It hit me the other day when I was speaking with a call center operator about my reservation. She was funny, smart, well informed and flew around her app. with the quickness of the chipmunk. She is the new breed of worker. Not the production worker that performs repetitive tasks, like data entry and responding to the same dumb information requests, anxious to get you off the phone to meet a call duration metric. No, our relentless offshoring, automation, and customer self-service is slowly eliminating this type of worker.

We hear numbers like this consistently, and this from a Workforce Planning  VP at a major Major Telecommunications company,

“Today  70% of our inquiries are handled by self service (IVR, Web, or mobile) with only 30% that ever get to our call center.  But these calls that get through are really hard. The customer has researched the problem on line and is ready to have a deep conversation. So unfortunately, even though the call volumes are way down, the number of agents we need has not decreased due to how complex these calls are. "

What does this mean for enterprises? High performance will be achieved supporting these workers with advanced information management and solutions like Dynamic Case Management that give them freedom to make decisions and advance the customer experience.  

We will shortly publish a wave on DCM. Look for some new European solutions like BeInformed (Netherlands), Whitestein (Germany), and ISIS (Austria) to gain ground on  PegaSystems, IBM, EMC, Appian  and others from the traditional BPM market.