As a part of our upcoming article on Electronic Displays in the call center, we spoke with NEC Display Solutions' senior product manager, Hans Baumann. We wanted to get the technical dope on displays, particularly the high resolution plasma and LCD displays that are appearing in so many call centers, large and small.

Baumann explained to us some of the mysteries of displays, like burn-in, viewing angle, and glowing phosphors.

What is the life-span of a display monitor?

Hans Baumann, NEC: This is a good question, and it's something that's really not addressed well in our industry because typically the specification is number of hours to half-brightness, and that means typically that's 50,000-60,000 hours a display can be run. The backlight, the fluorescent tubes in the back will only be putting out half as much light as they did when it was new.

That tells you part of the story, but the bigger part of the story [is]: are the other components in the display also designed to last that long? Typically they're not, typically, many display manufacturers spec out 20,000-30,000 hours for the other components.

If you want to ensure that agents understand their workloads in the context of the workload of the entire center – whether agents' jobs involve taking orders or resolving requests for support – few tools are more useful and reliable than electronic displays. But what if your space can't accommodate them?

This question came up during a conversation I had yesterday afternoon with a manufacturer of electronic displays.

Some call centers are located in buildings where, for example, columns obstruct agents' views of displays, or where agents' cubicles have high walls.

The person I spoke with pointed out that when a large display isn't the best option for presenting information that agents need to do their jobs, it's often a good idea to show the information on agents' desktops.

And, he added, even when your space does allow you to install a large display that lots of agents can view at the same time, it's still worthwhile to present statistics for individual agents, and the groups they're part of, on agents' desktops.

How does your call center disseminate information among agents? I invite you to e-mail me to share what works for you.