Today's call center manager values two things: times savings and sales organization and though, many probably don't have the time to pluck a book from a shelf addressing these subjects, here is a book by an industry expert you won't want pass up.

Donna Fluss, whose work appears several times a year in Call Center Magazine, has written an engaging book called The Real-Time Contact Center: Strategies, Tactics and Technologies for Building a Profitable Service and Sales Organization.

This book takes you step-by-step through the process of transforming your center. It’s not a hand book for day-to-day operation(although there’s a lot of value in it from that point of view). Rather, it’s a book that makes a powerful argument for turning your call center into the kind of corporate asset that executives only dream about.

Using time-tested methods, such as checklists, worksheets and calm, friendly prose, she walks you through the process of buying technology, using it effectively, and perhaps most important —communicating the value of what the call center brings to the rest of the company.

What we liked about this book is it treats managing a call center like managing any other profit center — there’s no assumption that the call center is just a money pit that can’t be expected to contribute to the bottom line. Fluss tackles the issue head on, talkingto managers like professionals, rather than as cogs in a faceless corporate wheel.

“Changing the culture of a contact center from cost-oriented to a profit center that is measuredagainst corporate revenue objectives instead of departmental productivity goals is challenging and will take time,” she writes. “The next transition to a real-time engaged contact center will be even more difficult, but financially rewarding for companies that make the necessary investments.”

Donna Fluss’ Real-Time Contact Center is published by Amacom.