A few weeks ago, I attempted to call a domestic airline to change my son’s travel date. After navigating through the outdated IVR system by pressing multiple keys, I reached a human agent.
The only problem was that the agent had absolutely no clue about my booking because their system was taking time to load.
What should have been a two-minute task with a travel portal took me 20 minutes as I made the mistake of booking directly on the airline’s website.
It got me thinking.
The airline is likely using legacy contact center software, which is hurting their brand, efficiency, and ultimately, their bottom line.
I am sure you would have had multiple such experiences with businesses across verticals. Here are 10 unmistakable signs that your legacy contact center software is costing you more than you think.
#1 Your agents still toggle between multiple windows to serve a customer
If your agents need to switch between five different systems just to answer one customer query, you’re in a fix.
It slows your agents and frustrates your customers.
I recently called my auto insurance company to check the status of my claim. I was put on hold by the agent for more than two minutes, and I was listening to some awkward music. After two minutes, he requested two more minutes, and the call got disconnected.
I had to go through these steps again for four minutes before I was able to determine the status of my claim.
This results in agent stress, lower productivity, longer handling time, and customer churn.
#2 There’s zero visibility to real-time metrics
Does your legacy system provide a live dashboard? Very unlikely. So, when there’s a sudden spike in call volume, you are reacting instead of responding.
One of our customers had a product launch, and their call volumes skyrocketed. Without real-time alerts, they didn’t reroute or scale support fast enough. This resulted in angry tweets and less-than-expected sales.
This forced them to migrate from their legacy system to our advanced cloud based contact center platform just after this product launch.
This results in zero control, missed SLAs, and customer dissatisfaction.
#3 You can’t scale quickly during seasonal peaks
Most legacy systems aren’t cloud-native. Scaling up during seasonal peaks is a nightmare, as it necessitates purchasing additional hardware and licenses. This entire process is low, expensive, and operationally painful.
I buy Diwali sweets from an organization through their e-commerce platform. Every year, they know that their call volumes spike during the festive season. So, they wanted to add 50 agents to handle the volume.
To do that, they bought additional hardware and licenses. After the festive season, they were unsure what to do with the additional hardware, so they continued paying the license fee for an extra quarter, as that was the minimum commitment required by the vendor.
So, they wanted a solution to avoid facing this challenge every year. That’s when they migrated to our cloud platform.
It results in inflexibility, high IT costs, and poor seasonal performance.
#4 Remote work is a nightmare
What did you do during the pandemic? You had to move your agents to work from home, and they had to log in using VPN licenses. Did your system crash every time they attempted to log in remotely?
A BPO tried remote working during the pandemic using VPNs. The agents had only broadband connectivity at home, which wasn’t sufficient to connect to the legacy system and make/receive calls. They failed miserably, and they moved all their agents to work from the office prematurely.
After this, they moved their entire contact center to our cloud platform, and to this day, they continue to follow a hybrid working model easily.
It results in employee attrition, compliance risks, and inflexibility.
#5 Integration feels like rocket science
If your team needs months to integrate a simple chatbot, you’re burning time and money.
A telecom customer of ours wanted to extend WhatsApp support. Their legacy vendor provided them with a 3-month roadmap and a substantial bill to accompany it.
This results in increased go-to-market timelines, disconnected experiences, and budget overruns.
#6 Your customer experience feels transactional
Legacy systems don’t give agents any context on past interactions, customer preferences, or open issues. Customers had to repeat themselves every time they interacted, making them feel like just a ticket number.
The example I gave about me calling the auto insurance company to know my claim status, I had to call a couple of times before I got my query resolved. I had to repeat myself the second time I called. The agent had zero context on my previous interaction.
This results in low CSAT, brand erosion, and poor customer retention.
#7 Your compliance and security mechanisms are outdated
Legacy systems may not support new regulations, such as GDPR, CCPA, or India’s DPDP Act. All it takes is one breach, and you’re in trouble.
Imagine a healthcare helpline storing all its recordings on local servers. If there is a cyberattack, they would be served multiple legal notices and end up paying regulatory penalties and facing public trust issues.
This results in fines, lawsuits, and reputational damage.
#8 Reporting is slow, manual, and often wrong
Are you pulling Excel sheets to understand performance? You’re not just wasting time, but you’re making decisions based on outdated data.
All managers in contact centers and BPOs spend more than 30% of their time compiling data to be presented at the end of the month. Often, they miss critical information from the data and can’t course-correct.
This results in poor decisions, missed KPIs, and slow growth.
#9 Your self-service options are non-existent or limited
Today’s customers want to help themselves with most queries. They want to access FAQs, IVR, chatbots, or voice bots. Legacy platforms don’t enable modern self-service.
I wanted to cancel my broadband subscription because I was moving to new premises, and they did not offer services at my new location. Their IVR did not allow it, the mobile app did not show the unsubscribe or cancel option, and the chatbot asked me to write an email to them.
I wrote that email, and I received a call from their agent who took my request to unsubscribe. It took me six days to complete the process of unsubscribing.
This results in poor digital experience, higher call volumes, and agent burnout.
#10 You are spending more to maintain your system than to improve CX
Is your IT team busy keeping the lights on? Then you are not innovating, and the system is working against you.
One of our current BPO customers used to spend 12 lacs a year just maintaining their legacy system. This money could’ve easily gone into speech analytics or AI-powered routing.
This results in stagnation, technology debt, and loss of opportunities.
You might think you’re saving money by squeezing a few more years out of your legacy contact center.
Move out of that mindset, as it results in lower productivity, a clunky customer experience, a missed competitive edge, poor compliance, and an inflexible infrastructure.
Take stock of where your contact center stands. Have an honest conversation with your team, and ask yourself:
Are we investing in CX, or are we paying to keep our problems alive?
Sticking with legacy systems isn’t just a tech decision. It’s a business risk, and it is something that you can easily live without.
The world has moved on, and your customers already have.
