The analogy – A Faster Horse
“We want more insights, better dashboards, deeper analytics, and overall just better reporting as to what’s going on during our team’s calls.”
Prior to the introduction of real-time call guidance, this is what leaders were taught to want.
Always be on the lookout for the next tool that delivers that next level of meaningful insights to use during the next call review or one-on-one session. Sales and Operations leaders have been taught that dashboards and insights are the keys to scaling an organization.
When Henry Ford was introducing the Model T to the world, he knew there was a common problem. People wanted to arrive at their destination faster. Just like revenue leaders of today’s modern business know they want to get to their destination as fast as possible.
Travelers in the early 1900’s wanted to get to their destination faster. The problem was, as Henry Ford is famous for saying “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
Sales and Operations leaders today only know one thing – dashboards are used to scale their teams.
Identifying A Problem
Customers can easily describe a problem but don’t always know how to articulate what the solution should look like. Leaders know they have a problem.
Ramp times are increasing, call volumes are increasing, quota attainment is decreasing, and the cost of quality agents is going through the roof.
So, the question becomes, should technology vendors ignore what the market is saying?
Countless amazing technologies that we all use today were once shunned by investors, it was only after visionary disruptors introduced their vision to the world that society followed suit and embraced the change with open arms.
The world didn’t know it needed a camera, music, access to the internet, and a phone all with access from your thumb until Steve Jobs told us we needed it.
Any contact center software solution should have a fundamental understanding of one’s customers and their pains via observational, empirical, anecdotal, or even intuition; and should also feel free to completely ignore customers’ inputs and feedback.
Dashboards Don’t Solve Problems
Agent assist and automated QA software providers today are doubling down on their interest in listening to their customers.
Tasks are not being managed and notes are slipping through the cracks. Customers are getting frustrated as their problems aren’t solved the first time around.
The result of listening to the market is by and large resulting in products that are providing their service “in any color they want, as long as it’s black.”
Real-time call guidance software that works in real-time is the Model T. Or better yet, it is GM coming to market in the 1920s opening up a whole world of possibilities and telling their customer what they should want.
You should want better financing options, you should want the ability to trade in your old car for a new one, and the list goes on…
Is Real-Time Call Guidance Worth It?
Sales and Operations leaders should not be building dashboards to fix their problems. They should be deploying software that ensures agents always know the right thing to say while notifying them when a call falls out of their standards.
This is where agent assist and call guidance software should deliver the specific playbook at the moment it’s needed, yes that means in real-time.
Individual coaching sessions should not only happen once a week, but they should also happen on every call, every day. Why are agents taking five hundred calls a week (sometimes more) and only getting coached once a week on a handful of those calls?
It’s because managers are still riding the horse they rode in on, expecting it to lead them to water faster.
Call guidance software today, like Abstrakt, is ignoring the market.
Our approach is one of saying “What if you didn’t ever need to review a dashboard again because all your calls were perfect?” What if call repeatability was as simple as producing the Model T?
Granted, we are not advocating for robots on our team, however, we are simply making the argument that just because “it has always been done that way” doesn’t mean it’s the right way.
Sales and Operations leaders, it is time for you to think a bit differently.
Abstrakt is transforming the contact center world with real-time call guidance and automated QA software.