What do highly successful contact centers do that sets them apart? During interviews with 17 contact centers in 5 countries (the U.S., the United Kingdom, South Africa, UAE-Dubai and Australia), I noticed a distinctive pattern: managers at the top-performing organizations were more concerned about five key issues than their less-successful counterparts. They told us:

1. A Guiding Vision is Critical
Without exception, top performers from Dubai to Michigan spoke to me passionately about their vision for their organizations. As a result, they tend to dedicate more resources to making sure their people, processes and technology are aligned with that vision. They also talked about their contact center's role in carrying out the broader corporate strategy.

For example, one contact center director told me about the need to protect his contact center from failure by understanding what differentiates it and where it adds value. He had recently turned down a new contract because it was in conflict with the business strategy.

2. Employee Satisfaction Rules
Successful contact centers take employee satisfaction seriously, because they understand its impact on service as well as costs. BNZ's Susan Basile told us, "Take your employees on every step of the journey with you. Dissatisfied employees will not have great conversations with customers."

While most contact centers measure employee satisfaction, I noticed that the more successful organizations dedicated internal resources to resolving employee issues and reporting back to management.

3. A Commitment to Training Starts at the Top
Top-performing contact centers include leaders and even senior management in their training and development plan. For these organizations, training is a continuous process, and most had formal certification plans designed to continually maintain and improve skills at every level.

4. Take Care of Customers and They Will Take Care of You
To be truly competitive and uncover potential service problems, today's most successful contact centers organizations are digging deeper to find out what their customers really think. It's not easy to quantify client satisfaction, retention and loyalty, but of the contact centers I interviewed, those that tried hardest to measure performance in these areas were performing better than their counterparts. Some measured satisfaction daily, and one center regularly surveys customers on their willingness to become an advocate -- a measure of loyalty that goes beyond satisfaction.

5. Technology Should Serve People, Not the Other Way Around
Top performers focus on making sure technology serves their clients' needs. They regularly assess how their systems are working for them: Does the IVR have too many options? With a new campaign, could the customer get trapped in an IVR menu? They don't let their agents struggle with technology issues alone, and when new systems are needed, they invest with caution. Finally, these organizations take the time to observe agents using the technology and get regular feedback about it from both customers and staff.

Provided by Johanna Lubahn, managing director for call center services for Cohen Brown Management Group. Johanna_Lubahn@cbmg.com, (517) 349-4066.