Do you have a contact center migration strategy?

Is your contact center platform at end-of-life support? Then you need a plan and strategy for a dramatic, much-needed transformation! 

A contact center platform migration, upgrade or new integration is a complicated multi-level effort that requires extreme attention, strategic planning and anticipation of all possible outcomes. One of the first tasks of this planning process is building robust and comprehensive functional requirements. 

These requirements serve as the blueprint for success, guiding organizations through the complexities of their projects, and ensuring alignment between business objectives and technological solutions. They form the foundation upon which successful projects are built, bridging the gap between business needs and the technical capabilities that can fulfill them. 

Improper implementation planning can negatively impact customers across various dimensions. Resulting in downtime and disruption, hindering customers' ability to access products or services and causing frustration and lost productivity. 

• Data loss or corruption may occur, potentially compromising sensitive customer information and leading to mistrust.
• Incompatibility issues may arise, causing software glitches and compatibility problems that impede customers' ability to use certain features effectively.
• Security vulnerabilities could also emerge, exposing customer data to potential breaches and damaging the company's reputation.
• Poor user experience, delayed deliverables, increased costs and negative reputation can further compound these issues, ultimately eroding customer satisfaction, trust and loyalty.

One example is when the U.S. government launched Healthcare.gov in 2013 as part of the Affordable Care Act. It encountered numerous problems with technology, long wait times and website issues. One of the major issues was the lack of comprehensive requirement gathering prior to implementation. This resulted in technology not being adequately prepared to handle the volume of users, leading to inconveniences, frustrations and a lack of trust from the user base.

Where to start?

Your organization may already have business requirements documented; however, that is only the beginning of your full requirements. Business requirements explain the "what" and "why" of a project and describe the high-level business needs. The functional requirements then explain the "how" by detailing the functions required to fulfill the business need.

For example, your business requirement may be to provide capabilities for a customer to track an order placed. However, your functional requirements include all the steps to fulfill that business need such as: 

• Provide capabilities to assign a tracking number to each order.
• Provide capabilities for customers to search for their tracking numbers.
• Provide capabilities for customers to use natural language understanding (NLU) for a customer to call for tracking information.

Gathering these requirements from all stakeholders is imperative to reducing risk and impact on your customers' experiences. 

Prioritization

Once requirements have been gathered, prioritizing is paramount for ensuring the solution's alignment with business objectives. By focusing on the most critical requirements first, organizations can ensure resources are directed toward addressing key business needs and delivering the most impactful features within a specified timeframe.

Prioritization facilitates risk management by allowing teams to focus on high-risk areas early in the development process, reducing the likelihood of project delays or failure to meet stakeholder expectations. Prioritization also enables a more iterative and incremental approach to development, in which features are delivered in stages allowing for early feedback. This approach assists with ensuring the solution is evolving in response to user needs, leading to a more responsive, user-centric system. 

Additionally, by focusing on features that address unmet customer needs, organizations can gain a competitive advantage in the market. 

WWT contact center advisors can help

With more than 25 years of contact center experience, our team of advisors can conduct a thorough assessment of your current people, processes and technology landscape to determine effectiveness across tactical and strategic aspects. 

We do this by observing and conducting interviews with your organization's stakeholders, business leaders and end users to better understand your business needs. We evaluate the usage and future needs of various applications within your organization, including multi-channel contact routing, self-service options, artificial intelligence capabilities, user desktops, telephony integration, QM tools, WFM solutions and analytic capabilities. 

Utilizing our contact center functionality matrix, we document functional requirements and prioritize based on business needs, level of effort and implementation schedule.  

The benefit to your organization is simple: WWT does the heavy lifting by establishing and documenting requirements, enabling a launch pad for future functional features. We identify pain points and risks involved in the analysis stage and save time and expenses. We also provide industry best practices and recommendations around feature selection and prioritization within a fully functional deliverable document.

Remember, projects risk going off course without clear, well-defined requirements, leading to wasted resources, missed deadlines, unmet objectives, and potentially poor experiences for both customers and employees. 

Your requirements lay the groundwork for what the business aims to achieve. They offer guidance on tools or software necessary to realize those goals and identify challenges the technology must address, as well as details the precise functionality needed.