So I am an infrastructure engineer. I make sure all the servers/switches/routers/computers and such work.
This year we upgraded our call center. The CSRs run thin clients. We bought new servers to run VMWare, bought a new SAN, bought licenses to run Windows server and upgraded all the CSRs. Then we migrated to Office 365. I just figured out how to get autoregistration working on the thin clients (not terribly hard, just a lot of little parts) to roll out the new version of Office.
And word comes down that the CSRs all need dual monitors.
The thin clients we use do not appear to support dual monitors. Their Citrix solution appears to support dual monitors but that is not what we own. I have a call out to confirm this. If this is the case, I have to buy a couple hundred PCs and monitors and all the new hardware and licensing that we bought is trash.
Does whoever decided this know that it’s going to require an additional $200,000 and that the existing hardware will need to be replaced? Because that person needs to make the call to spend the money.
In this case it is not a poorly planned project, just that we are expanding. We bought a company (we are buying companies in our space pretty regularly now, which is good) and the upgrade was planned before we bought the new company.
After looking at the integration, it was decided that combining the call centers works well but to do so the reps really need dual monitors.
On the bright side, after speaking with our present vendor we might have a solution that costs ~300 per head instead of ~900 per head. The vendor, who will be losing our business, called and said ‘We are coming out with a product at the end of the year which will do dual monitors’. I said ‘That is too late’ He said ‘Give me your info and I will have Bob call you. He used to work for us but now works for X and they should be able to get what you need’.
Bob called and is sending me a test unit.
I am mighty impressed with the sales guy from our present company.
Something similar happened many years ago when I briefly worked as a shoe salesman for Kinney Shoes. There was a Volume Shoes store a few spaces away in the shopping mall, managed by a Mexican-American man. A non-English-speaking Mexican migrant worker came into Volume Shoes, looking for a pair of heavy-duty winter work boots. The manager realized that his store didn’t have boots that were suitably durable for the kind of work the customer would be doing, so he walked the customer down to our store and sold him a pair of our boots. My own store manager was mighty impressed by that, and I think he gave his sales commission to the other guy.
"And word comes down that the CSRs all need dual monitors. "
I know it’s a silly question no one dare ask if they value continued employment, but why?
Some muckity muck saw dual montiors in a movie and thought it looked cool and would double productivity (after all, two screens means you can take two calls at the same time, right?)
I can believe that the call center staff need dual monitors. Perhaps one is for their script and the other is for them to enter the responses? I have two here at work, and one always has Outlook open, while the other usually has Word, Excel or the SDMB open on it.
But here’s another potential issue for the OP; are the desks wide enough for dual monitors? We usually set people up with 2 22" monitors and that needs almost four feet of deskspace.
I used to do CSR work and used two to four monitors (one Remote Desktop, one ticket tracking, one email + IM, one internet / other). Four monitors was best, but each monitor was a standard 1080p monitor. So I could have made do with one 40" 4K monitor.
Multiple monitors did significantly increase productivity. Simply keeping the ticket details visible while RDPing to another system was an immense help. And then there was having the procedure of what to do on the other screen.
On the bright side, after speaking with our present vendor we might have a solution that costs ~300 per head instead of ~900 per head. The vendor, who will be losing our business, called and said ‘We are coming out with a product at the end of the year which will do dual monitors’. I said ‘That is too late’./QUOTE]That’s only about 60 days away. Surely they have a version of that undergoing testing about now. Offer to be a beta test site for them – all you want is $xxx in credit for their products – and start some of your CSR’s testing the new system. And remember, beta testers can influence the product to work the way that’s best for them.