In the previous Industry Insight in this series, I looked at how to orchestrate the key capabilities of the dynamic contact centre. By now, your appetite should have been stimulated to begin the journey towards making your own contact centre dynamic. This Industry Insight will look at just how you can do that.
The journey towards the dynamic contact centre is an evolutionary one. Any contact centre, no matter its state of maturity, can immediately begin this journey and start to incorporate any or all 10 of the capabilities of the dynamic contact centre.
As each contact centre is different, no two will undertake exactly the same journey. However, there are four non-negotiable steps every contact centre must go through on the way to becoming a dynamic contact centre:
Step one: Assessing the state of the contact centre
Before companies can create a dynamic contact centre, they need to understand just where their contact centre stands in terms of its existing capabilities. Measuring these capabilities requires an in-depth insight into how technology, resources and processes come together to deliver a great customer experience.
To know where a company is, it needs to apply the contact centre maturity model. This model looks at contact centre capability in four categories: customer strategy, people, process and technology. It then looks at the phases in the model and assesses the capability of the contact centre relative to each of these.
These four phases are:
* Establishment phase: This is the earliest stage for most contact centres, and the priority is the creation of basic services.
* Consolidation phase: Management begins focusing on efficiency and goals, such as reducing queue times.
* Performing phase: The focus shifts from cost reduction to quality improvement.
* Optimising phase: The contact centre finds a realistic balance between cost, quality and revenue. It can also adjust dynamically to business and customer needs. Not many companies have reached this desired state.
It is important to note that it takes courage to assess how efficient a company's contact centre is. It takes honesty to concede where it is good and where it can improve.
Step two: Know where the business is going
It is important to note that it takes courage to assess how efficient a company's contact centre is. It takes honesty to concede where it is good and where it can improve.
Peter Flanagan is director of Intelleca.
Once a company knows where its contact centre is today, it needs a clear picture of where the business aims to go over the next 12 to 36 months. This length of time reflects the fact that a contact centre changes often and periodically in line with market pressure, competitive pressures, market events, technology developments, budgets, regulatory and socio-economic developments, and more.
Knowing where the business aims to go requires the development of a high-level strategy overview. This may sound extreme, but it's not hard. In fact, the business should have done this already, so if it hasn't, this is an excellent stimulus to jolt the business into mapping its strategy.
In the light of the corporate strategy, there's one important question to ask: What does the contact centre have to do to support the one- to three-year goals and objectives of the business? With this insight, a company can determine how to build a dynamic contact centre in alignment with those goals.
Step three: Perform a gap analysis
Once a company knows where it is and where it wants to go, in support of the business objectives and goals, it can perform a gap analysis. This compares the contact centre's current capability against what the contact centre needs to fulfil the corporate strategy. This compares, in other words, the "as is" state with the "to be" state.
The gaps in the comparison represent opportunities for improvement and investment. Often these gaps will represent one or more of the dynamic contact centre's capabilities. As an example, the company may want to focus on workforce management and optimisation because it wants a more sophisticated system than a standalone spreadsheet. This doesn't happen overnight, but can be phased in and prioritised as and when the contact centre needs a certain capability to fulfil strategy.
Step four: Craft a roadmap
The final step is to craft a transformational roadmap. This is a blueprint of how to get from where the company is to where it needs to be, all based on current state, business goals and gap analysis. As part of the roadmap, the company will incorporate one or more of the capabilities of the dynamic contact centre.
The transformational roadmap also serves to develop budgetary guidelines for the next 12 to 36 months... and that on its own is a terrific deliverable.
* In the next Industry Insight in this series, I will look at what life is like in the dynamic contact centre.
* Peter Flanagan is director of Intelleca.
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