‘If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.’

I have been thinking recently about Playbooks and their impact on Contact Centre Planning.

Ah, good old Playbooks.? I’m so old (although I prefer the term ‘experienced’), I can remember the days before they came along.? In those days, responding to any significant change to a situation or a plan involved navigating through unbelievably complex chains of command and massively over-engineered communication and escalation protocols.? I clearly remember emergency meetings in designated ‘War Rooms’ for members of pre-selected ‘committees’, whose delegates would get together to initiate responses to emerging issues and attempt to guide the business through some choppy waters.

Playbooks came along and massively and positively changed everything.? They managed to turn events into non-events by delivering a predetermined chain of actions to react to situations, empowering people to be able to take those actions quickly and effectively, whilst ensuring that all relevant parties were kept informed.? I got to spend less and less time in the ‘War Room’ and more and more time actually doing the job I was being paid to do.? Happy times, for sure. (although I did secretly miss the thrill of being called away to these emergency meetings and pretending I was important.)

Recently, I’ve seen a couple of articles suggesting that we should continue to focus on playbooks - and I can kind of see why.? They remain in use today because…well, they work.? All of the thinking and organisation in these things is sort of front-loaded - you’ve spent your time preparing your responses to situations that might happen so that, when they do arise, everyone involved can deliver a telling and effective response to which all parties have already given their ascent to.? And if they are working…well, what’s that phrase coined by Thomas Bertram Lance?? ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’?

"...to produce tomorrow’s solutions, you must use tomorrow’s technology."

Fair point, I suppose. But I’m afraid I subscribe more to the thoughts of Barack Obama - ‘The future rewards those who press on’.? And I’m pressing on.

You see, I can’t help but think that using a Playbook alone is very much yesterday’s solution.? And yesterday’s solution was great for fixing yesterday’s problems.? But we are Contact Centre Planners.? We are always using the experiences and knowledge of the past to help us to shape our actions, but we are fundamentally always looking forward to the next period, the next year, the next big challenge. My wife, Sandra, summed it up perfectly the other day when she said that, to produce tomorrow’s solutions, you must use tomorrow’s technology.? And she’s right.? We are trying to build the Contact Centres of the future, here, and we all know that’s a big enough challenge as it is - staying with yesterday’s technologies to do that is like trying to send astronauts back to the moon by using Stone Age hand axes.? I suppose it might work, eventually, but it seems highly unlikely.

What your current response to change and volatility lacks is immediacy.? In the modern world, customers expect your business to deliver real excellence, regardless of how they choose to interact with you.? Expecting them to wait whilst you crank the handle to get the wheels to turn so that you can react is tantamount to failure in their eyes.? What you need is an automated, proactive, intelligent tool in place to help you to deliver platinum-level service that will delight your customers and keep them coming back for more.? QStory’s Intraday Automation Software is that automated, proactive, intelligent tool that will help you to build the Contact Centre of tomorrow, today.

"...QStory is ensuring that the ‘how’ can be delivered with a few clicks of a mouse button."

Using QStory’s software, you can keep the ‘retro’ vibe of the Playbook alive and well, but augment it with the agility and automation to enact your revised plans in milliseconds and with the minimum of fuss and manual endeavour.? Suddenly, instead of taking actions to make small, incremental changes to fight against volatility, you are able to make wholesale, sweeping changes to plans, radically changing your approach and providing world-class Customer and Colleague experience on the way.? Your plucky Playbook is still delivering the authorisation and ensuring communication is maintained - the ‘what’, if you like - but QStory is ensuring that the ‘how’ can be delivered with a few clicks of a mouse button.? And because you can act so quickly and so decisively, QStory allows you the flexibility to support competing business priorities simultaneously, giving you the best possible result regardless of the situation.

So, I’ll sign off with one last quote, this time from novelist and playwright, John Galsworthy - ‘If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.’ ? As Planners, we must always remember that and leave the ways of the past behind us.