Boston is famous for its meandering streets that seem to take the long way to where you need to go. Folklore tells of how the trails of aimlessly wandering cows were simply paved over. This may not be true, but it serves to illustrate a point. When we become complacent with inefficiencies they can become institutionalized.
If you speak with any contact center leader, you begin to sense their frustration with how difficult it is to deliver the experience customers demand today when using tools built nearly a decade ago! Change is inevitable. What a call center was designed to do even two years ago will become obsolete. To combat systems obsolescence, cleaver managers will devise process workarounds. But soon, even the workarounds required too much effort and they become caught in a trap that we refer to as the “perilous and stagnant call center”.
Contact centers of all sizes and functions can easily become trapped into becoming stagnant. As we have seen, when a call center begins to outgrow its systems, people will compensate. In essence the company institutionalizes inefficiency and figuratively begins to pave their own cow trails.
The environment in which business operates is constantly and rapidly changing. Fortunately, there are early warning signs that can help you determine whether you are prepared for change. Have you ever wondered just how resilient your contact center is? Can you recognize early risk indicators? Are you able to quantify the impact and to make the case for needed upgrades? How do you move the evolution of your call center forward in a smart way that makes sense for your business? If you would like to learn more, please join Nancy Jamison, Principal Analyst with Frost and Sullivan for her perspective and recommendations. For more stories, a more in-depth discussion into impact and recommendations, also consider reading and sharing this paper.
