Part 2: Organisational chasms create customer experience issues

Part 1 was here if you missed it. In that article I reflected on how I had reframed my understanding of the role and relevance of a contact centre in the customer experience.

Something else I have come to understand through interactions with over 100 organisations in ANZ and South East Asia over the last two and a half years - the are organisational chasms between digital/technology teams and the ‘contact centre’ teams. These chasms are where customer experience falls off the cliff, along with money and efficiency.

By design, digital and customer operations teams have different goals, different process and nearly an entirely different language. Frequently, I don't think they even have a shared understanding of the term "customer experience".

There are many ways this manifests. While I am primarily focused on digital experiences, I regularly meet with Customer Operations leaders (the Contact Centre owners). If we get to discussing improved digital channels, improved technology architecture, data platforms, continuous delivery of value, etc - they lose interest quickly. Simply not their problem.  They are just trying to optimise the experience once it hits the contact centre. When it comes to technology, they want to know about improved operational data, automation of processes the agents have to interact with etc.

It appears in other ways as well… particularly around the technology that drives the contact centre.    In many cases the agents that are handling the interactions are dealing with an array of different tools to solve a problem, often with complex interfaces, that are not intuitive and create inefficiencies, errors and frustration both internally and with customers.

My experience is that contact centre leaders and their teams feel de-prioritised, disempowered and/or distrusted by their technology and digital counterparts. So they make do and optimise for the things they can influence or control - an entirely natural response.

My over-simplified assessment is that these chasms are created not through organisational earthquakes, but the long slow erosion of trust and connection through both time and the layers of the organisation.

The board, CEO and leadership teams might care deeply about the integrated experience, however they create organisational structures that divide the responsibilities. Then there are operational differences in processes and cadence. Then there is the different technologies they use. Then there are cultural differences between digital teams and operational teams. Then there are language differences in what words even mean, which in any people construct creates isolation and distrust. The chasm is deep!

Sidebar: Early on I was very confused by the use of "omni-channel" within the contact centre when they clearly didn't mean anything to do with the website, self-service options or in-person interactions. Turns out, omnichannel means a platform that can interact via multiple messaging channels (Whatsapp, Line, We-Chat, Facebook messenger etc) in the contact centre world. Same term, entirely different meaning.

I won't repeat myself from part 1, suffice to say that a misinformed yet prevailing under-appreciation of the role and value of the contact centre and customer operations within digital leaders and teams. I imagine this contibutes to the chasm, as they aren't actively seeking the input and contributions of customer operations in digital experience design.

Significant impact

The chasm results in a sub-optimal overall customer experience. For example, the contact centre teams know where the issues on the digital channels are - their customers literally tell them every day. It means there are clunky handoffs from a digital or self-service experience into an assisted channel, the agents have little to no context on what came before it for the customer.

It results in higher costs for the organisation - more agents than required is just one example, but less loyalty, less potential for upsell, and various other incremental costs from broken processes, handoffs and organisational boundaries.

So there is significant downsides from the gap between these key customer touchpoints... however that doesn't account for the opportunity cost of what the organisation could achieve with an integrated customer experience - driving true customer loyalty, maximising the share of wallet, more satisfied teams. The gap between current state and "better" is one thing, however the gap between current state and "great" is much bigger.

Some suggestions

Extending the chasm analogy, I think there are bridges that we can build between the digital and the contact centre that can lead to improved customer experiences, improved operations for each of the groups and ultimately overall organisational cost savings. Some of these require organisation changes, and others are more behavioural, in order of increasing difficulty.

Common language (or at least a translation layer). This is probably true of any organisational silo. This relies on a little bit of human curiosity and or vulnerability. For example "when you say omni-channel, what do you actually mean?" or "what do you think represents our ideal customer experience?".

Talk more (not more meetings, but definitely less ego). More talking to build trust, understanding and empathy between leaders. This was mentioned in a recent episode of my favourite podcast (The Knowledge Project) Blake Eastman says:

"I think organizations need to talk way more than they are in this siloed environment. Sometimes if you just were able to have those conversations, you would be able to navigate and see the power structures way easier. And people just don’t have that social skillset, the people skills, to sit down with someone." [Blake Eastman on the Knowledge Project]

Instead of protecting turf and being loyal to their organisational tribe, being more curious, collaborative and empathetic will likely lead to better overall outcomes.

Overall customer experience metric tracking (or at least acknowledge they are connected). Begin by tracking and focusing on improving overall customer experience. The common problem with metrics like NPS are they are internally weaponised, particularly against the point of interaction. For example, imagine a perfectly executed contact centre interaction that gets a "2" NPS score because the digital experience is so bad it leads to a customer frustrated by the fact they even have to pick up the phone. Customers don't care about the touchpoint, they care about their overall experience.

Service design (or at least map end-to end unhappy path journeys). Consider the experience both from the customers point of view as well as internal - and not just the touch points your team is responsible for. I have seen MANY "customer journey maps" that have either a big box for "website/mobile app" as the first touch point in a journey mapped by customer operations, or "contact centre" as the touchpoint for a process built by a digital team. Bring them together and do the work of understanding the breakpoints that lead to one or the other.

Shared goals (or at least an understanding of each others goals). This is a key source of friction and disconnect - at best, goals should be aligned or inter-twined. They should be at least not competitive or zero-sum. At the very least understand each others goals so you know where the areas of mis-alignment or contention are.

Secondments (or at least send some people to work in each others teams). Ideally, having some people from one group spend a few months in other group... however it is amazing what a digital person will learn by sitting next to a customer service agent and listening to calls for a day... and have one of your customer experience operations leaders shadow a digital product owner for a day or two. This sharing of experiences will reveal a lot of opportunities for collaboration and improvement.

Aligned technology architecture (or better integrations). Increasingly, there are modern technology platforms that can bridge the divide between digital and the contact centre - this is the foundation for the third article in this series, so stay tuned for that one!

Structural changes (no easy path on this one!). Have a senior executive that is responsible for the overall customer experience. This isn't a silver bullet without other changes. In my experience, this starts to create a different "silo" that require support from technology and/or lines of business, so it needs to be considered deeply. That is an article in itself!

As with most things, this is a system AND a people problem. The intention for a seamless customer experience is often there and there is a common desire to do the best for the customer. Just like the digital teams are constantly iterating and improving the digital experience, there are endless cycles of optimisation and process improvement in a contact centre environment, focused on call deflection, first time resolution, average handling time etc.

The teams really WANT to improve the customer experience and efficiency of the operation, however they are making local optimisations that could be made so much better by a more wholistic, end to end approach.

Leaving it to Deming to sum this up:

A system must be managed. It will not manage itself. Left to themselves, components become selfish, competitive, independent profit centers, and thus destroy the system. The secret is cooperation between components toward the aim of the organization. —W. Edwards Deming

Next up: Part 3 - How the contact centre and digital channels are coming together to create better experiences and business outcomes. Given part 1 and 2, should I continue the series, would it be worth your time to read something like that? UPDATE: Part 3 here.

This article was written without the use of Generative AI (maybe it could have been improved with some ChatGPT!).

I would absolutely love any feedback you have on what I have shared, positive or constructive.