Building powerful contact center change from the front lines to the C-suite

While 58% of executives are seen as responsible for setting change strategies, only 26% actively involve affected employees in the design process — even when those employees will be most impacted. It’s easy to rely too much on subject matter experts (SMEs) who may be out of touch with the end-user experience. Front-line employees are directly involved in daily operations and customer interactions; therefore, involving them early during design and testing is important.

Agents are often unhappy with the usability of their current tools and are motivated to improve their personal performance. In a Khoros survey of contact center executives, one described his approach to deploying new tools to agents as follows: “We spend a lot of attention on agents. They like variety and using different tools. They want to be respected and recognized. Agents like cool stuff, and if you can position it as a cool tool or platform, they will like it.”

• Common concerns around change: Their workload is often heavy, and their time is often managed down to the minute, so they worry about how learning new tools could decrease their job performance, which might lead to their replacement.

• KPIs that matter most to them: Handle times, resolution rate, customer satisfaction, and sales conversions.

• Top questions about change:

  • What training will I receive?

  • Will this change make it easier or more challenging for me to do my job?

  • Where can I share my feedback?

  • How was my point of view considered in the planning of this change?

  • Why are we changing right now?

As with most everything in business, you must build your project and implement change with your customer in mind.

• Common concerns around change: Customers increasingly want more convenient, mobile, and digital interactions. They want more self-service opportunities, automation, and to spend less effort overall.

• KPIs that matter most to them: Customers prioritize speed, quality, convenience, and positive outcomes. They are willing to switch brands to those that offer clearly differentiated sales and support experiences.

• Top questions about change:

  • Why was this change made?

  • Is this a change your customers will notice?

  • How will you know if it is or isn’t being well received?

  • How will customers learn to use it?

  • Will the change improve the customer experience?

  • How will you communicate to customers about the change and the potential impact on their experience?

  • Are there privacy concerns for customers?

Directors, managers, and supervisors are pivotal in bridging the gap between the front lines and senior leadership. They are the best people to deliver messages to employees about both the “what’s in it for me” message and how new changes will affect the team and the jobs of those directly below them.

Change should not take place in a vacuum from the top down. Managers and supervisors should also be represented during the design and testing phases because their continued support is essential to sustaining and maximizing the value of change.

Directors, managers, and supervisors are inherently invested in effective change management. They are the most impacted by change because they have to understand what the change means to their jobs and guide their team through it. To keep everything moving along smoothly, they often have to communicate with roles above them, too.

• Common concerns around change: Directors, managers, and supervisors are often stuck in the middle, managing up and down while also trying to advocate for what their team needs. They worry about the staff they might need to make a change run smoothly.

  They also don’t want to see negative impacts on KPIs, even if those impacts would be temporary, and they worry about an overall negative impact on their programs that could come with change. They hesitate about additional workloads, needing additional staff, and potential negative effects on performance.

• KPIs that matter most to them: When it comes to change, directors, managers, and supervisors want to improve both the customer experience and the efficiency of their staff, and they want to improve their ability to track KPIs.

  They gather information about customer satisfaction using CSAT scores, NPS, or automated surveys. They are also responsible for monitoring employee efficiency with handle time, which can be tracked in two ways:

  1. agent response handle time.
  2. total conversation handle time.

  They also measure incoming queue volumes and resolution rates to set staffing levels and develop programs to speed new agent onboarding.

• Top questions about change

  • How will the change impact resolution times?
  • How was my team’s point of view considered in planning this change?
  • Why is this change a priority right now, and how does it fit in with the rest of my team’s priorities?
  • How will I know if my agents are struggling with this change, and how will I be equipped to help them?

Customer service executives report that their top barriers to running a “dream contact center” are budget, conflicting priorities between or within teams, IT issues, and a lack of new technology. A partnership among leaders is critical to creating change quickly and maximizing its value to the business. It’s also essential for your entire organization to hear the big picture from senior leadership to help set the tone and understand resource allocation.

The CCO is the most critical partner in implementing contact center change. . These executives focus on streamlining tools and processes, improving staff efficiency, and supporting new channels.

• Common concerns around change: When they think about making changes to the contact center, the time it will take to retrain staff and the fear that a new platform will require additional resources all loom large.

• KPIs that matter most to them: Contact center leaders are focused on managing customer engagement — both inbound and outbound — across all channels, with an eye on customer experience, agent performance and retention, and overall contact center costs or efficiency.

  They want to improve digital channel experiences, offer more effective self-care and bot options, and use AI to augment agent performance.

• Top questions about change:

  • What is the ROI for this new solution?

  • How will it impact efficiency and resolution times?

  • What will agents and their supervisors like about the new systems and processes?

  • What will agents and their supervisors lose by making this switch?

  • How will new agents be trained after implementation?

  • How will existing agents learn about enhancements as they occur?

  • What is the best approach to communication between agents and their supervisors?

  • How will feedback be collected and processed?

Customer experience leaders represent the customer perspective and ensure the organization acts in customers’ best interest. They strive to unify all customer initiatives across departments. They care about customer service excellence and are responsible for understanding the end game a good customer experience can provide. They work with multiple departments ranging from sales to marketing to the product.

• Common concerns around change: CXOs fear big changes might cause a decline in customer relationships, revenue, and profit. They worry about how the proliferation of tools might impact the customer experience, and they want to meet the growing demand for a convenient, personal, and excellent experience on their customers’ digital channels of choice.

• KPIs that matter most to them: Their change-oriented goals are to enhance customer satisfaction, the customer experience, and customer feedback. They also seek to improve customer loyalty, retention, and lifetime value. If they also oversee the customer service team, they track service metrics like response times and customer effort.

• Top questions about change:

  • How does it impact the customer?

  • How will the change affect NPS and CSAT?

  • What processes will need to be altered?

  • Can listening to customers and gathering feedback directly on their experience be possible?

  • Can data be integrated from other sources for a full customer view?

  • How will this change enable me to show the impact or ROI of customer experience initiatives clearly?

The CIO’s most crucial needs are consolidating the tech stack, integration, reducing costs. Not only do CIOs evaluate the security, privacy compliance, technology integration, and roadmap details of a contact center purchase, they’re also often involved in setting a company’s digital strategy and driving company growth through technology.

• Common concerns around change: CIOs hesitate about the complexity of integration and the effort to train staff on new platforms. CIOs also hesitate to think of having an additional system to administer.

  They don’t want to implement software that will not be adopted, requires significant IT support, or will have to be replaced soon. They worry about security breaches and compliance violations.
  

• KPIs that matter most to them: CIOs seek business value and user satisfaction with new technology. They value tech consolidation over tech fragmentation. They also need effective security and to understand system availability (uptime, downtime duration, etc).

• Top questions about change:

  • How will the change affect the tech stack?

  • How secure is the new technology?

  • Will it help me consolidate and connect disparate systems rather than just creating another one?

  • How will it help me use tech as a competitive differentiator for the business, so IT isn’t seen as just ‘keeping the lights on’?

  • Will my team get the precise requirements needed to implement and successfully support this change in the long term?

  • How will we know if new technology is being adopted?

Leaders of a brand’s online community want to educate and inspire customers to help each other, stay engaged, and spread community awareness to others. Though these leaders have the final say about community decisions, they are not usually final decision-makers or budget keepers regarding contact center changes. 

These leaders must seek change in areas such as supporting their brand’s self-service options — mainly through the community — creating customer engagement opportunities, and building brand-owned social networks.

• Common concerns around change: They’re hesitant about how significant changes might affect their engagement strategy and worry about the need for additional content creation and support staff that change might bring.

• KPIs that matter most to them: These leaders want to increase engagement among their community users and members, reduce support tickets and related costs and increase customer retention. They monitor community traffic and NPS scores for members closely. They also want to reduce support costs in general and support tickets and calls in particular.

• Top questions about change:

  • How will this change impact customer self-service?

  • What do we do with customer feedback on this change?

  • What will the impact be on staffing structure, new roles, and headcount?

  • How will the change impact CSAT and NPS?

  • What process changes will need to occur?

  • Does this change replace something, or is it added to an existing structure?

  • Does it offer robust engagement opportunities and management tools?

  • Can it provide guidance for gamification and other engagement tactics?

  • Can it integrate key sources of data?

Digital and social care leaders are tasked with creating the vision and strategic direction of a best-in-class digital care or service department. They must respond to customer support challenges on every digital channel, within their budget, and according to performance metrics. Typically, these team members are a subset of the contact center, with agents trained explicitly on digital channels, but occasionally, digital care and the contact center are a single team, and agents are omnichannel-trained.

• Common concerns around change: They’re held back from change when they fear a negative impact on key performance indicators, the effort it might take to retrain staff, and the possibility of juggling multiple tools.

• KPIs that matter most to them: The areas where digital social care leaders most need change include performance improvement, consolidating tools, and supporting new channels. They care about productivity metrics like the number and average cost of support inquiries handled each month, and efficiency metrics like utilization, occupancy, and quality. They want to boost call deflection, customer satisfaction (measured by NPS and CSAT scores), and customer retention.

• Top questions about change:

• Will it be easy for my agent teams to adopt?

• Will it be easy to train the agent teams?

• Can the shift drive efficiency and reduce costs?

• Does it have real-time analytics to help managers make decisions and analyze performance?

• Are there privacy concerns for customers?

Transforming your contact center is a journey that demands more than strategic planning; it requires the collective effort and support of your entire team. By assembling a diverse group of stakeholders — ranging from frontline agents to C-suite executives — you create a strong foundation for successful change.

Remember, the success of your contact center change initiative hinges on the support and commitment of your team. Invest in building solid relationships, proactively addressing concerns, and ensuring everyone is aligned with the overarching goals.

At Khoros, we understand the intricacies of managing change firsthand. With our extensive experience in implementing Khoros Service across various industries, we’re well-equipped to guide you through every stage of your transformation.

Our customer service software allows brands to serve customers on their digital channel of choice with unmatched operational insight to boost satisfaction and reduce costs. When you unify multiple channels in a single solution, you empower your team with the ability to engage across all touchpoints, including but not limited to:

• Messaging apps like WhatsApp, Apple Messages for Business, and Line

• Social networks like Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn and WeChat

• Review sites, like Google Play Store, iOS App Store, Yelp, and Trustpilot

• Brand-owned channels, like web chat, in-app, Email, SMS, and Voice

• Owned communities, forums, and knowledge bases

Let us help you build consensus, streamline processes, and achieve lasting success. Request a demo today to see how Khoros can elevate your contact center.