Customer Service Initiative

Communicating Project Progress

18th March, 2009 - Posted by Pam -

It’s been said a million times - Keep your users and agents in the loop on project progress and changes to business processes as you go along.  Still, I am surprised by how infrequently this happens.

If you don’t have user buy in, you risk project failure in many ways.  End User acceptance is key to a successful project.  If the end users haven’t had a say in the set up and overall navigation of the new system, chances are your project will fail.

If you don’t keep your users in the loop regarding project progress (or lack there of) you will experience a negative impact to overall morale. If you tell them you’re working on it over and over again - and don’t give them visibility to the project’s status, successes, and obstacles - they will lose faith.

Here’s a real life example:  A company is using an antiquated Customer Service application to process changes and cancellations to orders.  It sometimes takes up to 5 minutes to verify a zip code and often times “hangs” when adding items or removing items from an order.  The Customer Service Agents are becoming more and more frustrated with their jobs - because it’s hard to ask a customer to wait for these long periods of time, and the customer becomes frustrated.  One day, an agent called my attention to how long it was taking her to verify a zip code.  I “reminded” her that we had a lot of resources working on upgrading the system and told her it’s a top priority.  Well, turns out it was the first she heard of it.  Now, we give a weekly update to the agents to let them know when something better is coming.  And we’ve invited a number of agents to participate in design and testing.

In spite of not including the agents in the beginning of this project - this project will be successful; because now they are fully informed and engaged.

I hate to think of what would have happened if we hadn’t included them.  So, please keep your users and agents in the loop on project progress and changes to business processes as you go along.