Six Elements of Success When Moving to Avaya Experience Platform

The ideas and insights below will help you develop a successful plan for migrating to Avaya Experience Platform that aligns with your business goals and objectives. These principles and tips are applicable whether your organization has 10, 100, or more than 1,000 contact center employees, and the insights are derived from the many decades of successfully deploying Avaya contact center projects for our valued customers.

Success Element #1 - Leadership

Executive sponsorship is critical for any organization to ensure Avaya Experience Platform success (or any other project success). When the senior leadership team leads from the front and communicates the “why” behind the investment, employees follow. Get executives on board early. Demonstrate how Avaya Experience Platform improves the customer, employee, and total experience. Help executives become familiar and confident with the application by coaching and providing support resources specifically designed for them. Provide simple steps for getting started. Encourage senior leadership to make the most out of their investment by utilizing all the reporting and monitoring capabilities. Remind them to reward good customer experience practice from their teams.

Success Element #2 - Champions

Creating a champions network is key to success since no one can’t do it all alone. Champions naturally connect with people and have an appetite to develop and extend skills. Even in a smaller organization, having a single champion can make all the difference. Champions are not only early enthusiasts but also invaluable critics.

Champions will also be the most effective communication channel to the wider organization. To achieve success, it’s critical to identify these people early on. They must have early access to training so they can support the wider team. Identifying champions may seem like an easy task but selecting the right person or team of people will make a big difference in your transition. For larger organizations, have a good spread of champions across the organization, from a variety of roles and departments.

Success Element #3 – Use Cases

Use cases help identify areas where Avaya Experience Platform can have maximum impact on customers, employees, and the organization. Use cases are a type of user experience document that describes a process that employees undertake while interacting with customers. Any organization will find it helpful to think about and create use cases before going live with the application. Thinking about use cases early on with your team can bring bigger successes to your overall goal.

To create effective and meaningful use cases, collaborate with leaders, managers, and employees to understand the workflows, processes, and reporting in place today and identify those that need improvement. Spend time with colleagues in small groups from different departments who represent key roles and invite them to participate.

Use cases are beneficial since they provide an opportunity for the wider organization to understand the change and demonstrate how Avaya Experience Platform delivers a better customer and employee experience. Constantly reviewing use cases throughout the transition keeps the project on track and delivers a higher level of success.

Success Element #4 – Readiness

Having great products and services is only half of the migration, the rest is user experience for both customers and employees. This means thoroughly testing from the point of view of customers and employees to remove any concerns before launch day. For instance, how will customers interact with us? And how will customers access the right employees they need? What business applications need to be integrated?

Draw upon your use cases and conduct test runs to ensure every touchpoint is effortless for both employees and customers. Think about, discuss, and decide if there are any capabilities you’ll want to enable or disable for customers and employees.

Getting readiness right the first time makes all the difference to the project, employees, and customers.

Success Element #5 – Communications

Communicate. Communicate. Communicate.

Proactive communication is needed for any successful transition. Without it, people do not understand why you are introducing Avaya Experience Platform. Having a clear communication plan before, during, and after launch is essential. Great communications are effective when a combination of different mediums is used. Consider utilizing a combination of announcements from leaders, success stories on your intranet, impactful videos, and how-to guides to support your people throughout the journey.

Communication plans are not just for large global organizations; they are useful for any size business. Get your project champions involved in spreading the news on how Avaya Experience Platform is providing benefits to daily activities, customers, and the organization. Think about the value statement you want your colleagues to hear and include this messaging throughout the shared communications.

Success Element #6 – Administration

Are you the administrator in your organization? If so, we've got you well-covered. Avaya has a training course and a plethora of online resources you can access at any time which takes you through all the important steps. These tools get managers and supervisors comfortable and familiar with administrating Avaya Experience Platform.  If you have any questions at any time, simply reach out to your Avaya Customer Success Manager for assistance.

Summary

When you purchase from Avaya, you’re not alone. Avaya is with you every step of the way during the migration project. Transition planning means collecting a range of information to better understand the full potential of Avaya Experience Platform. For a successful roll-out, you need to have a reliable onboarding process to help everyone—supervisors, employees, managers, executives—smoothly transition to the new service and highlight the benefits for them.