There is a bit of interesting lore surrounding the streets of Boston. If you’ve driven “Beantown” you know how crooked and confusing the streets can be. Legend has it that that Boston’s streets are just paved cow trails. This may not be true, but it serves to illustrate a point. When we become complacent with inefficiencies they can become institutionalized, and this has never been more true than in cases of a stagnant contact center.
I’ve spoken with many contact center leaders who are frustrated with how difficult it is for them to improve their contact center metrics and the underlying customer experience they work so hard to deliver. Their stories all have a familiar ring to them. Years ago, the call center started lean. Then along the way the company experienced rapid growth. To keep up with the growth, clever managers devised workarounds. But soon, even the workarounds required too much effort and they were caught in a trap that we refer to as the “perils of the stagnant contact center”.
Small, medium and large companies – they all, at times, have informal call centers or even accidental ones. Perhaps they are truly impromptu, as when disaster strikes, and a group of employees is madly pulled together to man the phones. Often, these centers start small, and take the natural next step to becoming a contact center, but without the modern-day applications planned many centers enjoy. Watch out. Informality can cause stagnation. Without the recognition that all contact centers are evolving entities that hold the power to make or break a customer relationship, these information contact centers stagnate, which can be a company’s worst enemy.
It’s all too easy to fall into this trap. The contact center is often taken for granted until a change – dramatic or subtle – occurs. Perhaps the crisis is facilitated by the failure of a critical piece of legacy hardware. Perhaps your site has been compromised due to a natural disaster. Perhaps you are experiencing rapid growth. Maybe it’s as simple as no longer being able to hit your operating targets. It’s in that moment you realize that not doing enough to keep your contact center updated is making a bad situation even worse.
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 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?
Learn more about how you can avoid the trap of the stagnant contact center.
