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Next-generation KPIs: Redefining customer experience measurement - Hero

Customer experience (CX) is evolving — and your measurement strategy should too. Discover how next-generation KPIs can offer deeper insight into CX performance, from customer effort and journey satisfaction to agent engagement and digital maturity.

Next-generation KPIs: Redefining customer experience measurement

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Explore the transformative potential of Contact Center-as-a-Service (CCaaS) solutions and learn how to navigate the evolving landscape of AI-driven customer interactions with this executive brief from Frost & Sullivan.

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The CCaaS breakthrough: Redefining customer interactions with AI

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Access the latest survey results and stay on top of CX developments in 2025 with this new report by Execs In The Know, sponsored by TELUS Digital.

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Execs In The Know: 2025 CX Leaders Trends & Insights

Discover how TELUS Digital transformed customer support for a leading cryptocurrency platform, scaling the program within weeks while achieving high customer satisfaction scores.

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Reduction in Average Handle Time within 3 months

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Elevating the customer experience for a leading cryptocurrency platform

The words "product-market fit" have adorned tech industry pitch decks for some time. It's a simple concept, really, and something all successful businesses need to prove. To achieve product-market fit, the product(s) you offer as a business must align with the needs of the market. Without such a fit, you might have an idea, but perhaps not a business.

In fact, even if you have product-market fit, and therefore a business, you still might not have a long runway without profitability. This is particularly the case when challenging economic environments make venture capital funding more difficult to come by. That is precisely why scale-ups need to think beyond product-market fit, and strive to achieve profit-market fit.

Harvard Business School senior lecturer Jeffrey Rayport recently described profit-market fit on the HBR IdeaCast podcast. According to Rayport, profit-market fit is achieved when a venture not only shows that it can quickly ramp up revenue and its customer base, but also finds its sweet spot where every new customer brings in additional revenue and incurs only marginal cost. It's at this point, explains Rayport, that a venture "moves towards sustainability."

This major milestone isn't likely to be reached by accident, though. Rather, you need to be deliberate, and deploy strategies to overcome common challenges in the scaling journey.

Many companies, especially those in tech, can be successful in achieving product-market fit, says Rayport during the podcast interview, "But the wheels come off the bus in some way during the scaling phase."

Imagine you head up a start-up that seems destined for unicorn status. You have an app and it's topping the charts. You have customers and your number of active users is going through the roof. To date, your impressive numbers have earned you no shortage of admirers, and by extension, funding. But to get to where you are, you've needed to spend: Your servers, your offices, the growth of your team and a myriad of other costs outstrip the money that your product brings in. As a result, you can't sustain — let alone grow — your business without additional outside funding. Now, facing rising interest rates and economic pressures, that funding looks like it is going to dry up. Put simply, you haven't found profit-market fit — the relationship between the money and the product that enables businesses to steer themselves toward sustainability.

A strong profit-market fit helps you remove internal constraints on your company's growth, and makes you far less dependent on outside funding.

Challenges in establishing profit-market fit

There are, of course, challenges associated with scaling and reaching the point of profit-market fit.

Once there's a good product-market fit, a scaling company must keep up its generated demand and make strides toward product profitability. This brings us back to matters of efficiency — a word that's popping up all across the tech industry and one that's top of mind for start-ups, scale-ups and mainstays alike.  In fact, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg even went as far to say, "Our management theme for 2023 is the 'Year of Efficiency,' and we're focused on becoming a stronger and more nimble organization." For tech brands of all sizes, the pursuit of efficiency means keeping costs under control and doubling-down on activities that are generating revenue — but that's not where the work ends.

Other challenges include providing a consistent digital customer experience (CX) as your company grows, and maintaining a coherent organizational culture where people are on the same mission and where their efforts align.

Brian Hannon, global head of customer experience innovation - technology at TELUS Digital, points to the value of experience when facing challenges in the scaling journey. "Achieving profit-market fit is difficult. It's even harder when you're learning every lesson the hard way," explains Hannon. "You can build up a lot of momentum as a hit tech company, but it's easy to run into real challenges if you don't have a firm grasp on how to scale in a sustainable way."

Outsourcing digital CX to reach profit-market fit

One way to scale with efficiency in mind is to outsource aspects of your digital customer experience.

Keeping your CX in-house means dealing with sudden peaks and dips in demand that quickly become costly on the hiring front, to say nothing of the complexities that come serving new markets and establishing operations in new geographies. What's more, outsourcing can save scale-ups from having to bear the full cost and risk associated with big and potentially transformational technological investments.

You can't overlook the value in an outsourcing partner's experience either, explains Hannon. "They'll have worked with countless companies before, and will be able to provide direction from lessons learned. An outside perspective on where you can introduce greater efficiency can be a real asset as you grow."

Today, conversations about efficiency have a way of leading to automation like robotic process automation (RPA). This form of automation provides around-the-clock capabilities, produces replicable results at scale and handles repetitive tasks so your team members don't have to. These capabilities enable automated service channels — such as chatbots and intelligent FAQs — that play an important role in a modern digital customer experience operation. With the expertise of a proficient outsourcing partner, introducing automation becomes less resource-intensive.

"It can feel safe to stick with what you know. But to make the progression from product-market fit to profit-market fit, brands need to keep an open mind to new technologies, and new ways of bringing efficiency."

Outsourcing with TELUS Digital for next-generation, digitally led customer experiences means benefiting from 18 years of history and global reach that has served more than 650 global clients in 30 countries of operation. Reach out today to learn more about how we can help your scaling company achieve profit-market fit.

You've heard of product-market fit, but what about profit-market fit? Learn the difference and how scaling tech brands can achieve it.

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Check out our solutions

Why achieving profit-market fit is essential for scaling brands

As the telecom industry faces mounting costs and shifting customer expectations, AI can turn challenges into opportunities. Learn more about the use cases.

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How telecom brands can seize industry opportunities with AI

On this episode, we explore practical strategies for maintaining authentic customer connections and how, paradoxically, automation can make your experiences more human — not less.

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Is automation the key to more human, personalized experiences?

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Asset Image 2025 Safety in numbers

Explore trust and safety trends for 2025 from a survey of 819 enterprise leaders. Gain insights on fraud detection, KYC, content moderation and ID verification.

Safety in numbers: Trust and safety trends, 2025

See the results our global, disruptive client achieved after they transitioned to Contact Center Outsourcing Solutions from TELUS Digital.

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Order accuracy throughout the transition period

Bringing efficiency to a leading food delivery platform's overwhelmed contact center

You need to run your company, so why add contact center manager to your resume?  Today, value comes from enlisting subject matter experts to help grow your business in a strategic way. Outsourcing offers just that.

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Startups and Outsourcing

Start-ups and outsourcing: How to achieve growth and innovation

Frost & Sullivan, a globally recognized market research and consulting firm, recently published an executive brief titled, The CCaaS breakthrough: Redefining customer interactions with AI. This comprehensive report identifies a number of emerging global trends, disruptions and new technologies shaping the contact center industry.

In this article, we delve into five major trends highlighted by Frost & Sullivan that are impacting contact centers. Read on to see how advancements in technology will reshape how contact centers enhance CX, drive agent productivity and equip their workforces with the right tools.

1. Rapid adoption of cloud-based technology platforms and architecture

One of the most significant contact center industry trends, according to Frost & Sullivan, is the shift toward cloud-based platforms. This refers to the use of internet-based platforms and infrastructure to deliver services traditionally handled by on-premise systems. Instead of relying on local servers and hardware, contact centers using cloud-based platforms can access a suite of tools and services remotely, hosted by third-party providers. These cloud platforms typically encompass everything from call routing and workforce management to customer relationship management (CRM) systems, making them an all-in-one solution for modern contact center needs.

According to Frost & Sullivan, seven key factors are driving rapid cloud adoption:

The end-of-life of existing system platforms: Many legacy contact center platforms are becoming outdated or are no longer supported by vendors. As these systems become less reliable and harder to maintain, businesses are increasingly turning to cloud-based solutions for contact center modernization. Today' cloud-based technology offers advanced capabilities and ongoing support without the need for costly replacements or upgrades.

The ability for premises-based organizations to add CCaaS in hybrid configurations: Businesses can combine the reliability of their current infrastructure with the flexibility and scalability of cloud-based services. This approach lets organizations gradually transition to the cloud without disrupting ongoing operations or requiring a full system overhaul.

New process automation and analytics capabilities: With AI-driven automation and real-time analytics, cloud contact centers can streamline workflows, enhance decision-making and improve customer interactions by predicting needs and optimizing agent performance.

Redesigned agent desktops: Having the ability to consolidate multiple tools and channels into a single, user-friendly interface enables agents to work more efficiently, offering quicker access to customer data and faster responses and ultimately improving the overall customer experience.

Digital transformation: Companies are looking to modernize their operations and deliver seamless customer experiences across digital channels. Cloud platforms are well-suited to support omnichannel services, allowing businesses to meet customer expectations in a digital-first world.

Richer integrations to third-party applications: Integration with applications such as CRM, marketing automation and ecommerce systems enables businesses to create a more connected and streamlined customer journey by pulling data from various sources to provide personalized and efficient service.

Advanced self-service applications: Applications like AI-powered chatbots allow customers to resolve simple inquiries without needing to speak to an agent. These tools reduce operational costs, enhance customer satisfaction and free up agents to handle more complex tasks.

One of the ways organizations are capitalizing on cloud technology is through the implementation of Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solutions. CCaaS is a cloud-based solution that delivers all essential contact center functions through a subscription model. This approach enables businesses to access advanced tools without the need for significant upfront investment in hardware or software. According to Fortune Business Insights, the CCaaS market is expected to grow from $6.08 billion in 2024 to $24.45 billion by 2032. This expected growth can likely be attributed to the scalability, flexibility and cost efficiency that these solutions offer organizations.

2. Constantly changing consumer behavior and preferences

Consumer behavior has undergone significant shifts, particularly in terms of how customers engage with contact centers. It's no surprise that changing consumer behavior and preferences made the list of key contact center trends to watch. As customers demand more personalized, seamless interactions, contact centers must continuously adapt to meet these evolving expectations.

For example, Salesforce's State of the Connected Customer report reveals that consumers interact with companies across an average of eight different channels. Additionally, 71% of consumers prefer using different channels — whether email, phone, in-person, online chat or others — depending on the situation. This underscores the need for businesses to offer an experience that allows customers to start an interaction on one platform and continue it on another without disruption.

Speed and responsiveness are also top-of-mind for the modern consumer. "We care about our time more than ever," said Jay Baer, keynote speaker, entrepreneur and author of The Time to Win: How to Exceed Your Customers' Need for Speed, during an episode of Questions for now, a TELUS Digital podcast that focused on building customer loyalty. Baer explained that brands that exceed expectations by responding to customer inquiries faster than anticipated can turn those customers into advocates. Baer's research also found that 50% of customers are less likely to spend money with a business if it responds slower than expected, and every year, these expectations for speed continue to rise.

In addition, research by Statista shows that 88% of customers now expect brands to have an online self-service portal. This reflects the growing preference for resolving simple issues independently, without speaking to an agent. As digital natives become the dominant consumer demographic, self-service options like online resources and automated solutions have become essential.

These are just a few examples of how shifting customer expectations will force brands to rethink their service strategies and adopt new technologies to stay ahead.

3. Increasing use of personalized automation using AI

Personalization has long been essential for brands looking to build lasting relationships with their customers, and this trend doesn't appear to be going anywhere anytime soon. A survey conducted by TELUS Digital revealed that over 60% of American consumers prefer a more personalized customer experience, even if it takes more time.

Recent advances in technology have significantly enhanced personalization capabilities. AI-driven automation, for instance, encompasses a wide range of applications, from chatbots to advanced routing systems and predictive analytics. Unlike traditional automation, which handles repetitive tasks using predetermined rules, AI-enabled solutions can analyze large volumes of data in real time. This enables dynamic, personalized interactions based on each customer's unique profile, providing more relevant and timely support. As a result, contact centers can offer a more tailored experience, reducing the need for human intervention in routine inquiries while improving overall customer satisfaction.

Bank of America's virtual financial assistant, "Erica," for example, has proven to be a game-changer in the financial services company's customer service since its launch in 2018. According to a release from Bank of America, "to date, Erica has responded to 800 million inquiries from over 42 million clients and provided personalized insights and guidance over 1.2 billion times." The assistant helps customers manage recurring subscriptions, monitor spending and handle inquiries like finding transactions or transferring money. Erica is especially effective at providing quick responses — 98% of clients receive answers within 44 seconds. And when further assistance is needed, Bank of America's Mobile Servicing Chat capability connects clients with a live representative who can answer more complex servicing questions.

4. Developing analytics and insights to drive business outcomes

Effective data analysis enables contact centers to monitor performance in real time, track customer behavior and identify patterns that can inform business strategies.

As Kory Lawszewski, vice president of global sales at TELUS Digital, pointed out in the report, 2024 CX Leaders Trends & Insights by Execs In The Know, sponsored by TELUS Digital, every customer interaction across various channels offers valuable insights that can be used to identify pain points and refine service strategies. "Review customer support call logs, interactions between your customers and your chatbots, replies on your social media posts, and anywhere else your customers interact with your brand," Lawszewski noted. By leveraging these insights, businesses can enhance their customer experience approach, anticipate future needs and make data-driven decisions to optimize service and efficiency. This feedback loop helps fine-tune processes, foster personalized interactions and ultimately drive higher customer satisfaction.

Analytics in contact centers typically fall into three main categories:

Descriptive: Focuses on analyzing historical data to understand what has happened, providing insights into past performance metrics like call volumes, customer satisfaction scores and average handling times. This helps contact centers identify trends and assess overall performance.

Predictive: Uses data models and machine learning to forecast future outcomes based on historical patterns. For example, it can predict call volume spikes, customer churn risks or the likelihood of resolving an issue during the first interaction.

Prescriptive: Recommends specific actions based on predictive insights. These analytics can be used to suggest how to allocate resources, optimize staffing levels or tailor customer service strategies to improve results.

AI-driven analytics are further changing the game by offering deeper, more actionable insights in real time. Traditionally, contact center analytics relied on historical data and basic metrics like call volume or average handling time. While useful, these insights were often reactive, providing a look at past performance without much predictive power. AI-driven analytics, however, change the game by enabling real-time analysis and predictive modeling.

Brands are already starting to plan how they can leverage the powerful benefit of AI-driven analytics. American Express, for example, is preparing to use generative AI to analyze customer feedback and inquiries gathered through its existing customer service channels. The goal is to focus on "predicting how our customers are going to perform over time, enabling better financial planning and decision-making," said Luke Gebb, executive vice president of American Express Digital Labs in a VentureBeat article.

5. Focusing on employee experience and engagement

In an industry where customer service excellence is the primary goal, investing in the well-being and engagement of agents is essential. When employees feel supported, valued and equipped to perform their roles effectively, they are more likely to deliver exceptional customer service. In fact, a survey by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services revealed that 55% of executives strongly agree that a great customer experience cannot exist without a great employee experience.

A strong employee experience not only benefits customers, but also improves key performance metrics, including revenue. Jacob Morgan, keynote speaker, futurist and author of The Employee Experience Advantage, found that employee experience is a combination of three factors: culture, technology and physical workspace. According to Morgan's research,  "experiential organizations" — those that scored highest in the three employee experience factors — see four times higher average profits and double the average revenue compared to those that fall behind in these areas.

To enhance the employee experience, brands can focus on providing agents with opportunities for growth, offering comprehensive training and development, as well as implementing recognition and reward systems for performance. However, investing in the right tools and technology that simplify employees' jobs is equally important. AI and automation are playing a pivotal role in helping contact center agents handle growing customer demand more effectively.

For instance, contact center AI tools such as agent assist bots can provide real-time support to human agents by offering instant suggestions related to customer queries, retrieving customer data and more. Meanwhile, contact center automation tools such as robotic process automation (RPA) and knowledge bases further streamline operations. RPA automates repetitive tasks such as data entry, freeing up agents for more complex interactions, while knowledge bases provide quick access to information, for both customers and agents.

In another episode of Questions for now, Nigel Devaraj, senior product manager, hyperautomation at TELUS Digital, noted that investing in the right tools to make it easier for your agents to do their job boasts a number of benefits, including reduced stress. "They're happier because they're not having to worry about these little mundane activities because we leverage automation to actually take care of those mundane activities for them, and they can really focus on the end customer service."

Another notable benefit is increased productivity, according to Chandrakant Binwani, former director of intelligent automation solutions at Automation Anywhere in the aforementioned podcast episode. "From an agent perspective, [automation] helps them with their productivity, with their experience. They can focus on talking to you, connecting with you, understanding your problems, simplifying your experience, improving your experience as well as simplifying and improving the experience of the [customer service representative]."

Future-proof your contact center operations

Trends like cloud adoption and AI-powered automation are key drivers shaping the contact center of the future. These innovations can help streamline workflows and resolve issues faster, leading to higher productivity and better resource allocation. Additionally, understanding trends in personalization, analytics and changing customer preferences allows contact centers to deliver more targeted services, ensuring that customer satisfaction remains high. Neglecting these developments can leave businesses lagging behind their competitors, while those that embrace innovation stand to gain a competitive edge by improving both the customer experience and their bottom line.

To fully capitalize on emerging trends, partnering with a customer experience provider, like TELUS Digital can be a distinct advantage. With nearly two decades of experience in the evolving digital CX landscape, our team of experts stay ahead of industry trends and best practices and can provide invaluable insights to help brands meet modern consumer expectations and embrace technological advancements. Reach out to our team of experts to see how we can help future-proof your operations and position your company to thrive in an increasingly competitive landscape.

Discover some notable contact center trends driving innovation in CX, from AI-powered automation to cloud adoption, with research from Frost & Sullivan.

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