Shiny new software...solves everything right?

Well.....that depends...

We all love a bit of Contact Centre tech, but for me, are we really getting the most out of the investment we made? Here's my high level thoughts on how to approach any tech investment.

What to consider

If you buy a SaaS product or software to plug a gap in your Contact Centre, the tech alone is not going to solve all of your problems.

Yes of course, it's about choosing the right piece of software to help solve the right problems, and that's where building a robust list of requirements (plus a wish list) is super important. Your requirements needs to include what you need to fix right now, but also what you want to achieve in the future, otherwise you'll be buying software and spending money on something with a limited shelf life.

When nailing your requirements, I always start by breaking it down into areas of the Contact Centre, i.e what do my agents need to do or achieve with this new software, what do my Team Leaders and Managers need. What data do we need or want to see and how do we want that presented etc.

I will also go out to the wider business to build in other requirements to ensure we've covered all bases where relevant, i.e if this software will give us data, what data do the BI team need, and how would they want that presented, if they had a blank sheet of paper, what else would like to be able to do or see from the data.

Are there other teams that would also benefit from the software, if so engage them, explain the why and gather their requirements.

And finally SLT/Board. What do you need to report on daily, weekly, monthly. Capture any relevant use cases that support you and the team in being able to share the results of the investment in the software.

Customer Success plays a big part

When selecting your software, do you think about all factors, i.e what customer success do they offer? Do you have time to launch and run everything linked to the software yourself? How easy is it to make changes directly yourself... Of course this all depends on your business. If you have a huge team, then being more self reliant, may not be an issue as you likely have resources to manage most things internally. But if you have a smaller team, that Customer Success becomes even more important as you'll be needing to lean on them to help support and guide you through the length of your contract to ensure you're getting the most out of the platform, without it being a full time job for you to manage.

Any SaaS software you buy for me, should be a partnership, they should want to work alongside you and not charge you for every email or tweak that you need making to the platform. By working together, you're more likely to get the most from your investment, and ultimately give yourself and your teams the tools to deliver outstanding customer experience.

Summary

If you don't get this right, you'll end up with some new shiny software that you only use 10% of the functionality available and won't continually develop it to ensure you're driving the real value from what you invested in, which then risks the SLT/Board from seeing that ROI and therefore reducing your chances of securing further investment on other tech you many need in the future.

I talk about Contact Centre, Customer Service, Customer Experience, People Experience. Over 23 years in the industry, if you want to get in touch, I'd love to connect and let's chat!