Series: Contact center enablement
Proactively anticipate and manage change
Change management is the process, tools, and techniques to manage the people side of change to achieve a specific business outcome. Your project management process ensures that Genesys Cloud configuration supports contact handling and other contact center priorities. But your change management process ensures that you retain prepared, motivated, and confident employees who embrace the changes that come with new technology adoption.
Change management enables you to:
- Identify the nature and scope of the changes — technology, workflow, work environment, job requirements, and customers — that accompanies the new technology.
- Identify the impacts of these changes. For example, if you’re implementing a new contact channel, are your current agents skilled and motivated to handle these interactions successfully? If they are not, how do you plan to address any gaps?
- Train and support employees to navigate the changes that impact them and the business.
- Communicate a compelling business case for change and how it supports the vision for the future.
- Identify channels that monitor adoption of changes and address gaps.
As leaders and advocates for proposed changes, the entire project team plays a critical role in change management. It’s imperative that this team understand what’s changing, why, and what’s in it for all employees and customers across the organization.
Questions
Discuss the following questions with your team:
- Who on the project team oversees the change management effort? Is this person tasked with communicating changes across the organization and crafting a compelling, persuasive pitch for the change that is coming?
- Is the transition to Genesys Cloud part of a larger change effort? How does this project fit in with the bigger picture?
- What are the impacts to internal and external customers and business partners as the result of the proposed changes? What are the impacts to your customers? Will customers perceive these impacts as positive or negative? How will this impact how to communicate the changes?
- Change management is collaborative. Have you discussed how changes impact team members across the organization and how best to position the changes? Have you discussed how to ensure that users are on-board and confident that they can adjust their work processes to support the changes? Make sure that you have representation from each contact center and contact center support team to help identify how to best support employees through processes and workflows.
Actions
Take the following actions before moving forward:
| Preparation | Assigned to | Complete date |
|---|---|---|
| Define your change management methodology. Choose as simple or complex a model as your team is resourced to support and one that matches your corporate culture. | ||
| Define a communication plan to share information about upcoming changes and solicit input. Make sure that the plan includes routine updates using your organization’s standard communication methods. Ensure that updates include information about proposed changes, the reason and benefits, and how to roll out the changes. Establish training and support avenues and where to go with suggestions or questions. | ||
| Determine a method for gathering feedback about how to communicate changes are communicated, trained, and rolled out, and incorporated into work. Use your change management process to learn more about your organization’s culture, your employees, and how they best adapt successfully to change. Adjust the plan as necessary. |
