You’re at the exciting stage where your call center is about to embark on the introduction of a DevOps methodology into your processes. It makes a lot of sense to implement this transformation in order to deliver better customer experiences (CX) and improve the productivity and collaborative capabilities of your teams, but this change doesn’t come without its challenges – particularly for the teams that may have to completely overhaul their previous way of working in order to shift into a more agile environment. A DevOps implementation is no small feat for a company and its employees. It’s important to get engagement and buy-in from your stakeholders so that they can apply and uphold the new practices you are bringing in.
The practicalities of DevOps for call centers
1. Design with the client in mind
Before you jump into the how to’s and must do’s of DevOps, start by documenting and observing your current user journeys to understand how they interact with your omnichannel customer service technology. By doing this, you can structure your DevOps integration in such a way that it immediately starts to address common problems through automated testing and continuous improvement.
2. Get set for testing
Analytics will now become a significant part of your daily activities. It’s essential to have the necessary testing and monitoring tools in place to help you keep track of performance and truly accelerate your responsiveness to bugs and bottlenecks.
3. Map out the new process
Things are inevitably going to change. But for DevOps to bring in positive results, goals must be set for the implementation, followed by the creation of defined processes that support best practice. This involves:
- Ensuring everyone uses the same technology – Create a centralized repository for all DevOps teams so that they easily share and process information. Get rid of redundant processes and systems and integrate everyone into a single platform.
- Create a standardized customer experience – By eliminating variability and clearly defining the outcomes of each process, teams can test and deploy with greater confidence and accuracy.
4. Release and monitor
When your testing is complete, and the correct code has been formulated, it’s time to deploy new products and fixes into the environment while keeping a close eye on how these changes affect CX. At this stage, you should perform a load test to ensure that high volumes of traffic will not affect the customer journey.
The support of your team will go a long way to ensuring that consistency in the procedure is upheld as you bring in this new approach to building better customer experiences. Find your champions early on and appoint them as leaders who can help to keep everyone accountable and motivated to hit the targets you’ve set.
One of the pivotal changes that DevOps brings in is the process of continually testing and enhancing new and existing product releases – a significant mindset shift if your teams are used to manually testing or waiting on long approval periods. For this reason, a thorough introductory period is necessary, along with the support of more experienced staff members and the right tools and applications to ensure a successful transition.
For a more comprehensive look at a DevOps implementation for your call center, we’ve created a practical guide that gives a more in-depth overview of the topics discussed here. Click the link to download your free copy.
