The Unified Desktop Isn't Just for Customer Service Agents

Contact centers are now beginning to realize the value of a single interface through which their various team members (agents, supervisors, executives, even IT) can do their jobs, or at least significant portions of their jobs. This single interface is known as the unified desktop, as I previously blogged.

The difference between my initial post and this new one is that previously I was focusing on the unified desktop solely for the agent - the person(s) interacting with the customer on a telephone call or via email or chat sessions. The unified desktop was a single, central place where data from disparate sources, and functionality from different systems, came together in an easy-to-use, recognizable screen that made customer interactions easier and faster to achieve.

I now realize that the unified desktop is really more like a unified interaction application which can be relevant for any and all users within a contact center operation. Supervisors can use this same interface, albeit with different capabilities based on their role as a supervisor, to perform their supervisory duties. Executives, too, should be able to use this same interface, again with information and capabilities that are specific to their user role and permissions. In this way, a well-developed unified desktop can provide a sort-of centralized operating system (OS) that literally allows everyone within a contact center to work within the same application.

More on this in future posts...

Contact Center Trends

CP Wire recently published an article outlining 10 trends in the contact center. They do a decent job of describing the activities of forward-thinking contact centers, and the ideas here are very similar to my own posts.