Why Your Call Center Needs User-Centered Design

Today, user-centered design isn't widely used to improve call center interactions. That needs to change. When applied in the call center, the core activities of a user-centered design process — research, ideation, prototyping, and testing — can help customer experience professionals identify and fix problems that frustrate agents and lead to poor customer experiences. This process can be applied to just about anything in the call center: agent-facing software, agent training modules, call center workflows, and even phone dialogues themselves. Customer experience professionals need to introduce call center execs to an approach that focuses on the needs of both callers and agents — and show how the results of such efforts can translate into real business value.