCA (acquisition,
onboarding, retention, cross-sell,
advocacy) model used to
analyze customer trends across
channels?
Tracking and evaluating
asynchronous handling requires
new thinking by leadership.
Customer Relationship
Management systems will
become an even more critical
backbone to the channel
ecosystem with increased data
sharing expectations.
Compete on the digitally-driven
experience by evolving IT
infrastructure and big data
capabilities to help real-time
personalization.
Deepen customer trust through
enabling a secure, data-driven
relationship, and uncover
opportunities for increased
security.
Customer and operational data become even more important as analytics capabilities continue
to mature. Financial institutions should continue to look for ways to gather customer
information to better understand and serve them. Traditional methods for metric tracking,
customer service rep KPIs, profit and loss calculations and management guidance should
change to match the new priorities in the contact center.

20. OPERATIONAL & CUSTOMER DATA:
COLLECTING CUSTOMER DATA
Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 20
As technology develops to mine and translate social feeds into sentiment, trends and a
complete customer 360, understanding various forms of customer data is becoming
increasingly important.
Collecting customer data by channel allows institutions to supplement their customer
profiles with interests, trends, sentiment, and behaviors
1. Source: comSCORE 2016 MOBILE APP REPORT, *WE ARE SOCIAL
2. Source: STATISTA
3. Source: INSTAGRAM, 4/2017
4. Source: SNAP, INC, comSCORE 2016 MOBILE APP REPORT
Companies need to be present in the
customer’s ecosystem to create a
TRUSTED DIALOGUE
It is necessary to
COLLECT AND MANAGE
customer data while respecting
privacy and adhering to
regulation
Social networks contain
PUBLIC DATA AND
INFORMATION that’s
pertinent to marketers
1.65Billion
Active mobile
social accounts
globally1
500Million
Daily tweets2
13Hours
Average person
spends a month
on Facebook1
700Million
Instagram
users3
166Million
Daily active
Snapchat users4

21. OPERATING
MODELS
Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 21
Market
Trends
Key
Implications
Strategic
Decisions
Coordination across channels
for capability investment
becomes more critical due to the
diminishing the individual
channel’s role in decisions.
Maximizing experience across
all channels is unrealistically
expensive.
Optimizing speed, cost and
quality becomes even more
difficult.
Has contact center alignment
changed from Operations to the
Sales organization?
How is your contact center
staffed to function in a Test and
Learn environment?
Are FTE dedicated to driving
experience, continuous
improvement and voice of the
customer?
Align contact center in the CMO
organization to drive alignment
in mission, measurement, focus
and rewards.
Iterate on customer experience
instead of waiting for the ideal
omni-channel model to be
developed.
Deploy a rapid prototyping
platform for get true test and
learn speed into the hands of
channel leadership.
New operating models, such as the on-demand workforce, create opportunities for companies
with seasonal work volume to seek efficiencies through shared workforces. A successful
contact center requires the right combination of organizational alignment, reporting structure
and strategic vision.

22. OPERATING MODELS:
AN ON-DEMAND WORKFORCE
Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 22
The on-demand workforce can dramatically improve contact center efficiency and demand
more from its agents.
Variable workforce—gain access to
specialist skills and technology at times of
peak demand.
Uber surge pricing model—peak times
and seasonality can attract a higher
hourly rate to encourage agents to sign
up for these shifts.
Perpetual part-time agents become more
valuable to the contact center to more
accurately match supply and demand.
Digital tools will provide the human agent
with data from multiple sources to resolve
complex problems.
Project management skills will be needed
to control a variety of resources.
Recruiting, training, compensation, etc.
will need to adapt to develop and retain
the necessary skills.
Agents
On Demand
Agent as a
Problem Solver

23. MOVING
FORWARD

24. DEFINING THE STRATEGIC VISION AND
ALIGNMENT OF THE CONTACT CENTER
Develop the model of
channels for meeting
customer expectations and
the cost/benefit implications
Analyze customer base and
their current and future channel
propensities to determine areas
of opportunity in the existing
channels to compliment each
other and fulfill overall
expectations.
Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 24
While a contact center begins to standardize its operations and technology, a holistic
enterprise strategic vision is needed for the future of the contact center.
1
Understand customer
segment expectations for
those service and acquisition
interactions
Examine the propensity for
customer adoption based on
the existing and desired
customer segments to validate
the strategy and help to shape
concepts for operations,
education/marketing and
investment need.
2
Develop hypotheses for the
new capabilities required to
support the future customer
strategy
Develop and refine hypotheses
across experience delivery,
marketing, customer education,
policy, technology leverage,
organizational barriers, and
process to change service,
deepening, and acquisition
interaction mix.
3
Build the path to deliver
against the strategy
Shape the approach based on
the impact and ability to deliver:
customer readiness,
investment/benefit urgency,
delivery dependencies, critical
decision making, etc.
4

25. ACCENTURE
CONTACTS
Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. 25
John McNally
Managing Director
Financial Services, North America
Chicago
john.f.mcnally@accenture.com
Andrew Systma
Senior Manager
Financial Services, North America
Charlotte
andrew.sytsma@accenture.com
Follow us on LinkedIn
www.linkedin.com/
showcase/16181827
For more information, please contact us or read our blog post series on
Contact Center of the Future.

26. ABOUT
ACCENTURE
Copyright © 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture. 26
Accenture is a leading global professional
services company, providing a broad range of
services and solutions in strategy, consulting,
digital, technology and operations. Combining
unmatched experience and specialized skills
across more than 40 industries and all business
functions—underpinned by the world’s largest
delivery network —Accenture works at the
intersection of business and technology to help
clients improve their performance and create
sustainable value for their stakeholders. With
more than 401,000 people serving clients in more
than 120 countries, Accenture drives innovation
to improve the way the world works and lives.
Visit us at www.accenture.com
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informational purposes only and does not take
into account the reader’s specific circumstances,
and may not reflect the most current
developments. Accenture disclaims, to the fullest
extent permitted by applicable law, any and all
liability for the accuracy and completeness of the
information in this presentation and for any acts
or omissions made based on such information.
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