Contact Center Pipeline September 2026 | Page 9

What 9 / 11 may have accelerated was the recognition that connectivity, resilience, and business continuity mattered more than ever. I remember my first airline trip after 9 / 11. The lines were long, armed military personnel were visible throughout the airport, and the message was unmistakable: the party was over. The experience reflected a broader shift taking place throughout business and society. Security, preparedness, and risk management had become priorities in ways they had not been before.

Was 9 / 11 causal? Not directly. The major forces transforming contact centers were already in motion. But it reinforced the importance of those investments and likely accelerated ongoing efforts to improve infrastructure, preparedness, and communication capabilities.

Looking across the past 25 years, however, I would argue that Covid ultimately had the most profound impact on contact centers. Decades of investment in technology, centralization, and remote connectivity were tested almost overnight. Contact centers shifted to remote operations at remarkable speed, proving the value of capabilities that had been evolving for years.

Perhaps that is the lesson from all of these events. Y2K tested systems. 9 / 11 tested resilience. Covid tested adaptability. Through each challenge, contact centers continued to evolve, serving as a critical link between organizations and the customers who depend on them.

Looking back, I never would have predicted half of what we ' ve experienced over the past 25 years.

Can you imagine what the next 25 years will bring?

MICHELE ROWAN

At the time of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, I was managing a large contact center in Tampa, Florida for Hilton Worldwide.

I was enroute to the contact center when the first building was struck and watched the news from our office as the second was struck. Those moments will stay with me forever, as they will for every one of us …

Employee safety was always a priority at Hilton; we had communication and evacuation actions that were practiced frequently( one of the many benefits of being part of a top shelf and global hospitality company).

During the emergency, Hilton’ s frontline reservations and customer care representatives worked tirelessly to help customers book and rehouse travelers who were stuck or stranded. And as leaders we focused on furnishing our teams with as much intel, tools, and resources as we possibly could in real time.

The key priorities that I saw arise as a result of 9 / 11 in our industry were primarily in disaster recovery planning and geographical redundancy. Hilton was already geographically dispersed across the U. S.

Certainly, business continuity plans were prioritized after 9 / 11: both within the U. S. and internationally. Network redundancy and emergency planning moved from the middle( or bottom) of the priorities list to the top, full stop.

Several years later, remote readiness followed in our disaster recovery planning via remote work readiness. Our early adoption of work from home for contact centers( 2007-2008) certainly prepared us well for the COVID-19 pandemic years later.

LAURA SIKORSKI

Following 9 / 11 I cancelled a few consulting engagements as I just didn’ t want to fly, and Zoom was not even an option back then. But I did do a few Skype calls.

I also remember data centers were greatly harmed as most of their networks were fed through the World Trade Center, albeit through different service companies and entrances, to a single address location.

Today, most data centers are in different time zones. So are enterprise contact centers, serviced by contact center-as-aservice( CCaaS) and the cloud. Outsourcing interactions to other countries has become the norm as even accents are no longer a problem due to AI.

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