In our attempt to answer this broad question, let's examine one aspect of customer service for which call center managers are accountable: quality.

Quality is a difficult concept to pin down. So many resources that a call center depends on, human and technological, contribute to a call center's ability to assist customers. Given their jobs, agents are directly accountable for how they each communicate on behalf of your company. Yet their performance is not entirely attributable to them. Without a combination of supervision, evaluation, coaching and training, neither agents nor managers have any sense of how their work contributes to the call center's performance.

And, without a certain combination of technical resources, some of which your call center shares with the rest of your company, agents have no way to communicate with customers at all. When we refer to technology, we have to make an important distinction. Certain types of technology, like computer networks and databases, are necessary to enable businesses to run, regardless of whether they maintain call centers. You can say the same thing about furniture and facilities; these, too, matter to call centers because they matter to businesses.

Other types of systems, like call routing systems, IVR systems and customer databases, are more likely to fall under the specific purview of call centers. These systems certainly affect whether agents can do their jobs. If, for example, an agent encounters a delay with displaying a customer's record during a call, or the agent can't view the record at all, then it's difficult for both the customer and the agent to complete their conversation to the customer's satisfaction. In the absence of an agent, customers are likely to be frustrated with an IVR system, speech recognition system or Web site that doesn't allow them to complete their transactions efficiently.

Does that mean that you can ascribe the quality of agents' communication with customers to technology? You wouldn't make a decision to keep an agent on your team based on how well his or her equipment functions. You evaluate the agent on his or her ability to communicate.

Here's a trickier question: Can you attribute the quality of your call center's performance to technology? This question is harder to answer than a question about agents because companies judge organizations on a wider range of criteria than they judge individuals. Some call centers need to generate revenue or increase their productivity, in terms of the number of customers they serve, to justify their very existence. What's more, whether call centers invest in tools like scheduling systems or speech recognition systems, they have to demonstrate that they have generated more revenue or have increased their productivity shortly after purchasing these systems.

Any investment, in people or technology, is essentially the same in this respect: some quantifiable benefit must accrue to the overall company as soon as possible. Otherwise, the company will characterize the investment as a loss.

The problem with judging quality in terms of technology is that it conflates – and confuses – two different things. Computers automate easily repeatable tasks, like setting up a schedule, viewing a customer's record or looking up one's bank balance, so that these tasks require less time than they would if people performed them without computers. Technology enhances productivity, not quality.

Technology is not part of a company's workforce; technology refers instead to tools a company's workforce uses to increase its productivity. If your immediate aim is to ensure your call center is as productive as possible, technology is the area to focus on. If your goal is to improve the way your call center fulfills its responsibility to customers, then your primary focus has to be on how you develop agents.

Productivity and quality aren't antithetical; you can improve both at the same time. But there is a difference between the two. Although your call center may depend on computer networks and databases, the center itself doesn't exist to maintain them; that's a responsibility on which you collaborate with your IT team.

In the final analysis, what you're responsible for is defining what quality customer service means for your company. Through your ability to synthesize a plan for how you hire, train, evaluate and establish career paths for agents, you demonstrate that you're uniquely qualified to know what customers expect from interacting with your company. Quality is your responsibility because it's within your power.