Are We Frogs in Hot Water?

Andrew White at Contexta360 questions if we are frogs in hot water.

I am sure you have all heard the story of the frogs in hot water.

Just in case you haven’t, here it is. Take 10 frogs and put them in a bowl of hot water. They all jump out. It’s hot! Take 10 frogs and put them in a bowl of cold water and start heating it up gently. They all die as they didn’t notice that the water was getting hotter.

The moral of this story is directly analogous to the customer interaction centre work we do day in day out. We get used to our world and our working practices – what we do and how we do it. We should challenge this and react constantly to internal and external factors to remain sharp, agile and competitive.

Question: does your bank call you in every week to see if the mortgage payment was made, the salary came in, and your balance is in the black? No, of course not. Are they are interested in this? Absolutely, but they have monitors, metrics, alerts and clever AI, RPA, CRM, thingummy-BOTs that let them know when thresholds are breached.

Bringing in several million bank consumers would be a waste of time as more than 90 per cent of us are probably liquid, in control and being financially prudent.

So why is it we still see 100 per cent of contact centre agents being herded into monthly (and OMG… sometimes weekly) QM or QA or coaching sessions?

Well, because we have always done this. “Ribbit, ribbit. Go on kiss me.”

It’s bonkers. Just do the maths. Let us say 500 agents and 30 team leads; once a fortnight for 30 minutes each; with management time and planning/research (hunting for the metaphorical bad mortgage payment that 90 per cent have paid) – that is circa a QUARTER OF A MILLION £$, a year.

Or you can use this time to do WAY more productive and meaningful CX, C-SAT, CES work, transforming customer interaction and being a customer hero.

And that is just one example. There are so many more.

To help you leapfrog the maths, Contexta360 built a simplified calculator online.

Author: Guest Author