Contact centre veteran Shalima Bhalla says real-time interaction data lets operators anticipate needs and cut friction while boosting loyalty and revenue
SHALIMA BHALLA
Contact centre veteran Shalima Bhalla says real-time interaction data lets operators anticipate needs and cut friction while boosting loyalty and revenue
Contact centre Industry veteran Shalima Bhalla spent her early career as an engineer configuring agent routing systems and building contact centres. She watched customers at banks and telecommunications companies plan for months just to change a single interactive voice response( IVR) workflow: the automated phone system that greets callers and routes them through menu options.
The technology was complex and tightly integrated into backend systems. One alteration would cascade through entire workflows and execution stretched into years.
“ I worked with customers who had to plan for months to change one IVR workflow because if they made one change, it would have a domino effect on the entire workflow,” Shalima says.
Cloud infrastructure has compressed that timeline to days, with the process of introducing a multilingual bot or adding a language becoming a plug-and-play exercise.
142 January 2026