Is your contact centre in the know? Is it aware of the most recent decisions and changes that have been made in various organisational divisions and departments? Do these decisions or changes affect critical matters such as product, pricing and policies - and, as such, does this have an impact on what the contact centre communicates to its customers?
Collaboration, defined as: "the action of working with someone to produce something" is quite naturally a critical element for success in an organisation. Without teamwork in any business made up of more than one employee, there is chaos and a disastrous end result. Also important is that open communication between business people and lines eliminates any stutters experienced by the contact centre.
Yet, how is collaboration best achieved, especially in today's business set-up where contact centres are often far removed geographically from the core business hub? How do you adequately work together when offices are no longer linked by real corridors and doors, and channels, networks, screens and kilometre upon kilometre are the new "sitting-across-a-desk" normal? And how does this in particular affect the business' contact centre?
According to Dick Bucci, founder and chief analyst at Pelorus Associates and author at Aspect Software, an Ocular Technologies software partner: "Contact centre employees sometimes find themselves blindsided by decisions made elsewhere in the organisation.
"Strengthening ties with the broader organisation requires both a commitment on the part of contact centre management and adoption of tools and technology that facilitate teamwork. On that first point, management and staff need to be proactive in explaining their role to their peers in other departments and bringing their important accomplishments to the attention of senior management. It's a simple matter of salesmanship," Bucci points out. "The second issue is adopting supportive technology."
These include messaging and workforce collaboration platforms. To allow these technologies to empower business also means that the role of IT within an organisation needs to change from one as traditional gatekeeper to one as enabler.
As Jim Haskin, senior vice president and CIO of Aspect Software, says: "When our [IT] actions and policies signal that we serve as gatekeepers, our employees and customers suffer.
"One of the great things about enabling workplace collaboration through technology is that you don't have to do much for employees to adopt the solution. If the tool is intuitive to use, well thought out, and especially if some employees are already using it, everyone else will jump at the opportunity. Think carefully before restricting all collaboration to strictly business topics - your collaboration tool should foster community and work together across business and social topics."
Mastering the modern workplace has become paramount to not only sustainable productivity, but also profitability and customer loyalty. And, using tech tools to create and enhance collaboration has become the fresh lifeblood that is required to both successfully exist in the new digital economy and effectively relay important information to the contact centre - no matter where in the world a head office and contact centre is located.
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