The Red Circle Method: From Vision to Reality, One Quarter at a Time

Every contact center leader has lived this story: you spend 12–18 months developing a comprehensive new tech strategy and implementation plan, only to watch capabilities advance dramatically during that time. By the time your plan is “ready,” the requirements are obsolete and competitors are already gaining ground.

As tech visionary Ray Kurzweil once said, “Our intuition about the future is linear. But the reality of information technology is exponential, and that makes a profound difference. If I take 30 steps linearly, I get to 30. If I take 30 steps exponentially, I get to a billion.”

We’re in the era of exponential AI acceleration, which means the biggest risk isn’t doing the wrong thing. It’s doing nothing at all. So how do you balance bold vision with practical, low-risk execution? 

We’ve developed a proven framework we call the Red Circle Method to help you.

The Cost of Over-Planning

First, though, some real talk: getting stuck in the endless planning cycle is costing you—and maybe more than you think.

• Lost competitive edge: While you’re perfecting a strategy, others are testing, learning, and iterating.
• Operational drag: Agents continue a battle against inefficiencies chipping away at customer satisfaction.
• Financial impact: Each month of delay means missed opportunities to improve AHT, CSAT, and FCR.

Bottom line? Delay is the most expensive choice you can make.

Think Bigger: Reimagining the Possibilities

When it comes to successful AI implementation, vision matters. Incremental optimization won’t dramatically transform your contact center—but wholesale reinvention isn’t realistic, either. The key is to imagine without constraints, then translate that vision into quarterly stepping stones.

Before we get to the Red Circle Method, let’s start with a thought exercise.

Ask yourself: What would your contact center look like if you built it today—with no legacy systems, no headcount constraints, and AI-native from day one? Don’t worry about feasibility yet, just dream big. Then, for each reimagined process, consider how you might get there from where you are now. Identify three or four stepping stones, each one reasonably achievable within a quarter, that move your contact center closer to that transformation.

Consider how one real-world telecommunications company struggling with an ineffective IVR phone tree put this exercise into action. Instead of trying to improve the phone tree, they imagined a whole new first-contact experience—one where conversational AI could understand a customer’s needs, route them to the correct agent, and even handle many issues itself. And so, over the course of four quarters, they targeted smaller use cases that led them to their ideal  state.

• Quarter 1: Basic balance inquires and bill explanations
• Quarter 2: Service outage reporting and updates
• Quarter 3: Plan changes and upgrades
• Quarter 4: Complex troubleshooting and technical support

Each step was small and manageable, but together, they reshaped the customer service experience.

The Red Circle Method Framework

Now that you have an idea of where you want to go, it’s time to act. And the Red Circle Method offers a proven, disciplined, operator-first approach to quarterly progress.

Step 1: Audit your current pain points. Review QA problem areas, top call drivers, and handle time distribution. Ask your agents what wastes the most time in a typical call. You’ll quickly realize you have all the data you need to find ROI opportunities.

Step 2: Red-circle two or three of the most targeted, measurable, solvable issues. Avoid vague statements like “improve customer experience.” Something like “reduce password reset handle time by 30 seconds” works because it’s testable and impactful. Remember, focused goals prevent wasted effort.

Step 3: Build a bottom-up business case. Numbers create cross-functional alignment, so attach dollar values to AHT, CSAT, and QA scores and run A/B tests or time studies to validate impact. Make sure stakeholders in Finance, IT, and CX are on the same page regarding ROI expectations.

In practice, this framework sets you up for something we like to call the 33% Rule. Say you pilot three use cases—the ones you identified in Step 2—per quarter. Even if only one out of three is successful each quarter, you’re building a repeatable win rate, along with a culture of momentum. That’s where long-term transformation begins.

Momentum Is the New Strategy

Visionary thinking combined with disciplined execution creates a powerful rhythm: Dream without limits. Then test and prove value one quarter at a time. Repeat. 

This dual approach avoids the extremes of analysis paralysis on one end and reckless moonshots on the other. Your contact center will feel a positive impact in a matter of weeks.

And if a use case doesn’t work out as expected? It’s much easier to pivot after three months than after a year or more of planning and evaluating.

Beyond that, quarterly micro-pilots also build credibility for scaling. As teams adopt a test-and-learn mindset, you create a culture where AI is embraced rather than tolerated or ignored. The best technology is the technology that gets used, after all—and these quarterly stepping stones provide demonstrable progress for boards, employees, and customers.

In a nutshell: Perfect plans don’t win. Progress does.

We’ve already seen the Red Circle Method help CX leaders balance bold imagination with disciplined execution. Now it’s your turn to transform strategy into reality, one quarter at a time. Try red-circling just one challenge this quarter, and let it prove what’s possible.

Guest blog post written by Laivly.