While there are many steps and approaches that contact centers can take as they work towards optimizing customer satisfaction and building lasting value, there is one specific methodology that has proven successful – and that’s Operational Excellence (OE).

Operational Excellence entails identifying resources required to optimally meet customer demand and adjusting key processes accordingly in an effort for continuous improvement. While some components may seem unchangeable, OE can be used to evaluate and re-evaluate processes and activities with an emphasis on implementing efficiency. Through successful Operational Excellence practices, contact center organizations can:

• Gain deep insight into customer interactions
• Identify internal and external challenges
• Measure customer services against customer demand and expectations
• Improve customer-facing processes
• Deliver lasting customer value

Working in collaboration with the organization

As stated, to achieve contact center excellence, companies need to implement Operational Excellence. However, a contact center cannot do this alone in a bubble separate from the organization. Through an efficient and effective operational management strategy, the contact center must strategically align with internal goals to provide consistently high-quality customer service across all channels, measuring performance metrics for continuous improvement, reduction of operational expenses, and a boost in employee and staff satisfaction.

Through this multifaceted approach, contact centers become better equipped to meet customer demand by providing optimum levels of service without compromising productivity or profitability.

It all sounds easy, right? Not so fast.

Implementing or changing operational management strategies is not easy. It’s no wonder that there are companies and consultants who focus exclusively on just change management. Generally, changing operational management strategies involves a significant change in processes requiring a series of complex steps and demanding a significant investment of time from internal resources. There are also a number of potential challenges that can cause organizations not to embrace change:

• Concerns that major change will interfere with existing processes or lead to significant costs
• It’s human nature! Most people are naturally hesitant about any type of transition which makes it easy for underlying problems to go unresolved
• The fear that attempting major change via a traditional approach isn’t a good use of time and resources
• Risk of failure

Because successful contact centers seek new ways to improve operations and enhance the customer experience, operational management takes on a greater importance.

 

Leveraging operational excellence through a holistic approach

With all the perpetual changes involved in day-to-day business (with or without the pandemic!), it’s increasingly difficult to maintain a lasting competitive edge. Businesses are always looking for new ways to create value for their clients, notably by tackling operational management issues faced by their client-facing business units.

As contact center pros with many operational management consulting mandates, our team recommends adopting a holistic approach.

 

What is a Holistic Approach to operational management

The word holistic is derived from the Greek word holos, which means whole.

Over the past decade, the word holistic has taken a hokey, or new age connotation, though the term is a widely used concept in the field of medicine meaning to treat the patient as a whole person rather than treating the disease or the symptoms of a disease.

In the world of business and specifically in management, encompassing a holistic approach consists of designing strategies that focus on all core fundamental elements touched by customer-facing business units. Based on a broad and integrated vision, this approach leads to a global understanding of the health or deficiency of these business units, helping to restore and maintain balance between all the various elements.

A Holistic Vision—Fundamental Elements of Operational Management Practices

The approach described below is best used within a specific business unit that deals with internal or external clients, such as sales, customer service, technical support or human resources.

Based on best practices and years of real-world experience, contact center organizations rely on our expertise when a newly implemented change creates issues that impact their customers – like issues surrounding the mobilization of a team, service quality, business objectives, or operational efficiency.

Here are the four fundamental elements that need to be taken into account when discussing a high-level model of operational management practices:

SERVICE OFFER

• Purpose of the business unit
• The customer
• Products and services that address customer issues
• Access to services and service standards
• Customer satisfaction, quality assurance program, complaint management

HUMAN RESOURCES

• Team composition
• Roles and responsibilities

PROCESSES

• Tied to customer expectations and operational efficiency

TOOLS AND TECHNOLOGIES

• Supporting the service offer and business processes

 

As you can infer, each element is equally important as they are all interdependent. The customer service offering(s) and the purpose of the business unit are both key elements that should be taken into consideration to determine the team composition and the role of its members. Processes are first aligned on customer expectations and the level of operational efficiency desired. The tools or technology must support the business unit’s service offer, as well as the business processes.

Regardless of the issue, to facilitate optimization, it’s important to adopt a global perspective that focus on each of the elements that are part of operational management best-practices. Together, this yields a “coordinated whole” with everything working on the same level, rather than focusing on specific elements, which could create discontinuity and inconsistency and thus potentially hinder the success of the whole. It also ensures that new processes are flexible and efficient and that they create added value for customers.

Leveraging operational excellence through a holistic approach is without a doubt a more optimal way of doing things. As with all great practises, there are additional factors that must be considered to ensure the success of the approach.

 

7 Operational Management success factors that you should never ignore

Although operational management practices demonstrate that there are many ways to develop an effective framework, contact centers that want to ensure success, should be cognisant of the following critical factors.

1. Solutions must be simple, practical, efficient, and easy to implement

• Focus on the real issues
• Capitalize on best practices
• Bring true value to all members and stakeholders
• Optimize processes
• Maximize quick wins

2. Adopt a global perspective

• Use tools to develop a global perspective of all activities to adopt and manage a vision focused on the client.

3. Measure performance and operations

• Create or identify relevant, motivating, and measurable indicators to anticipate needs, make corrections, and ensure monitoring.

4. Ensure cooperation between business units to reach compromises that put the customer first

• Listen actively and be open to finding compromises in situations where teams, interfaces, or others have conflicting objectives concerning the solutions put forward.

5. Align processes, tools, technology on the customer experience

• Meet multiple requirements that are aligned with the customer experience.

6. Plan and carry out the project

• Set priorities to implement improvements, as well as a schedule, and communicate to all.

7. Provide change management

• Inform and involve employees affected by the change to reduce impacts on them and convert them into change agents.

 

Support your people through the change to add lasting customer value

The contact center is expected to optimally manage customer interactions through high-quality service and support. The quality of the customer experience delivered – on a systematic and regular basis – is a key differentiating factor that helps businesses acquire new customers, maintain current customers and breed customer loyalty. All businesses must evaluate their customer service offerings with a global perspective to ensure that they meet the needs of their customers.

Through a holistic approach to operational excellence, organizations can align their people and processes to optimally leverage best practices across business units. Working together as a whole with the same goals, the people involved in implementing these processes must cooperate and effectively collaborate to meet expectations and ease the fear of change. By adopting a holistic approach, it enables the implementation of client-focused processes, creating value for customers.