How Contact Centres Have Adapted to Customer Service Needs

As smart technology and artificial intelligence (AI) streamline every aspect of our daily lives, the expectations placed on customer service provision become increasingly high.

In an age where there are as many smartphones as people on the planet and there are over 6 billion internet users each day, satisfying your customer service needs can feel like an insurmountable task.

At Whistl, we believe in empowering our partners to grow with the rising demands placed on their business through tailored solutions and specialist contact centre support.

In this article, we will share our insights on how customer services have changed, the impact this has had on call centres and our advice on fulfilling your customer service needs.

The Evolution of Contact Centres

The history of contact centres starts with the invention of the telephone, for which Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first US patent in 1876. The world was slow at first to adopt this new technology; the first telephone switchboard only arrived in 1894.

By the 1920s, rotary phones were introduced, making it easier for customers to contact businesses remotely rather than in person.

In the 1960s, the first contact centres appeared due to advances in call handling technology, which was followed by touch-tone dialling and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) in the 1970s.

Further advances in data management led by pioneers such as Oracle enabled businesses to outsource their customer services by 1989, while the globalisation of the internet made it possible to build an international consumer base.

The introduction of increasingly sophisticated technology has revolutionised customer profiling and facilitated the delivery of more consistent multi-channel experiences. However, modern businesses have arguably become too reliant on technology to fulfil their customer service needs.

A study conducted by Forbes found that consumers often feel like businesses are “hiding behind bad customer service technology” and that there are rarely human operators available when only a human can help.

Another study by Accenture found that companies have “lost sight of the importance of human interaction and often make it too difficult for consumers to get the right level of help and service they need”.

How Consumer Expectations Have Changed Customer Service

When fast call answering, fair pricing and delivering products as advertised were once enough to satisfy your customers’ needs, today's businesses are increasingly expected to provide customer services that are personalised to each user and consistent across all channels.

In fact, as many as 80% of consumers consider the customer service journey to be as important as the product being purchased, according to a study by Salesforce, highlighting this significant change in customer service expectations.

In response to the increased usage of smartphones and the internet, many businesses have adopted an ‘always-on’ approach to their customer service provision, operating contact centres out of hours and leveraging overflow call handling systems to manage demand during peak seasons.

As few businesses are capable of facilitating this approach without some degree of customer support outsourcing, this has driven the innovation of more advanced ‘self-service’ portals. These allow consumers to have their queries answered independently.

The Future of Customer Service Expectations

The consensus among many industry experts is that the rise in cross-border commerce and internet penetration will necessitate the widespread development and integration of self-service technologies.

In an article by McKinsey & Company, they argued that the best way for businesses to fulfil their future customer service needs would be “to increase digital self-service and to make smarter operational trade-offs, grounded in what matters to customers.”

Experts agree that new technologies will empower consumers to take control of their customer service journey and find resolutions without human intervention. However, there will always be certain queries that will require the human touch.

In the study from Forbes, they predicted that for tasks such as account closure, booking an airline ticket or asking for their creative input, customers would rather make a phone call to a real person than trust an artificial intelligence (AI) operator with their query.

This undoubtedly places additional pressure on contact centres to adopt an ‘always-on’ approach, such that their human operators could be as accessible as their automated counterparts.

This sentiment was echoed in a report by NICE, which predicted that consumers “will have zero tolerance for sub-optimal service, as they will be even more informed about the reality of service, have far higher expectations, be empowered by social sharing and be more willing and able to shift suppliers”.

This report went on to suggest that due to shifting consumer perceptions of service performance, great customer service will become commoditised, making it increasingly difficult to differentiate and delight customers.

With customers expecting an omnichannel experience, contact centres will have to adapt by leveraging all-in-one consumer experience management platforms to ensure businesses can give their customers consistent branding, tone of voice and information across all sales and contact channels.

How to Fulfil Your Customer Service Needs

At Whistl, we pride ourselves on driving continuous improvement with our outsourced customer service solutions to meet the rising expectations placed on our industry. To gain insights into how contact centres need to adapt to ever-changing customer service needs, we surveyed 1,000 UK consumers to record their experiences with call centre support.

From the feedback we received, we found that businesses must:

• Make the contact centre process easy and smooth, allowing the customer to speak to the right person with the right answer.
• Have procedures in place which allow a swift response and resolution. Customers want answers from agents who are willing to help.
• Avoid customers having to be on hold for too long and being bounced around different departments.
• Drop the repeated hold messages and rigid script reading in favour of useful information.

While these findings are representative of UK consumers, by partnering with Whistl, your contact centre can gather insights on your own customer base through similar feedback surveys.

This will allow you to identify gaps in your personal service quality, performance degradation over time and benchmark your customer experience against your competition.

Outsource Your Customer Services to Whistl

We hope that this article has given you some insight into how customer service has changed and inspired you to adapt your contact centre strategy to improve the experience of your consumer base.

At Whistl, we offer affordable solutions for businesses across a wide range of sectors, tailoring our contact centre support to fit different budgets.

When you outsource your customer services to us, you only pay for the time the calls are being managed, making our services considerably cheaper than employing full-time staff, along with all other associated costs.

For more information about our services or any of the information in this article, please get in touch with us today so that we can work together on the best solution for your business.

Updated November 2025