"Anyone can lead when the plan is working. The best lead when the plan falls apart." – Robin Sharma
I ran across this quote the other day and it stopped me in my tracks. This is exactly where we were collectively a year ago. I remember how pumped I was about the plan my team and I had set out to achieve in 2020. Our mission was simple, we were going “old school”, the mandate was: invest in programs and activities that would result in our people shaking hands and sitting down face–to–face with our customers and prospects. It sounded like such a great plan in January of 2020— just two months later, it was an impossible feat. We now needed to do a 180 pivot. Spoiler alert: we did it and we killed it!
Now, I am not going to paint a rosy picture, it took blood sweat and a lot of late-night planning sessions to right the ship so we could deliver the types of connections that inspired people to learn more about how Aspect’s solutions help them improve their customer and employee experiences. I learned a lot about my team and even more about myself. A big benefit I proudly admit is that now I understand what I am really good at and, probably more importantly, where my weaknesses lie.
In times of crisis, you don’t get to choose the focus of the crisis. There’s a big difference between being able to lead as a thought experiment and being able to lead when employee well-being and organizational futures are on the line. Recently, we’ve seen leaders singlehandedly shoulder the responsibility for the reputation and future of their organizations; as well as for the futures of their employees. Leaders that can weather a storm and maintain direction, vision, and mission in times of instability earn the respect of the industry and of their organization.
In our industry all interactions were forced to move 100% virtual, putting a lot of new volume and pressure to deliver on the contact center agents and other customer support teams. These changes and challenges have fueled an accelerated emphasis on optimization, greater efficiency and new investments in emerging technologies to meet the onslaught of customer demands. This is not business as usual and from what I am seeing may never be again. The optimization of your workforce has never been more critical.
Over the years we have used many different ROI and Business Assessment tools to help customers determine the impact of adding best-of-breed contact management and workforce management capability to their customer experience centers. An exercise we found extremely valuable when evaluating workforce management solutions was our Enterprise Workforce Management Benefits Calculator. We have decided to share this tool publicly so that you can use it on your timeline. In early 2021 we engaged Frost & Sullivan to certify our calculator so that you can be assure that the algorithms and thought processes behind this tool has been vetted by an outside firm and you can feel good about sharing the findings within your organization. Our calculator is designed to place an estimated dollar amount on operational improvements in four key areas that are near and dear to workforce management leaders, schedule adherence, occupancy rate, shrinkage rate and agent attrition. By emphasizing a holistic focus and efficiency, we have identified recommendations in the key areas that impact your business: your people, your processes and the technologies deployed.
Take a few moments to enter some basic information about your organization. Use this certified tool as a framework to assess the impact of incremental improvements made to people, process and technology within your contact center. We would love the opportunity to review the results with you and further identify focus areas to consider. If you like, we can even provide a deep dive into Aspect® Workforce ™ with our solutions consultants – at your convenience.
Read the case study HERE to see how William Hill – Global online betting and gaming company benefited from engaging early with this tool.
"It’s not just the calculations and understanding the what. It’s really about clarifying and visualizing the wow.” – Head of Customer Service Systems Improvement, William Hill.
For anything that we can measure, if you see it, you can achieve it. For leaders in our industry, accuracy is a better trait than certainty. Let us help translate your vision and dedication into achievable goals and performance, so that you can continue to prepare for the future.
