By
Brad Cleveland
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Date Published: August 23, 2019 - Last Updated September 08, 2020
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Comments
New technologies aren't passive — they're changing customer expectations, creating power shifts in organizations, and impacting the responsibilities of agents and managers. The best contact centers identify the technologies that further the mission of the organization, and they implement them with the necessary foresight, planning, and training.
They also recognize that an important (according to the late Peter Drucker, the most important) impact of technology is not the capabilities of the technologies themselves, but that they require you to organize your processes and information more logically. Their systems are supported by processes that ensure that information on customers, products, processes, and services is current and accurate. For example:
- Their knowledge management systems work because they make entering and updating knowledge a priority at the point of contact.
- Their quality monitoring systems are valuable because they have clearly defined quality and what needs to happen to support the organization's highest-level objectives.
- Their reporting systems provide essential support for making sound business decisions because they produce accurate information on the right things, delivered to the right people at the right times.
In short, they respect what technology can do but they know that it's of little use without supporting processes and a clear direction. Some have the latest capabilities, others don't — but what they have, they use to support their mission and most important objectives.
This blog post is part of a series on the Characteristics of the Best-Managed Contact Centers. To learn more, join Brad for session 103 at ICMI Contact Center Connections, October 28-30 in Chicago.