THE BLIND SPOT AUDIT
Staffing & Workforce Management
- Dashboard Accuracy Check: Do you measure the proper KPIs and present them clearly for leadership to actually act on? Where are your informational blind spots?
- Forecast Methodology Review: Are you forecasting at all? If so, how are you doing it, and how many different methods are in use? Are you evaluating whether you're working from the optimal timeframes?
- Forecast Accuracy Review: Are volume forecasts actually predicting real demand, or is staffing built on outdated assumptions or sub-optimal inputs?
- Schedule Adherence Audit: Are agents where they're supposed to be, and are your managers actually managing, having the tough conversations when necessary? Is adherence being measured in a way that reflects real service impact?
- Shrinkage Analysis: How much staffed time is lost to breaks, training, meetings, and system downtime, and is it being planned for or just absorbed?
- Overtime & VTO Strategy Check: Is overtime being used reactively to cover forecasting misses, or proactively as a real staffing lever?
- Intraday Management Review: When volume spikes unexpectedly, does anyone actually adjust in real time, or does service level just quietly slip?
Looking for Training or Talent Blind Spots? Check out The Deep Bench Program →
Technology & AI
- AI Tool Fit Assessment: Was each AI tool in your stack chosen because it solves a real problem, or because it was available and someone wanted to "do AI"?
- IVR Call Flow Audit: Does your phone tree get people to help quickly, or does it exist mainly to deflect calls regardless of whether the need was actually met?
- Self-Service Utilization Check: Is your IVR, chat, and web experience actually handling the simple tasks well enough to save your agents real time?
- Chatbot/Self-Service Escalation Check: When automation fails a customer, how fast and how gracefully does it hand off to a human?
- Call Routing Logic Review: Are calls landing with the agent best equipped to handle them, or just the next available body? Are your Customers getting transferred from agent to agent because your routing isn't effective?
- Speech/Text Analytics Utilization Check: Is the data these tools generate actually driving decisions, or just sitting in a dashboard nobody opens?
- Sentiment Data Accuracy Review: Does your real-time sentiment scoring actually correlate with real Customer outcomes, or is it noise? Are you even leveraging this powerful QA/CX technology, or is it sitting unused?
- Generative AI Drafting Adoption Check: If agents have access to AI-assisted response drafting in chat or email, is it actually being used consistently, or ignored in favor of old habits?
- After-Call Summarization Review: Is AI handling call wrap-up and summary notes, or are agents still burning time writing every note by hand?
- AI Governance & Escalation Path Check: When an AI tool gets something wrong, is there a clean, defined path to a human, or does the error just sit there until a Customer complains?
Customer Experience Measurement
- VoC Program Effectiveness Review: Is Customer feedback actually changing anything, or just getting reported on?
- Survey Design Audit: Are your CSAT/NPS surveys measuring what you think they're measuring, or just measuring how nice the agent sounded?
- Closed-Loop Follow-Up Check: When a Customer flags a serious problem, does anyone actually call them back, or does the ticket just close?
- First Contact Resolution Definition Audit: Is FCR being measured honestly, or defined in a way that flatters the numbers?
- Channel Consistency Review: Does a Customer get the same answer on chat, phone, and email, or does the answer depend on which queue they land in?
- Channel Mix Strategy Review: Does your channel lineup reflect what Customers actually prefer, or just what's cheapest for you to run?
Looking for Leadership & Knowledge Blind Spots? Check out The Deep Bench Program →
Process & Quality
- Call Disposition Data Check: Agents spend real time selecting a disposition at the end of every call, assuming AI isn't already doing it for them. Do you have the right choices available, and are you actually using that data for anything?
- QA Scorecard Alignment Check: Does your quality monitoring actually reward the behaviors that drive good outcomes, or just compliance with a script?
- Script/Process Rigidity Audit: Are agents empowered to solve the actual problem, or locked into a workflow that technically "resolves" the ticket without helping the person?
- Escalation Path Review: When something goes wrong, is the escalation path fast and clear, or does the Customer have to fight their way up?
- Handle Time Pressure Check: Is AHT being managed in a way that's cutting real resolution short just to hit a KPI?
- Complaint Root-Cause Tracking: Are recurring complaints actually being traced back to a process fix, or just handled one at a time forever?
Outbound
- Outbound Compliance & List Quality Check: Are your outbound calling lists, spam-flagging exposure, and number reputation being actively managed, or assumed to be fine until they aren't?
- Outbound Script & Offer Effectiveness Review: Are your outbound scripts and offers tested and refined against what actually converts, or have they been running unchanged for years out of habit?
Strategy & Oversight
- Vendor/BPO Performance Parity Check: If work is outsourced, is the outsourced experience actually held to the same bar as in-house? Did you choose the best vendor? Is it really cheaper once CX is factored in? Is leadership drunk on the outsourced savings and unwilling to give any of it back to fix CX breakage?
- True Cost-Per-Contact Audit: Does your cost-per-contact number include the hidden costs of technology, turnover, and rework, or just raw labor?
- KPI Alignment Review: Do your top-line efficiency metrics and your CX metrics ever get reviewed together, or do they live in separate reports nobody cross-references?
- Reporting Actionability Audit: Do your reports actually drive decisions, or get distributed, glanced at, and filed away?
- Technology Investment ROI Audit: For your last few tech purchases, did anyone go back and check whether the promised outcome actually happened?
- Cost-Cutting Impact Retrospective: For your last major efficiency initiative, did anyone check what it did to CX six months later, or did everyone just move on to the next project?
- Business Continuity Readiness Check: Is there an actual tested plan for a system outage, weather event, or other disruption, or does the plan exist only on paper?
- Compliance Monitoring Audit: Are required disclosures, scripts, and regulatory obligations being actively verified on live calls, or just assumed to be happening because they're written in a policy somewhere?