Gamma has set out a diagnosis-led approach to customer experience programmes, arguing that many problems blamed on contact centres stem from wider organisational issues such as fragmented systems, processes and culture.
In a discussion, Terry Gray, Public Sector Director for CX Practise, and Cassian Bramham-Law, Strategic Partner Director for CX Practise, described "invisible" customer experience challenges that show up as missed calls, long waits and abandoned interactions. They argued these indicators often sit downstream from root causes outside the contact centre.
Symptoms versus causes
Bramham-Law framed missed calls and wait times as signals rather than the problem itself. He said organisations often struggle to link those signals to commercial and operational outcomes such as lost sales or customer churn.
"I think it's a complex area, CX, because CX, like most things, like AI or any number of things, it means different things to different people," Bramham-Law said.
Gray said many organisations treat customer experience as a technology project. He described a pattern where leaders start with an assumed technical fix even when the underlying constraint lies in policy, workflow design, or siloed ownership across departments.
"When we start talking to customers, one of the things that we must help them do is look up, because they get so focused on what they believe is a technical problem, but it's an environmental problem," Gray said.
Contact centre in context
Both executives argued that performance management can reinforce narrow optimisation. They pointed to common measures such as average handling time, speed of answer and abandonment rates. In their view, those metrics do not always reflect decisions elsewhere in an organisation that shape incoming demand and customer behaviour.
Gray said many organisations treat the contact centre as a standalone function. That can mask upstream issues that generate avoidable contact, such as unclear communications, poorly timed customer notifications, or disconnected processes that create repeat calls.
They also highlighted a mindset issue: organisations can become attached to existing processes and try to replicate them in new systems. Gray said customer experience work should start with a clear view of how leaders want an interaction to work, then select technology that fits the desired process.
Friction focus
"Friction" in customer journeys was a recurring theme. Bramham-Law described good customer experience as largely invisible to users, with fewer barriers and less effort required to complete a task. Gray added that decision makers should draw on their own daily experiences as consumers when identifying friction points.
The conversation also distinguished between definitions of success. Bramham-Law said what "good" looks like varies by sector and business model. Some organisations may prioritise access to expert staff; others may prioritise low cost and speed. Customer experience work, he argued, should reflect those differences rather than applying a uniform template.
Load and measurement
Gray introduced the concept of "dynamic load" on customer-facing teams. He said even small changes in messaging or channel options can shift demand between phone and digital services, which can then change future requirements.
He gave an example from work with a national energy provider, where a front-end message offered callers the option to receive a link and use an existing website during peak queues. Gray said 30% of traffic moved to digital channels on the first day after the change.
Both argued that measurement should come before major resourcing decisions. They said organisations often see a high-volume symptom and move straight to hiring or expanding capacity. A better approach starts with data on why customers contact, where they drop out, and what happens next.
University clearing example
Gray described work with a higher education institution during the annual clearing process, when prospective students call in large volumes after receiving results. He said the institution recorded 8,000 missed calls the prior year, with limited information behind the headline number.
He said the diagnosis began by bringing together teams involved in the end-to-end process and agreeing the likely drivers. The analysis identified a queuing constraint with an existing provider: callers could wait up to 60 minutes and then be cut off. After changes, Gray said, the following year saw 72 abandoned calls, which he attributed to callers hanging up when prompted to fetch a student number.
Bramham-Law said the example illustrated a step-by-step method: diagnose the problem, measure specific failure points, then test fixes in discrete parts.
"If we can measure it, we can fix it, and we can show you how we've done that, and we can, I think most importantly, we can show you the outcome of doing that," Bramham-Law said.
The executives said they expect customer experience programmes to remain iterative. They noted that many organisations refresh core contact centre technology on multi-year cycles, while customer expectations and channel behaviour change over shorter intervals.