Bottom-Line Call Center Management : Creating a Culture of Accountability and Excellent Customer Service (Improving Human Performance Series)

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Summary: A hands-on guide to customer running customer call centers
Review: Until recently, customer call centers were very much back-end operations, out of site and out of the minds of corporate chiefs. That was before several recent high-profile fiascos in the US, UK and Australia, where badly-run call centers destroyed in a few months the customer goodwill that had been expensively built up over years.

It doesn't have to be that way. David Butler shows how call centers can be a bottom-line asset to companies, not just a money sink. It cites, for example, the case of a highly cost-effective center in the south-west United States with an annual employee turnover of under 3% and (if I guess the real identity of the company correctly) many happy repeat customers, including myself.

David Butler owns a call center management company and is a recognized expert on the subject. "Bottom-Line Call Center Management" contains detailed information on where best to locate new call centers, how to evaluate and implement new call center technology, how to calculate the value of a call center in dollar terms, and how to create an environment that will attract and retain a loyal and productive staff.

For those of us on the customer side of the business, Dr Butler stresses the need to ensure that representatives are familiar with the products they support or sell. Call center representatives, just like all customer-facing staff, need to understand how customers use the company products and services. If representatives can't articulate product knowledge and understand customer concerns, they really are just a "cost center" and, as the author repeatedly warns, are in danger of having their jobs eliminated or sent abroad. That represents a disaster to their communities and a financial loss to the companies that employed them.