What Tech Should You Buy Next? Here’s How to Choose

When it comes to choosing your next technology investment, as contact centre leaders, you’re undoubtedly spoilt for choice – with so many exciting, time-saving solutions available, especially since AI features have become commonplace too.

Whilst it’s certainly a nice problem to have, tough decisions still must be made, and budgets need to be spent wisely.

So how do you decide what your next technology investment should be? What do you need to consider and who do you need to involve in the decision-making process?

We asked our panel of technology experts to find out…

15 Ways to Choose Which Tech To Buy Next

1. Focus on Your Unique Pain Points – Not the Latest Trends

Rather than focusing on the latest trends, leaders should identify what drives their key business objectives – whether it’s enhancing customer satisfaction, reducing response times, or managing talent and reducing attrition rates.

If the goal is to elevate customer satisfaction, contact centres should invest in technology that helps achieve this and enhances the customer experience. It’s useful to also identify the pain points to then be able to assess whether managers have the tools and technology in place to address these and make changes.

For instance, AI-driven tools that provide insights into customer interactions and give agents real-time feedback during calls enable agents to adjust their tone and tailor their approach to better meet customer needs and improve customer satisfaction.

Contributed by: Nigel Dunn, Managing Director EMEA North, Jabra

2. Consider How Easily It Will Be Adopted by Your Team

A solution may have impressive features, but how easily will it be adopted by your team? User buy-in is crucial. A tool that’s difficult to use or understand can cause frustration and reduce efficiency, negating any perceived benefits.

If your agents or managers don’t find the technology intuitive, its ROI will be minimal, regardless of the feature set. Technology should enhance workflow, not complicate it.

Contributed by: Sarah Aldridge, Delivery Consultant, Odigo eXperience Services

3. Think About How the Solution Will Grow With Your Business

In today’s fast-paced world, technology can be both an asset and a challenge.

With so many options, how do you make smarter decisions?

A key focus should be to choose scalable, flexible solutions. Cloud-based, modular or snap-in solutions grow with your business and keep you adaptable, without locking you into rigid frameworks.

Contributed by: David Samuel, Chief Product Officer, Contexta360

4. Prioritize Solutions That Will Address Bottlenecks

View AI and other new technologies as productivity tools rather than agent replacements.

By focusing on how these technologies can enhance staff performance and improve overall operations, leaders can navigate the complexities of technology adoption more effectively.

Prioritize solutions that address bottlenecks and have a tangible impact on your contact centre’s performance.

Contributed by: Ben Booth, CEO, MaxContact

5. Get Your Agents Involved Early in the Decision-Making Process

When deciding on your next contact centre technology investment, don’t overlook your agents’ insights! Ask them what slows them down, what frustrates customers, and what tools would help them excel.

Involving them early in the decision-making process not only gives you valuable input but also increases their buy-in for the new system.

Trust me, if your agents aren’t enthusiastic about the technology, adoption will suffer, and the ROI will be limited. Let their experience guide your choices to ensure you’re selecting tools that will have the most immediate, meaningful impact.

Contributed by: John Ortiz, Technology Sales Manager, MiaRec

6. Prioritize Solutions That Offer Practical Alternatives to Time-Consuming Manual Processes

When choosing your next workforce management (WFM) technology, focus on addressing key challenges such as inefficient scheduling, fluctuating demand, and employee engagement.

Traditional WFM systems often rely on manual processes, leading to operational inefficiencies and dissatisfaction. AI-driven solutions transform WFM by automating tasks like forecasting, scheduling, and real-time adjustments, ensuring your resources are better aligned with business goals.

For employees, AI offers greater flexibility, allowing them to manage schedules, reducing stress, and improving work/life balance. This flexibility increases job satisfaction and enhances overall performance.

For WFM professionals, these tools shift the focus from repetitive administrative tasks to strategic decision-making, improving resource optimization.

Contributed by: Paul Turner, WEM Leader, Genesys

7. Double-Check Exactly How Well It Will Integrate With Your Current Solutions

Before investing in any new technology for your contact centre, don’t forget to explore exactly how well it will integrate with your current solutions – as introducing new technology can cause operational disruption unless integrated carefully.

Always make a point of selecting solutions that will work well with your established infrastructure – and avoid standalone systems that create silos and complicate the workflow.

Contributed by: Martin Oberdanner, Director Presales, Enghouse Interactive

8. Strive for Purpose-Built CX Solutions to Make the Biggest Difference

Businesses face unending options in the AI marketplace, but all are not created equal. Generic AI built from the open internet will not cut it. Purpose-built AI for CX is trained on industry-specific CX data to address the unique needs, values and objectives of individual consumers.

The power of purpose-built AI lies not just in strengthening technical solutions, but also in its ability to empower the human workforce.

By automating mundane tasks and providing actionable insights, purpose-built AI for CX frees up employees to focus on higher-value activities that require creativity, empathy and strategic thinking – all crucial elements that elevate CX from satisfactory to exceptional.

Contributed by: Catherine Forino, Senior Product Marketing Manager, NICE

9. Ask Yourself “Do You Consistently Hit Your Service Goals?”

The most valuable asset of every organization isn’t the products it makes or the services it delivers. It isn’t the technology or physical assets that it owns. It’s not even the loyal, evangelist customers. It’s the people.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Do you consistently hit your service goals? Across all channels?
• Is your staff turnover at a sustainable level?
• Do you make your agents flip-flop between being bored and being burned out?
• Do you engage and empower your agents in the planning process on their smartphones?
• Are you being tasked with cutting labour costs?
• Do you spend hours creating forecasts and building schedules and still have to fight fires every day?
• Is your planning process labour-intensive?

All of these questions are about workforce management. And if the answer to any of them is Yes, upgraded WFM technology should be at the top of your shopping list.

Contributed by: Chris Dealy, WFM Evangelist, injixo

10. Check If You Need to Spend Money on Orchestration First

There’s always some cool new tech on the horizon. AI is the rage now, and we’re seeing both good and bad deployments. But the smart money gets spent on orchestration first.

Before you buy another gizmo, you need to ask: “is the tech stack we’ve got working at peak performance?”

What I mean is, yes, you can add more and more tools to the stable. But you’re adding more complexity (and probably more silos). It’s not the answer.

Your better option is to focus on orchestration and get more value from the tools you have.

The smartest place to invest is in better integration between systems, more travelable data so you can maintain customer context, and a workflow building system so you can build and test the specific customer journeys that you need.

Contributed by: Pierce Buckley, CEO & Co-Founder, babelforce.

Jack Barton, Head of Marketing at babelforce explains how when contact centre leaders are choosing their next technology solution, it’s not going to come down to one purchase.

11. Create a Safe Environment for Experimentation

Leaders should take a balanced approach to implementation. Start by unlocking the value of existing data to understand where improvements are needed.

Create a safe environment for experimentation, involving staff in the problem-solving process to ensure better adoption and buy-in.

Contributed by: Ben Booth, CEO, MaxContact

12. Decide If You Really Have the Time and Resources to Manage a New Solution

A shiny new tool with more features isn’t always the solution, especially if you’re struggling to fully optimize your current system. Supervision and management are essential to unlocking the full potential of any contact centre technology.

If you lack the time, resources, or know-how to leverage data and refine your existing set-up, transitioning to a more advanced system could be even more challenging.

Automation can ease workloads in areas like quality management or workforce planning, but tools like AI also bring new responsibilities, such as monitoring and oversight, which may require adapting job roles.

The key is to be realistic about the value you can get out of a complex system and plan for change. You need to give to receive – sometimes that means investing time now to save it in the long run!

Contributed by: Sarah Aldridge, Delivery Consultant, Odigo eXperience Services

13. Ask Yourself “How Is This Going to Make Things Better for Our Customers?”

When you’re choosing new technology, make customer experience (CX) your top priority. Instead of just thinking about cost savings or efficiency, ask yourself: How is this going to make things better for our customers?

The best tools are the ones that improve interactions – whether that’s solving issues faster, offering a more personalized touch, or opening up better ways to communicate. If you focus on the whole customer journey, your technology investment will naturally boost loyalty and satisfaction.

At the end of the day, customers don’t care how smooth your backend is if their experience feels clunky. Tools that truly improve CX will always pay off in the long run, keeping customers happy and coming back.

Contributed by: John Ortiz, Technology Sales Manager, MiaRec

14. Understand What the Technology Actually Does in Practice

When deciding on new technology, contact centre leaders must look beyond flashy features and consider the realities of implementation.

Many solutions promise extensive capabilities but fail to deliver out-of-the-box functionality, requiring significant customization and ongoing maintenance. Understand the difference between what software can do and how it actually does it in practice.

Contributed by: Ben Booth, CEO, MaxContact

15. Explore Where New Tools Will Offer Advantages Beyond the Contact Centre

Any technology investment that you make needs to align with your core business goals. This is also an opportunity to support other key objectives of your organization, such as reducing your carbon footprint, optimizing the employee experience, and more.

You should also consider that while contact centres have previously uniquely measured goals such as responsiveness, agent productivity, and customer satisfaction, an increasing number of CX tools can offer significant advantages beyond the contact centre, extending overall business productivity and responsiveness to the wider organization.

For example, a solution that can deeply analyse customer behaviour can also enhance marketing and sales, and even product development. Your contact centre investment could become a shared asset for many departments, distributing both the benefits and the costs.

Contributed by: Martin Oberdanner, Director Presales, Enghouse Interactive

For more great insights and advice from our panel of experts, read these articles next:

• Next-Gen WFM: What Is Coming Down the Line?
• CCaaS Pulse Check – What’s Now Possible?
• Prioritize Urgent Queries – Key Strategies for Success

Author: Robyn Coppell
Reviewed by: Xander Freeman