Recent research by Aberdeen Group reveals the benefits contact centers can gain with Agent Desktop Optimization (ADO) initiatives. With ADO initiatives companies can improve the use of customer service agents’ desktop by making the relevant customer data more accessible, improving efficiency and allowing agents to provide more personalized service.
When I was in college I worked part-time at a contact center. I can still clearly remember how in the beginning of my shift it took me at least 10 minutes to get my desktop set up. That meant perfectly sizing 6 different screens to fit on my desktop so that all the relevant customer data was either visible or open in the background. The initial set up of these screens was time-consuming and searching the data while serving the customers was also a drag on efficiency.
I was thinking about my time as a customer service agent while reading through the recent Aberdeen research about ADO. It is great to see that companies are finally understanding the hindrances customer service agents have to deal with when navigating through all the customer data – it takes time and the customers are the ones who have to wait.
The research shows that improvements have been made, however, I am amazed that there still are many companies which do not view ADO as a way to increase agent efficiency and do not understand the business value ADO can provide. The research revealed that the main driver for ADO investments was to improve customer experience results and consistency. Improving customer experience should be one of the top priorities for every contact center manager.
In their study Aberdeen surveyed 141 organizations with ADO initiatives. The research showed that agents can spend up to 26% of their time looking for relevant data in various systems during each customer contact. From my personal experience I totally agree with this. That is time and money wasted on unproductive work. At times this was a very frustrating experience. We wanted to be as efficient as possible while addressing customer questions but the tools we were using were not optimal for our purposes.
Omer Minkara from Aberdeen Group has done a great job with the ADO research and I highly recommend you click on the link below and download your own complimentary copy of this research. Great insights, best practices, and recommendations for how to improve the performance of your contact center with Agent Desktop Optimization.
Aberdeen Group Research: Agent Desktop Optimization – Agents can Finally Focus on the Customer