To optimize their operations, contact centers typically aim to achieve predictable performance, relying on complex forecasting systems to assess peak loads and plan accordingly. But -- and this is a very important but -- what happens when the best-made plans lay in tatters? For example, if storm season hits unexpectedly early, as is forecast for this year, or your business changes in a way that triggers peak loading outside the plan, will your organization, and contact center, be able to cope?
Step 1: Load Testing
A good example is the impact a powerful storm can have on a utility company. With advance warning of a storm's arrival, the organization will know to expect a surge in calls. But how many? And when?
Load testing provides the ability to determine if the contact center will be ready to handle the onslaught. But the contact center needs to test the scenario in advance... well in advance. Even if an organization has experienced large surges in call traffic previously, unforeseen issues might pop up when least expected. Has the contact center implemented any technology changes since the last peak? Have any contact center managers come on board since then? Have the IVR trees changed? Unless you put the predicted load -- or even greater call volume, just to be safe -- through the system, you can never really know just how it will handle the stress.
The same thing applies from a unified communications perspective, especially as you move more users onto the system. What happens if an event occurs that generates an influx of phone calls? Maybe a negative news article comes out, say on a security breach. All of a sudden everybody is calling each other. As employees scramble to fix software problems and respond to the press, will the UC solution be able to keep pace?
Maybe the company will receive complaints about how nobody is answering the phone. But maybe the problem is really that the calls aren't going through to the right people, at the right time. Load testing will uncover these kinds of issues.
Step 2: Customer Experience Testing
Customer experience, or CX, is not just a buzzword, it is critical to the success of an organization. Deliver a bad customer experience and you not only lose current business, you lose potential business and, worse, your brand could take a beating on social media and other platforms. Yet you can run tests to prevent against bad customer experience.
Is the IVR system operating to give customers the experience they want? Are customers getting their problems solved to their satisfaction? Are customers walking away frustrated? If they try to interact with your company via the website, is everything working correctly? When it comes to customer service, do calls go through the IVR trees correctly so they're routed where they need to go?
If you know how to test for them, you can answer all those questions.
Step 3: Ongoing Testing
You've done load testing and everything worked as expected, but that was back then. You've also made sure you're delivering outstanding customer experience. You're all done, right? Not necessarily. While your organization is certainly in a better place, testing is something that needs to happen on an ongoing basis.
Of course, you'll also find that some one-time events call for special testing. For retailers, special testing might occur during advance preparation for the holidays. A tax company might run a special load test when prepping for tax return season. Or, if your company is planning a big ad campaign, you might want to run some load tests to see that your contact center can handle increased calling.
Other regular occurrences call for ongoing availability and regression testing. Are the phones going to be available and ready for use at the start of every business day? Are the conference bridge numbers available? Are the bridges ready for employees to hold online meetings? With monitoring software, you should be able to catch any technological issues that might lead to problems. Automated testing, conducted on a regularly scheduled basis, can help ensure systems are operating properly.
Bulletproofing your contact center is really about proactively identifying problems beforeyou have to react to them. The costs of downtime are far more severe than whatever it would take to find a problem ahead of time. Scheduled, automated testing can minimize downtime and unexpected outages. You might even prevent a catastrophe from occurring. Behind the scenes, you're able to switch to a backup or take the necessary action to keep everything running without interruption.
Automation is key to all this because it controls variance and offsets the human-induced uncertainty as to what has been done and what has happened. People do a great job of assessing what has happened -- judgement -- but repetition, consistency, volume, and details are challenges without automation. Do-overs are costly. Doing it right and with precision is efficient.
Much wiser men than I have said that prevention is better than cure, and prevention in today's contact centers all starts with automated testing.
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