Technology: Does It Work On YOUR Terms?

Would you buy a car if it provided everything you wanted—powerful engine, fuel efficiency, sleek body, slick paint job and a CD player with 6-disc changer—but that required you and the other passengers to sit on the roof?

Probably not.

Of course these are ridiculous examples, but they make an important point for contact center managers to consider: technology should work in the way you need it to, and you should never adjust the way you do business to accommodate the limitations of any technology.

Certainly no business ever intends to be in this situation, yet far too many contact centers today find themselves slaves to technology—and they’re losing business opportunities to competitors who recognize that the status quo represents stagnation, not success. In short, the successful contact center is one that is enabled by technology, and not hindered because of it.


The core components of your contact center technology infrastructure—predictive dialer, ACD, IVR—should not be so obtuse and unfriendly as to force you to bend to their will, so to speak. These systems should be flexible enough to easily and intelligently connect to and interoperate with the other critical applications that power your business such as workforce management, speech recognition and quality assurance, to name but a few.

The all-important data that flows between these internal systems should do so freely, based on the rules you define and in the ways that you decide. These technologies should provide an easy way to make simple or complex changes (update a call script, change a data source, replace vendor A with vendor B, or provide a different agent application). And, once changes are made, your technology should allow instant, real-time updating and not force downtime during peak activity or require after-hours system pushes.

Practical managers are fond of saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But just because a technology component works doesn’t mean it works well, or that it works in the ways you want and need it to. When practical managers add insight to their thought process, they will successfully avoid the trap of mistaking practicality for the acceptance of the status quo, and they will optimize their IT investments for the sake of their business.

Take the time to honestly and soberly assess your IT landscape. If, after doing so, you can confidently state that your current technology investment has your business poised for future growth and success, then congratulations are in order. However, if you discover that you’re sacrificing efficiency for the sake of technology, you need to reconsider your business priorities. Your position in the marketplace will be dictated by how well you meet market demand, and failure to recognize the need for adaptation can yield disastrous results for your contact center.

Be practical. Be insightful. And be careful. If you’re not, you may find yourself driving your car from the roof, or using a diesel-powered laptop!

The Consolidated (or Unified) Desktop

Contact centers are subjected to constant change: clients are forever updating, modifying and changing scripts, adding new projects, and introducing new sources of data that must be accessed to make an interaction be successful.

And while it might seem the IT team would be victimized by such continuous fluctuation, its the agent who may suffer the worst. Without a unified, or consolidated desktop, agents are clicking through multiple screens, copying and pasting data from one place to another, and otherwise engaging in effective tasks when they need to be focused on customer service and quality.

The consolidated desktop is one that, within a single interface, data from different sources (and even in completely different physical locations) can be assembled for easier access by the agent. Contact centers of all sizes are beginning to move towards this vision.

I was interviewed by The Evolving Contact Center podcast about this very subject. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Steve - don't wait to integrate and automate

I was recently speaking to a friend of mine who is an IT professional at an outsourcing firm. To protect his anonymity, I’ll call him “Steve.” Steve’s company has multiple contact center facilities here in the US, and each of those centers has different telephony platforms and a bouillabaisse of partner, legacy and proprietary applications to connect with.

I wasn’t surprised when Steve told me that new projects took too long to launch, that changes required him to take down during business hours, and that the company was constantly hiring new agents to replace those who left out of frustration due to constant changes and difficult-to-use systems.

But I was surprised to hear him tell me – after suggesting to him the adoption of an SOA integration platform for standardization and BPM tools to orchestrate web services – that introducing one more computing system was the last thing he needed.

Huh? What?

Steve told me he and his peers agreed that a zero tolerance policy had been put in-place with regard to new systems. “Make due with we have – make it work,” was the edict he and his co-workers had placed on themselves. Folks, this simply doesn’t make sense.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I like Steve. He’s a nice guy, and I think he’s a pretty smart fellow too. But in this case, Steve is missing the boat: SOA and BPM are exactly what his company needs to optimize their processes and to maximize their current IT investments.

Steve… if you’re reading this… don’t wait to integrate and automate. I’m telling you this as a friend!

SOA This. SOA That. Dolls Re-Enact SOA Confusion in Cute YouTube Video

In this YouTube video featuring "Greg the Architect", played by a doll (distant cousin of Ken Doll fame, perhaps?), Greg is tasked with implementing an SOA solution by his oppressed boss who is literally under the foot of "The Big Guy". Overwhelmed by the complexity of SOA and not-so-professional vendors, Greg is belittled, confused and ultimately yaks "SOA" in the toilet. A cute video from SOANowJournal, a publication sponsored by industry giant TIBCO.

Reuse and standardization, part of the value of Contact Center SOA, get Gartner's green light

Don't you love it when a plan comes together? I start the Contact CenteRevolution on a Wednesday night, and by Thursday morning there's already an excellent blog from a very smart guy, Joe McKendrick, who writes about the advice from a very smart company, Gartner, that SOA is definitely the way to go. While Joe is referring to any industry, I hope contact center pros will keep their operations in mind when reading this post.

Gartner: ‘no major conceptual flaw’ yet with SOA, but… by ZDNet's Joe McKendrick -- Gartner has given the green light to accelerated SOA spending. The concept works, but caution, the payback will be slower than expected