Everyone needs to save money, but a more fundamental challenge for call centers is how they allocate resources. Introducing an on-line knowledge base or an automated trouble ticketing system only makes sense if your company is willing to incur the costs of employing people who contribute useful information to the knowledge base, and who can address the issues that customers need help with.

There is no guarantee you'll lower costs of assisting customers if you automate mechanisms for delivering trouble tickets to agents or for disseminating answers to customers' questions. Nor can you guarantee that your customers will be happier because they can submit requests for help, or view your knowledge base, from your Web site.

The effectiveness of an automated process depends on the environment in which the process occurs. Agents' skills and customers' attitudes are essential parts of this environment. The satisfaction that customers experience is often the result of agents' abilities to convey their knowledge, either directly in their communication with customers, or indirectly through the information they document within knowledge bases.

Before we can demonstrate that an implementation of call center technology is beneficial to customers, we first have to show what effects, if any, the technology has on the modes and outcomes of your company's interactions with customers. This is a subject I'll consider in more detail next week.

In the meantime, I thank you for reading Call Center Magazine's blogs, and I wish you a happy Thanksgiving.