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2 minute read
The CEO was convinced we had an agent problem.
Customer support abandonment sat at 54%. More than half the people calling for help hung up before reaching anyone. Customers were furious. The support team was drowning.
The diagnosis? Our agents weren't good enough.
The proposed fix? Better training. Stricter accountability. Maybe new hires.
I looked at the same data and saw something completely different.
What They Saw vs. What I Saw
What everyone else saw: Underperforming agents who needed to work harder.
What I saw: Agents trapped in a system that made good performance impossible.
Here's what was actually broken:
- No intelligent call routing—calls dumped into a generic queue regardless of agent availability or expertise
- No capacity planning—coverage was guesswork, not aligned to actual call patterns
- No visibility—when agents worked remotely, we couldn't see where time actually went
- No performance definition—agents had no clear targets for calls, emails, or resolution rates
- No improvement process—when performance dipped, we had no way to diagnose why
You can't fix performance you can't see. And you can't improve what you haven't measured.
This wasn't a people problem. It was an architecture problem.
What Actually Fixed It
I didn't start with coaching or accountability. I started with the infrastructure.
Infrastructure: Routing + Capacity Planning
Built intelligent call routing so customers reached the right agent based on issue type and availability. Created hour-by-hour schedules mapped to actual demand patterns—agents scheduled when customers actually needed them, not when it felt right.
Visibility: Real-Time Activity Monitoring
Implemented monitoring so we could see utilization regardless of location. Not surveillance—clarity. Where was time actually going? What was creating drag?
Standards: Performance Definition + Feedback Loops
Set clear daily targets based on capacity data. When agents missed them, we had a process to diagnose root causes—skills gap, process bottleneck, or tech issue. We could see it and fix it.
The Result
Abandonment dropped from 54% to 5%.
Same team. Same customers. Different system.
We didn't motivate people to work harder. We built infrastructure that made better performance inevitable.
The Pattern Most Companies Miss
When metrics don't improve, the default reaction is: "Our people need to step up."
But most performance problems aren't motivation problems. They're visibility problems.
If you can't see what's happening in real time, you're fixing symptoms, not causes.
If you can't measure utilization, capacity, and workflow friction, you're guessing.
If performance targets aren't clearly defined and based on data, you're just demanding "better"—which means nothing.
The companies that actually improve don't work harder. They build systems that make improvement visible and measurable.
The Question That Changes Everything
Before you blame performance, ask yourself:
"Do I have the infrastructure in place that would make good performance even possible?"
Can you see real-time activity and utilization?
Do you have capacity planning aligned to actual demand?
Are targets clearly defined based on data, not gut feel?
When someone underperforms, can you diagnose why—or are you guessing?
If you answered "no" to any of these, you don't have a people problem.
You have a systems architecture problem.
And that's actually good news—because systems can be fixed.
What This Means for You
That 54% abandonment rate wasn't just a customer service metric. It was revenue walking out the door.
Every performance gap in your business—whether it's support, sales, operations, or collections—has the same root cause: you're trying to improve what you can't see.
In the next post, I'll show you how this same pattern shows up in collections, where volume and results are disconnected—and what to do about it.
But for now, ask yourself: Where in your business are you demanding better performance without having built the infrastructure that makes it measurable?
Because if you can't measure it, you can't manage it.
And if you can't see it, you're just hoping.
AED Solution helps organizations build performance infrastructure—the systems that make better results visible, measurable, and inevitable.
Ready to see where your blind spots are?
