This is an excellent discussion.
Most of what I personally read on my occassional visit to this forum has to do with the monetary gains of the call center industry. I personally have worked as a CSR and now I am actually setting up a contact center for a small dot com retailer.
What I believe, and I hope that I am not alone in this view, is that it takes a certain quality of person to be a CSR. Someone who gets satisfaction out of helping others and that is their primary focus.
Stats on their performance is secondary. In my position, my focus is not on stats so much. My concern is the customer. I know the importance of my center’s stats, I know the costs involved but I also know that this center is not about stats and costs but is about the customer. I will never create a sweat shop atmosphere and foresake the high caliber performance and attention to customer needs that my staff offers.
I look at it this way, a CSR concerned about customer satisfaction…all customers…will eventually clue in that customer service is lacking if so many have to wait in the queue and therefore pick up the pace as the queue grows. I think it would be very wrong of me to beat down a quality customer-oriented agent with daily stats about where they can improve when in fact their work is top notch already.