CRM magazine Best Practices Series: Contact Center Solutions: Doing the Right Thing Often Yields...

In the following special section of CRM magazine you will find best practice recommendations from nine leading vendors serving the contact center industry. As you might imagine, several focus heavily on improving the productivity, efficiency, and morale of the agents by empowering them with technology that actually helps them do their jobs better and more professionally. There are probably not many jobs more frustrating than fielding an endless stream of inquiries from customers without the information to successfully answer their questions. Add to that a confrontational environment fueled by long wait times and it's no wonder that turnover rates are traditionally higher in the contact center than anywhere else in the corporation.

The basic premise is pretty simple: Increase the job satisfaction of the agents who represent the first line of interaction with customers. Agents, in turn, will be more likely to provide better satisfaction to those they serve. Add to the equation better training and feedback, calls routed more intelligently, flexible schedules, and home sourcing, and you've improved the agents' work experience to an extent where tangible benefits will accrue in the quality of service they provide their customers. And improved agent-retention rates will further reduce new staff training costs.

Many of the technology solutions now available to contact centers truly serve multiple masters exceedingly well. The ascendancy of virtual contact centers is one of those unstoppable trends that make sense on many different levels. The same solutions that enable agents to work from home in a virtual contact center environment also have the very real side benefits of saving energy, decreasing carbon emissions, and reducing traffic for the rest of us who drive to work.

What makes the following essays especially interesting is that they discuss strategies that simply weren't feasible just a few years ago. And some trends, such as virtual contact centers, will take some getting used to for contact center managers. But the benefits far outweigh the discomfort of changing management style and the burden of implementing solutions to adapt to this new way of operating.

I thank the companies that participated in this section for their willingness to reach out to our readers with their particular vision and message. For more information about these companies, please visit their Web sites or contact them directly. This section of CRM magazine is available in PDF on our Web site, www.destinationcrm.com/whitepapers, for your convenience.