You and your project team have poured hours into the design and implementation of your new call center technology platform, and the big day has finally arrived – Go-Live. While Go-Live is the culmination of months – and depending on scope, even years – of hard work, the day itself sometimes just passes us by and proves to be a bit anticlimactic.
However, celebrating Go-Live and making it something to remember can reap benefits in terms of your system adoption and momentum. This is especially relevant for contact centers where agents suffer from change-fatigue – what’s going to get them excited to adopt this system over all those others you’ve implemented in the past? A little celebrating can go a long way for employee morale, and let’s be serious – who doesn’t like a little party?
Build Excitement for Go-Live
A good change management strategy involves communicating with and engaging your end-users long before your actual Go-Live date. By the time Go-Live arrives, contact center employees should have at least a general understanding of what is being implemented, its benefits, and how their day-to-day will be impacted. Maybe you’ve even involved them in some pre-Go-Live meetings or shown them a demo to offer a sneak peek. In the week immediately leading up to Go-Live, your Change Management team should shift the focus of these communications and project updates from being educational to being exciting and fun!
Some ideas to build the anticipation include:
- Create fliers and posters to place around high-traffic areas of the office advertising the project and its Go-Live. Make them clever and eye-catching.
- Make T-Shirts for your project team to wear to work in the weeks leading up to Go-Live. This will get the team asking questions and talking about the Go-Live.
- Create “invitations” to disburse throughout the contact center inviting agents to Go-Live. These can be themed to make them more fun, like making them look like boarding passes or concert tickets.
- Make the week leading up to Go-Live a “Spirit Week” with different themes and activities each day. Work with your HR partner to understand what you can do, but some typical ideas include pajama day, favorite sports team day, and more.
Make Go-Live day FUN!
We are asking agents to change their routines and way of working. Since Go-Live is a major milestone in achieving your contact center vision, make the actual day more than just another day at the office. A party atmosphere gets agents excited about the new tool and builds infectious energy in the contact center. Some easy ways to make Go-Live day fun include:
- Deck the contact center floor with streamers, balloons, and other party decorations the evening before Go-Live. That way when agents arrive in the morning they already start to feel the excitement.
- Bring in breakfast or lunch for the agents. Agents love free food, and gathering the team together in the break room provides an opportunity for you and your project sponsor to have an impromptu pow-wow to discuss Go-Live and reiterate its intended benefits.
- Provide agents a little “gift” to celebrate Go-Live. This doesn’t have to break the bank – even a little bag of candies with a note of appreciation or information about Go-Live can make an agent feel involved and vested in the Go-Live’s success.
Incentivize Adoption
We all know that agents play a critical role in the realized success of the implementation, so incentivize adoption in the short-term beginning on Go-Live. As with all contact center gamification, make sure you are driving the right behaviors, that all agents have an opportunity to win, and that guidelines are clear. However, for the purposes of Go-Live you can focus on immediate, short-term adoption behaviors as well as longer term business results. Some typical adoption games include:
- Being the “first” to accomplish something on the new platform. To increase opportunities to win, you can create the challenge to be the first five or ten employees to complete the activity. Some simple examples include being the first to post in your CRM’s social network or chatter, the first to create a challenge in your WFO tool, or the first supervisor to coach on a call.
- Completing a Go-Live quiz about the new tool or platform. This not only prompts participation, but also supports your system training efforts. The agents that get all the answers right can be entered into a prize drawing.
Provide Updates
Now that you’ve made your Go-Live memorable and exciting, make sure you keep agents updated on the success of the implementation. Continue to communicate consistently throughout the stabilization and adoption period. Highlight adoption metrics, celebrate top-adopting agents and supervisors, and share benefits the contact center is experiencing as a result of the new system. Making Go-Live not just another day at the office helps prevent your implementation from seeming like the “flavor of the week,” but long-term communication on its realized benefits is what makes it an implementation to remember.
