By: David J. Wardell

© 2000 By: David J. Wardell.  Reproduction or redistribution in any form without written permission is strictly prohibited.

Agencies routinely scan the technology marketplace for affordable solutions, as new entrants with what appear to be good ideas routinely come and go. Some undertake their own complex development or training projects in an effort to create proprietary tools.

Despite substantial investments and some equally weighty failures, meaningful progress remains as elusive as ever. Claims to the contrary usually notwithstanding, sustainable and credible productivity enhancement in a form acceptable to agencies and their customers is rare and usually not directly attributable to new tools.

From the agent's standpoint, the challenges and benefits are clear: revenues erode, very little is done about reducing costs, and the talent pool continues to diminish. If the need and the objectives are so obvious, why don't the solutions follow?

Part of the problem is that many of the most obvious answers are the wrong ones—for reasons that are sometimes hard to understand, they simply don't work. One interesting example is the workstation.

Rare 10 or 15 years ago, reengineered travel workstations have by now been tried so frequently that experience with why they usually don't work ought to be teaching some lessons. The premise is that if you build a truly organized (often graphical) user interface that is more efficient that the legacy CRS displays, and if you build a high degree of decision-making and process control into that interface, one can use less expensive operators not requiring traditional agent skills and those workers will be more productive.

Claims for potential benefits range from 5% to 20%, or greater, as contrasted with the "legacy" environment and depending upon the developer.

With numbers of that scale at stake such products should be pervasive in the marketplace by now. They are not because their benefits are often illusive and operating them takes such a toll on customer service that agents find the result unworkable.

To begin with, there is a sound argument on either side of the graphical interface question which, insofar as travel is concerned, has never been fully proven. In the hands of a skilled operator, a text-based display is far more efficient than a mouse-driven "point and click" interface.

When lesser-skilled operators are introduced the picture is less clear. However, frequently the productivity benefits claimed for new interfaces could be achieved through such basic and less expensive tools as giving the operator a typing course, if the result were appropriately analyzed.

Beyond that, many developers live under the illusion that they can change the way the operator interacts with the customer. This has lead to workstations that require information in ways or sequences the customer does not want to give it, as well as to a reduced experience, training, and operator customer service profile that is simply unsustainable.

Meaningful productivity improvement begins with a truly clean slate, meaning that developers must dismiss their personal views as to what old technology must be discarded and what new elements should be introduced, and approach improved ways to deliver those things the customer truly wants to buy.

Despite the many flaws one can identify in legacy CRS-based workstations, much of that technology has been refined over many years and left a permanent imprint upon operator and customer expectations. The focus should first be upon enhancing and extending the tools that already work, before one discards everything and starts over.

An agency's ability to pay for the next generation tools that are essential to lowering costs has been substantially reduced in recent years, yet the issues and benefits remain clear. Progress awaits only a better technology development process.