It’s one thing to say that the heart of a customer facing system is NOT in it’s technology, which is true. Good people can do great things with terrible technology. I’ve studied systems where people were handed their customer contact information on 3X5 cards and worked with that. However, good people with good technology support can do much better.

A recent article ‘Revived Fervor for Smart Monitors Linked to a Server‘ is about what used to be called ‘Thin Client’ workstations. That idea was pushed for some years and never really took off. PC based workstations and Microsoft Windows became and stayed the standard. However, there are good reasons to believe that ‘Thin Clients’ are about to make a comeback. If you’re building or working with a Customer Facing System, then you need to know about this technology. You don’t necessarily need to understand the underlying technology itself, but you should understand what it means for you and the people who are manning your workstations.

Customer Facing systems are often subject to competing requirements and face tight budgets. Today’s economic situation hasn’t made that any easier. Anything that disrupts the system can cause a problem, sometimes a major one, on occasion a devastating one. With 1000 workstations, problems tend to be constant. Luckily, all you need to do to fix it in many cases is simply take a workstation out of stock, load it, and put it in service. However, if the workstation stores data or has programming loaded on it, that may be difficult. In any case, it’s going to take a technical resource to get everything working. Maybe more than one if you have to transfer files to the new workstaiton, reinstall software, or other things. What if there IS no workstation, but it LOOKS like there is one?

With new technologies talked about in this article including virtualization, faster data transfer speeds, higher speed networks, and more, it’s now possible to have a complete workstation stored on a central server, maintained by the central staff, and have the actual hardware in place be minimal. A video display, keyboard, and mouse. I’m working with a ‘Thin Client’ (a browser) right now as I write this note. I have virtual environments stored on my workstation for multiple operating systems in front of me. All in all, the technology is advancing.

Why is this important to you? Because you need to be ready when it’s time to move. In the early days, the technology will be expensive, limited, and prone to problems. Only the most dedicated techies should be bothering with it at that time, though some companies will adopt it and have problems because the decision makers aren’t really thinking about what they’re doing, they’re looking for silver bullets.

Being too late doesn’t help either because if you wait until everything is perfect, everyone else will have already gotten the advantages of the new technology and you’ll be left with a nice system, but which new advances are putting out of date. So there are several things you need to think about:

1. You need to be aware of where technology is going. Keep an eye on the developments and get a chance to see it in action. If you can’t see it in use somewhere, it’s not ready.
2. You need to leave other people to jump early. Watch to see how they do. Find out what their problems are. Let them have the pain of making it work.
3. When the technology is being installed regularly and reliably, jump in if there is a good reason. Just to change is NEVER a good reason. If you’re building a new support center, by all means use the new technology. If you’ve got to replace the old stuff because it’s worn out, then get the new technology. But if you’ve got an efficiently working system, don’t change it just because you can. Change it when you can be convinced that there’s a payoff for doing it.

A lot of people are there to tell you to jump. The smart people are those who jump at just the right time. Not too early and not too late. That’s where you’ll get the maximum benefit out of your new investment.

Categories: Call/Contact Centers, Customer Service, Hard Systems