3 Ways To Provide Effective Contact Center Solutions
By Rick McFarland, CEO, Voice4Net
A new generation of IT personnel and contact center managers is coming to the forefront. Young, technologically-savvy professionals are taking leadership positions in the field, so it’s only natural many of these individuals focus on the concepts they were raised with: instant gratification, gratuitous rewards, and plug-and-play technologies. They expect an instantaneous, pre-configured solution for the contact center. Yet, they have a less-than-realistic sense of the amount of time, foresight, and integration expertise it takes to create a solution that addresses the unique issues of their businesses. They don’t always understand how sophisticated a contact center installation can be.
Mismanaged expectations are one quick way to sink a new client relationship. So how do we combat the unrealistic expectations of IT personnel who may anticipate instant gratification in the integration process? How do we change their pre-fixed mindsets for quick, cookie-cutter solutions that in some instances are simply not feasible? Technology resellers can approach this in several ways.
- Leverage Real-Time Web-based solutions. Resellers can utilize WebRTC, or real-time web-based communications, as their primary tool for creating a solution that delivers superior results, while generating notable efficiencies by way of time-to-market, cost savings and labor by reducing integration requirements.
WebRTC is a browser-based, HTML-5 protocol that leverages the architecture of the common web browser. A richly-featured contact center solution that is tailored to a specific business need can be accomplished much more quickly via WebRTC, and at a lower price-point, since both time and labor are conserved. This framework can be built on top of the client’s existing infrastructure, making it easier to adopt new features and capabilities while allowing the end-user to preserve their legacy investment.
A sophisticated WebRTC-based contact center implementation is as close as one might come to plug and play integration, while still facilitating the rich customization that caters to a unique set of business processes. It is, in effect, the best of both worlds: Crucial customization and an advanced feature set, in an expedient timeframe, and for lower total expenditure.
- Remember the human component. Remember exactly who will be using the system: human beings. Resellers must cater to the individual and cultural needs of their client’s staff. In the current IT climate, technology has become so sophisticated that in order to truly create a good fit for users, we have to pay particular attention to the human element.
Many outstanding solutions are rejected because personnel have difficulty accommodating new interfaces or procedures, no matter how stupendous their capabilities. Productivity-enhancing features go unused because employees who are not comfortable with change are often intimidated by new tools and policies.
A contact center network has to be workable by the people who need it to perform. A reseller can offer the most cutting-edge tools on the market, but if they don’t support the staff’s ability to adopt these innovations, the solution risks failure. You must deliver not only the tools, the industry knowledge and the integration expertise for each job, but also the people expertise to facilitate migration. Only then can an organization capitalize on the benefits the reseller has promised.
- Offer professional services. A savvy solution provider must institute a consultative approach, one that incorporates the culture of the company. Conduct comprehensive research on the procedures and internal culture of your client. You must become immersed enough to reasonably predict the necessary learning curve, and begin advocating new concepts that will breed familiarity with the incoming system. Policy shifts should be implemented before the upgrade even goes live. The dealer should estimate the level and type of training that suits the learning style of the organization, and provide a plan to institute that training.
For example: Are customer policies rigid, requiring personnel to adhere to steadfast procedures, or are workers encouraged to employ their own problem-solving skills? Is the staff resentful when it comes to mandates? Are they encouraged to be independent self-starters, or must they consistently seek supervisor authorization? Each of these dynamics will have a major impact on how easily a new system will be adopted, whether the staff will accept an unfamiliar interface, and whether they will use sophisticated—but unaccustomed—features.
A truly effective contact center is the result of a well devised plan. It considers the needs of the individual company, by providing the best possible interactions with its customers and business partners. The plan requires integration time, labor, and above all, an intrinsic understanding of the company’s existing infrastructure, business processes and internal culture.
In the end, technology is not about hardware and software. It’s about helping human beings conduct business better, faster and easier.