English
Frank Wassenbergh: How do you ensure a call center manager understands the capabilities & challenges of any CCaaS solution?
Steve Bederman: We had an epiphany, recently. And it’s an epiphany, because we didn’t plan it. But you know, let’s be honest, we’re developing technology. We’re not in the contact center per se ourselves. So we finally realize, and it’s a recognition that over the last 30 years I never had, that we’re selling this incorrectly.
And what we decided to do was instead of hiring software salespeople, which is what our industry generally does, we’ve now been hiring salespeople that were directors of operation in contact centers, that have no sales experience in selling software, but that were the buyers of this type of solutions, and they were the drivers of integrating that system and fixing it.
Steve Bederman on the Call Center Chronicles Podcast.
Steve is joining the Call Center Chronicles Podcast to talk about technology as a byproduct, women and technology in leadership roles and tech for the people.
Because you know, this technology doesn’t always work, it breaks. And there’s a lot of support needs. And and these were the people that not only made the buying decision, but also inherited the system and had to figure out what to do with it and understand what inherent problems go with it, and the hopes that they always had about how they like to use a wide range of channels as an example.
Where should technology, operations and process mapping meet for a successful CCaaS selection and implementation?
Steve Bederman: Let’s say that a CEO goes to a tradeshow or watches a webinar and learns about a new contact center technology. And they say, yeah, I really want to use all these channels. I want to be able to work in WhatsApp and Facebook and chat and video and voice. I want to offer all range of communication. And the CEO goes to his tech guy, usually and asks him to go find some some good products.
So they go out, they find NobelBiz or some other company. And all of that is going on, but the call center has yet to be involved. Then suddenly, they’re kind of down to a handful options. And they summon the Director of Operations and ask him: What do you think? Which one do you like? But the COO can’t see the value. “Why am I switching this? Are you kidding? We have the whole time they’re looking at this demo, or deciding which of these three choices that they are going to use that offer all this stuff and new features they’re thinking about, and now I have to figure a way to transition my contact center to this. Yeah, all of that is great. But by the time I’m done transitioning, we will all be dead, because this is impossible to do.”
And this, to me is the key to today’s world, which is, there are no new adopters to technology. This type of technology, is something that everybody’s adopted, everybody’s using something, and they’re switching for whatever reason. Maybe it’s about pain points, but usually it’s because their customers are asking for something new. And so we go in, and we do our best to apply what we have. The people that are trying to implement it are still running their contact center at the same time.
