"This isn't just bad logic, it's a major contributing factor to both customer and employee dissatisfaction," Robbins continues. "I don't believe that making this leap requires any type of new solution. It requires trust and grace in guiding and developing the front line to be effective in providing the best customer experience possible."
Another suggestion is to think from the "outside in," Ruckstuhl says, looking at your contact center performance from the customer's point of view and the CEO perspective...rather than just as an executive. This may involve viewing metrics differently.
"Companies can take an outside-in metrics approach—that's the business case I believe is missing today. [It's] disabling [organizations] to acquire and set up the right tools and technologies which are subservient to human beings," Ruckstuhl says. "But without [such tools and technologies] working in concert with human beings—live agents—you're not going to be able to turn the ship around. If they can figure out how to do outside-in...then things will go a lot more smoother. I think this industry is in a transition period."
Such a transition period calls for upgrading contact center technology—the basics as well as multichannel solutions—and respecting representatives, which translates into survival of organizations, Ruckstuhl explains. "The speed of acceleration has changed a lot, which means that the winners and the losers will get shaken out much faster," she says. The people who are in the battlefield day in and day out who make sure that you win are [the] front-line agents who engage with customers.
"Companies that don't make that adjustment and use the latest technologies and understand how to treat their workers appropriately are not going to be in business. When I use the word transition, I mean that we don't have time. I'm saying that either you're in or you're out. Either you make changes or you're not going to be around."