Tool Overload is Killing Your Contact Center from the Inside Out

 Mitel’s Stuart Aldridge discusses why the gap between what IT thinks it's delivering and what agents actually experience is quietly destroying customer service quality.

In this CX Today discussion, Associate Editor Rhys Fisher sits down with Stuart Aldridge, Head of UK, Ireland & South Africa at Mitel, to dig into the findings of Mitel's State of Workforce Communication in the AI Era report. 

With contact center agents juggling upwards of 12 tools on a single call while still being pressured to deliver exceptional customer experiences, the cracks in enterprise communication strategy are getting harder to ignore. 

If you work in CX leadership, this one hits close to home. 

Mitel's latest research surveyed over 2,000 IT decision-makers, desk workers, and frontline workers across the UK, US, Canada, Germany, and France, and the results are uncomfortable reading for anyone responsible for agent experience or customer outcomes. 

The perception gap is enormous: 81% of IT leaders believe they're listening to user needs and delivering accordingly. Only 28% of frontline workers agree, and in healthcare that number drops to 17%. 

Tool overload is the real villain: Agents are routinely navigating 10-14 applications on a live call, and 61% of workers say switching between tools is actively costing them productivity every single day. 

Shadow IT is a symptom, not the problem: 76% of workers admit to using non-approved tools, not to break the rules, but because those tools are simply easier. The compliance and data risk that creates in a contact center environment is significant. 

Consultative selling has gone missing: Stuart argues that vendors and resellers are too focused on closing deals and not nearly enough time sitting with the "Carols" of the world, the actual end users, to understand what they genuinely need before adding yet another layer to an already overwhelming stack. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hello and welcome to CX Today. I'm Reese Fisher, Associate Editor, and today I'm delighted to be joined by Stuart Aldridge, the head of UK, Ireland, and South Africa at MITEL. Stuart, thanks for joining me. How are you doing today? Good day, Reese.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Yes, really good, thank you. And again, I really appreciate this time. So looking forward to the next few minutes.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Yeah, absolutely. No, I appreciate you coming on. I think it's uh yeah, it's a really interesting chat today. You know, we're gonna be speaking about a recent NITEL report, but I think maybe it's best if I if I let you kind of talk through what that report is and uh some of the key findings, maybe just to kick things off.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Yeah, no, thank you. Um some some really great work with our marketing team. I I certainly wasn't aware they were doing this. The output of it um shared with me uh a number of weeks ago. And and when I think about what they've targeted, it's it's it's really, really well thought through. So this is a a survey that they started in January this year. It ran through to April. Uh myTEL partnered with a an organization called Van Vansomborn, uh, and it was very much focused on the state of workforce communications. It targeted three different parts of the workforce. It targeted the IT decision makers, it targeted desk-based workers, and also frontline workers, and across a number of verticals, but in a number of different countries. So they looked at North America, UK, France, and Germany, uh, both public and private sectors, and organizations with 500 employees or more. Uh so again, that ran Jan to April, and the output really shared uh from May onwards. And and wow, it it really it does show the importance of a number of things and the value in provider and vendor understanding within organizations. So I'll I'll come on to talk a bit more about that as we go through through this uh discussion.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

Yeah, absolutely. No, it's uh yeah, it's a really it's a really interesting study. I would uh I would recommend anyone taking a look through. I've obviously gone through with a bit of a bit of a CX lens and picked out some of the areas that I thought were of particular interest for the CX space, you know, and I saw, I guess one of the key findings was that 70% of frontline workers say poor communication tools actively get in the way of delivering good customer service. I suppose for a contact center leader, perhaps, where do you think the blame sits? Is this a technology problem, a procurement problem, or is it maybe something else?

SPEAKER_01 3:00

Um tool-in, and and you've obviously gone through some of those percentage outputs. There's some real eye-openers in that mix. Um tooling, I think, is a real challenge within not just contact centre CX environments, but also frontline workers in in healthcare environments. That there was a lot of output and a lot of quotes used in the output, uh, but I think it was the the volume of tools that organizations expect users to use. Uh and if you were in a CX environment, I think most CX uh leaders already know the tooling is far too uh far too severe in terms of um complexity, uh, the number of applications the agents are asked to utilize on calls while still being pressured to speed up calls, deliver great customer service and good customer experience. It it's a real challenge. I also think in the UK specifically, and there's a number of the outputs that are UK focused, uh there's quite a blur. There is, as you know, a number of vendors in the UK that all say me too, uh, that all focus on um you know more and more and more in terms of license and agent sales, uh, buy for five years, get two years for free, all those kind of things. And unfortunately, uh it's a really challenging place for buyers today because they can see some value in some of those tools, but of course they're trying to wrap that around an existing tool environment. And so when they procure and they add another blend, another value to to what is already an existing set of applications and tools, it becomes a further challenge for the uh agent, for the healthcare worker, for the desktop worker, uh, for a lot of users. Uh and there's some really scary stats there. And I think when you look at the big difference between what an IT decision maker thinks they're delivering versus what a user, either desktop or frontline, feel they're getting, it it's a huge gap. It is an enormous gap between those those different different workforces.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Yeah, absolutely. That was a it was another area I picked out, actually, that kind of that disconnect in the data. Like you said, I think it was over a half of IT leaders believe they're supporting their teams with AI very well, but less than a third of workers agree with that. I guess could you talk a little bit more on that? I suppose, you know, especially in a customer-facing environment, I guess, that gap could really translate, you know, could impact the quality of service and customer experience. What do you think needs to change to address that situation?

SPEAKER_01 6:02

Um so one area I think um is is missing. I think there's such a focus on the selling in our industry. There's such a focus on and the challenge I accept. And quite often having a very large sales team, many of them will happily say how difficult the market is to sell, how difficult it is to differentiate yourself in the market. But then just consider the buyer, how difficult it is today to buy in this market of complex solutions, many, many different incentives by many, many different vendors, you know, by us because it's it's free for a year or free for two. Um, and when you look at those incentives, IT decision makers are driven to buy for less value, um, you know, ensure they're getting the best value. But actually, when you look at the users themselves, are we spending enough time with a user to sit down and truly understand what their experience needs to look like? And I know this has a CX um variation on it, Reese. If I look at a lot of the output, it doesn't matter if it's CX or frontline workers, desktop workers, it it was a huge gap. 81% of IT decision makers believe that they are listening to the user base and delivering what the users need. 81%. And when you look at the frontline worker and the and the desk user, it's as low as 28%. And I think in healthcare that was 17% of workers that believe the the purchase of tools is based on their use and their knowledge and the true understanding of how that that works. And w one of my sales leaders um uh talks about Carol quite a lot. And Carol, in his in his world, is someone that he went and sat down with in one of our large enterprise customers. He didn't talk to the IT decision maker, he went and sat with Carol, who delivers a very, very important function within this organization that utilizes a lot of the tools, and he spent half a day sat with Carol. And when he sat with Carol, he truly understood how much of the tool complexity was visible and how much they were trying to navigate around that. And I think you saw in one of the stats, uh, certainly here in the UK, there is a huge percentage of users that feel they are pressured into using the tools in the way that they've been delivered, regardless of the productivity. And if you're a CX agent, if you work in a CX environment, you have, let's say, nine, ten, I've heard 12, 14 tools that I might have to navigate around as an agent while handling the communication tools. All of those things I have to manage, and that's a pressure because there's no other way of doing the function, delivering the role. It doesn't matter how long it takes to navigate around those tools, I'm still expected to deliver the very best customer service for that inbound call or whatever that might be. So it's a really challenging environment, and that's really what has come out of this survey. Uh it is incredibly easy to see how many people adopt non-approved tools as well. You know, quite simply, uh sometimes the non-approved tool might just be an easier way to work versus the corporate tool that I've been told I must use. And I think it was as high as 76% were using non-approved tools in environments where they were told they couldn't, but they just found that that was an easier way to work. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Yeah, it's really interesting you bring that up, Stuart. That really stuck out to me as well, and glad our minds are working the same way because I saw the start about the amount of frontline workers using these non-approved tools, and I thought the exact same thing, is it because it's just easier than how to navigate the big tools fully or you talk through the but obviously in doing that, that that does then become, you know, it becomes a compliance and a customer data risk. I suppose we talked a little bit why it's being normalized, I guess, or why we think what what can companies do about fixing this problem, do you believe?

SPEAKER_01 10:46

Um I think if you're an IT decision maker, I think uh they already have a challenging uh challenging role in the purchase, in the buy-in process. Uh certainly if you're in the public sector, there's a process and it's a lengthy one they have to go through to find the right tool at the right value. I still don't think as a provider, my tell, uh as a as a value-added reseller, um that enough consultative selling is going on to ensure that the buyer is actually buying the right solution for the user. And like I said, Carol, who spends time with Carol before they go out and procure what what an IT decision maker believes is the right need, but actually is it just stacking on top of the tool set uh that people are already having to navigate? I think something else that came out, uh over 61% of the users surveyed believe they are wasting time, losing productivity um time through switching between all the various different communication tools, whether it be email or an internal tool or a a voice tool, something else, but just the sheer volume of those tools that stack is causing enormous amounts of lost time. And I don't necessarily mean that from a uh a CX environment alone, uh across all of that uh user base, wherever they are, that could have serious consequences. Uh it really could. It's not just customer experience, but if you look at where the survey focused, it was across lots of different sectors. Imagine that in healthcare where time was being lost in a critical scenario, uh, and actually the tools were doing anything but helping you achieve whatever it is much, much sooner. And I think that is really the the the shame of what's going on. Again, my my own interpretation of it, I think there's a huge amount more that value-added resellers can do to help buyers understand more about the user need, the user experience. If you already own a customer, if you own an account, you should understand better the needs of the users, the business processes, the opportunity to improve productivity. And there are tools that do that today, Reese. You know, workflow workflows with AI can improve productivity. But I think that's not just a case of let's buy some more AI and you know, why not buy some more AI and get some more AI on top of that? Why not really truly understand all of the user needs, the processes that already exist, the stacks that they already have to navigate around, and then deliver an ultimate best user experience need. That may not require any more tools. It might be a case of utilising better what they have, uh, understanding the user needs and advising the buyers better in that scenario. And I think those things are not there at the moment. Um, certainly here in the UK, there are so many vendors that have a solution that looks and feels better than what the buyer might think they already have. But before jumping in with those scenarios, I think it's really important to get the right consultative advice. The user experience is key in all of this. Because behind the user experience are the productivity losses that many people are suffering today.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. Just wondering why it feels like it it's almost it's quite a well-known thing now within the space that this is an issue. Why do you think so many organizations, like you said, they aren't speaking to the carols, they aren't priority prioritizing that user experience?

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Um that's a challenging one. I think it's always going to come down to time. Uh and even time, you know, let's be honest, has Carol got time to spend time looking at what I really need because my day is consumed with so much activity. Can I leave my activity and go away and design the perfect Carol world? Uh, those kind of things are probably quite challenging in their own sense. Um but I think that time is worth investing in. One, because I think that the tool stack is growing. And I think in a lot of environments it's growing because somebody thinks there's a better tool in in maybe one application that isn't there in many others. So why not involve that? Why not include that? And suddenly you've got 20 tools that I'm using. Uh, and not just that, I've got a uh a personal preference with uh non-approved applications and tools that I'm also trying to bring into this this world. Uh but I think those things have got to happen. Certainly one thing we're doing at MyTelreese is whether it's uh an existing customer, we have a set of named account managers now in our indirect space that's task and role is to go and understand the user experience better, work much, much closer. Uh and and the stakeholder engagement, it isn't just about an IT decision maker. It has to be several other parts of the business, to learn the business, to get under the skin of the business, and advise and be a trusted advisor. Because those words were something we all quoted many, many years ago. Uh to a degree they've been lost, and actually we do see some value because uh the tools that people are using today can already deliver a huge amount of that need, but it's truly getting under the under the skin of the organization and being able to advise what a Carol needs, how a Carol may already have the right tools uh that actually can work slightly better in a slightly different way, and maybe there's a number of tools that she really doesn't need anymore. So those kind of things are things that we're doing at MyTel. We're working with our channel partners, our value-added resellers, um, and I think they all they all recognize the the value that they can bring to that need as well. The stats speak for themselves. You you've seen them yourself. It's really obvious to see that a user experience needs to improve.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

Yeah, yeah, I think that's uh that's probably a great way to end things. Thanks, Doug. It's been a really, really interesting chat. Like you said, I think the report has done a really good job, I think, of really outlining some of these pain points that we've been hearing about in the in the CX space for quite some time now. And like you outlined, I think that tools ball, tool fatigue is definitely one of the biggest things it packed in the agent experience and knock on the customer experience right now. So yeah, uh it's some really interesting stuff in there. Thank you for your time.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

Thank you, Reese. Nice to speak to you.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Yeah, any tightness to it. I did also want to just quickly thank our audience as well for uh tuning in today. If you enjoyed this, and I'm sure you did, please remember to like and subscribe to the channel and head on over to csdday.com for more stories like these. Until next time. Thanks for watching.