The revolution in customer contact and its impact on IT staff

Many organisations have traditionally invested huge amounts of money in on-premise contact centre solutions. The benefit of this was that they were in control of the entire system, from network and security to functionality, backup and recovery. The development, implementation, configuration and support were mostly done by in-house IT staff.

However, the world of customer contact has changed enormously over time, almost like a revolution! More and more digital channels have been added, technologies – especially those involving AI and machine learning – are developing at lightning speed, and the number of interactions has exploded. In addition, customers expect companies to be available 24/7.

This makes it increasingly difficult to maintain ‘traditional’ – often unwieldy – contact centre platforms and have them supported by the existing IT team.

Future-oriented change

Apart from the high costs that tend to be associated with expanding an outdated contact centre solution, it also means that a lot of time must be spent maintaining an existing platform that in many cases is not equipped to be able to flexibly move with new developments. Sometimes change is necessary to remain successful in the future.

In many cases, moving to a cloud platform is the most obvious solution, but it undoubtedly has consequences for the IT team. There is often a fear of redundancy due to the reduced need for in-house IT employees or their specialist knowledge. This is understandable because in the vast majority of cases a cloud solution requires much less in-depth technical knowledge than an on-premise platform.

However, a declining need for IT staff is contradicted by a recent Gartner survey¹⁾, in which 55 percent of CIOs planned to increase their total number of full-time IT employees during 2021, especially in the field of automation, cloud and analytics platforms, and support for home workers.

^{1) Gartner: Newsroom Press Release 31 March 2021}

Hidden talents

But change can sometimes be hard to accept if you’ve been the expert on a particular supplier or technology for a long time, only to find that the value of your knowledge is rapidly declining. It can even be a driver to hinder technological modernisation.

Therefore, be sure to take stock of the knowledge and skills within the IT team. Employees often have hidden talents that you as a manager may not be aware of. Compare these with the technical skills needed to achieve the intended objectives. The outcome of this should form the blueprint for creating a retraining plan to enable the team to continue making an essential contribution to the success of your organisation’s contact centre.

Central role

In addition, a digital transformation offers opportunities for strengthening the position of the IT team within the organisation, as well as the relationship between IT and the business. Unfortunately, organisations often still have the impression that IT is only qualified to manage the network, as a result of which their added value in contributing to and advising on new technology and its impact on the business is not seldom overlooked.

So make sure that IT is part of project meetings at an early stage, and that not only team leaders but also employees from both teams work together to deliver new technology and achieve the intended functional objectives. And, in addition to measuring the costs of the implemented technology, also (especially!) measure the value it has generated for the business, and ensure that the successes are shared with the rest of the organisation.

Would you like to talk to us about how to smoothly roll out technological changes in your contact centre? Let us know! We are happy to tell you about the experiences we have gained within dozens of organisations from all kinds of sectors in the Benelux and further afield.