95% of organisations polled say that a lack of cooperation between departments is frustrating them in their attempts to digitally transform their customer contact experience.
New research from KCOM and industry body CCA Global, a leading global authority on contact centres and customer experience, surveyed contact centre managers about their efforts to become more digitally-enabled.
Survey respondents were drawn from organisations of varying sizes (23% with 0-50 contact centre agents, 27% with between 501-1500, 13% with 251-500 and 10% with more than 5,000) and from a wide variety of industrial sectors including financial services, telecoms and utilities.
And the results found that, irrespective of size or industry, a lack of coordination across departments was rated as extremely significant or significant by almost all respondents.
Other obstacles included the inflexibility of current processes and systems (cited by 83% of respondents) and the cost related to digital transformation being more than anticipated, due to a lack of integrated IT systems and forward planning (cited by 45%).
Finally, 23% of respondents reported that their organisations were hampered by having no long-term digital strategy.
“Some of these issues may well be diluting the appetite of organisations to take full advantage of the benefits digital transformation can bring to contact centres,” said Anne Marie Forsyth, CEO, CCA.
“Despite the fact that 46% of respondents said a digitally transformed customer experience could be a real opportunity to differentiate their organisations and leapfrog the competition, it seems that integration worries across the company are holding back these projects.”
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Hi Neil. Thanks for the excellent website. I'm fairly new to it but always find a few articles of particular interest in each edition.
The problem of SILOs is not new. Back in the 60's this same lack of co-ordination (as now between Marketing and Digital Marketing) was very common between Sales and this new fangled thing called Marketing. But starting as a Senior Management Trainee in Unilever Soaps and Detergents we were indoctrinated to think like CEOs of our brand and to act as co-ordinators of our brand activity across all parts of the business. To support that we had an initial 2 year induction during which we worked on all floors in the Factories and out on the road with real targets as Salesmen and Merchandisers. Not just for a few days but months at the sharp ends. That worked for Unilever and for all of us trainees. But how few firms would now make that serious level of investment? However, even that was not perfect in removing SILOs, since inter-brand competition between brand managers was still needed in the allocation of resources !
Thanks (2)Thanks for your kind words, Brian.
There is certainly a long history of siloed structures. Strange to think that something that seemed sensible back in the day, enabling clearer accountability and allocation of resources, has now become such an obstacle.
Thanks (0)"Other obstacles included the inflexibility of current processes and systems (cited by 83% of respondents) and the cost related to digital transformation being more than anticipated, due to a lack of integrated IT systems and forward planning (cited by 45%)".
Not surprising!
There is so much of a rush to "Go digital" that proper R&D development and testing is not being carried out by a "Digital Task Force" of newcomers or outsiders who know very little about the firm and how it works. That way firms are being enticed, almost stampeded, by fear of being left behind, into 'Digital' with insufficient Development Planning, Training and Budget. Existing Senior Managers of other departments know little about the use and management of the "Digital Steam Roller"
The same types of problems arose back in the 60s and 70's with the introduction of the first major Airline and Tour Operator centralised and globalised IT Reservation Systems. We just did not call it "Digital" in those days.
Major Disruption to traditional methods is costly time-consuming and painful. Enthusiasm and Clever ideas are not enough. Needs careful management.
Thanks (1)These figures are worrying given that consumers want a joined-up experience across the customer journey – they don’t care which departments are involved. One way to break down barriers is to create customer hubs, cross-functional teams that bring different skills together in order to solve consumer problems. There’s more on customer hubs in this blog post http://www.eptica.com/blog/rise-customer-hub
Thanks (1)"The skills within a customer hub include sales, marketing, customer service, analytics, change management and collaboration – all within the same team, rather than simply scattered across the organization".
This appears to be very much focused on service industries. No mention of Production, R&D, Quality, or Finance. In effect this makes 2 major Silos - Customer facing vs Non-customer facing. Not a good idea.
Thanks (1)"Despite the fact that 46% of respondents said a digitally transformed customer experience...it seems that integration worries across the company are holding back these projects"
The digital wave is on and if we talk about the telecom industry, the digital disruption is already forcing changes in their business models for survival. While digital transformation should be used as a catalyst, Gartner predicts that only 30% will manage to cross to the next level of a successful transformation.
In order to upgrade to a digital customer service, operators need to upgrade their support solutions with the right tools, where top 3 solutions useful for telecoms are discussed here. http://www.kochartech.com/blog/2017/03/09/3-solutions-telecoms-ensure-sa...
Thanks (0)