It's true -- LED displays are still the most durable, affordable and visible type of overhead display a call center can buy. The bright light-emitting diodes can be seen from all angles, in sun-drenched corridors near windows, and from much farther away than their high-resolution LCD and plasma counterparts.

Charlottesville, Va.-based Inova Solutions calls LED displays the "workhorse" of the market. "We just got a call from Verizon to replace a display system that we sold them over 20 years ago," says Wendy Hubbard, the company's executive vice president and co-founder. "They're bullet-proof, they're easily maintained and -- even though there are so many formats and different ways to display information now -- they are still the most visible from the longest distance."

Inova Solutions and Plano, Texas-based Symon Communications still do a brisk business in LED screens. According to Symon's Bob Brittan: "If you're displaying strictly statistics and it's in a large room, we'd probably recommend an LED board. It's a proven technology and we have customers who are still using our products that they bought 15 years ago. They're just very, very reliable."

Hubbard has seen some call centers return to LEDs after trying higher-tech, higher resolution displays for a while. "Things go in and out of vogue," she says. "But, in general, nothing beats an LED display for a 'call-to-action' message. In other words, not just communicating the condition, but what we need to do about it in the moment, because the LED display is so visible and so bright, and even has an audible tone. So if you're trying to proactively manage your call center, not reacting after-the-fact, but you're in the moment trying to optimize your agents' performance, there is nothing like the LED to provide that call to action."

Installation of the newer LED display models is fairly simple and inexpensive. Symon's NetLite II line of LED displays offers a wireless version in which the only cable used is the power cord. Inova Solutions' X Series displays use the power-over-ethernet standard to draw both data and power from the network, so the display only requires a single ethernet jack.

A Higher Resolution Solution

But what if you need to display more than statistics? There are plenty of situations in a call center that demand high-resolution displays of information -- even video. Inova's marketing specialist Jason See offers one example of a sales center that keeps pace with its competition via LCD display: "They use the LCD multimedia to show third-party specials, whether it's on a Web site or in a television commercial. It keeps the agents informed on what's going on outside of their little shell."

A center might also install LCD displays in the breakroom, showing network television on one side of the screen for resting agents, with call volume stats on the other side to alert them when it's necessary to get back to the phones.

In some cases, real-time network TV can provide useful information to help agents to better serve their customers. Take the utilities industry, for example. "If I work in a utility call center, I can watch the Weather Channel on the display along with my key statistics -- because both of those data points are relevant to customer satisfaction," Hubbard explains. "In that case, an LCD is obviously a better trade-off."

The Plasma Question

You may have noticed that our examples favor LCD, or liquid crystal display, over plasma screens. We asked NEC Display Solutions' senior product manager Hans Baumann about the difference between LCD and plasma. "Plasma is generally not recommended for static images that will be up for extended periods of time. There really is no good way to protect the display [from burn-in issues] in that type of an environment," he says.

NEC does make plasmas, but Baumann says that he wouldn't recommend them for call centers, that is "unless you're showing full-motion video -- which isn't typical of a call center application. [If you're displaying static data], you can orbit the image and move it around in a figure-eight pattern to shift the pixels that are being excited, which will reduce the [burn-in] effect. But over time, it's not the ideal technology." In the past, he adds, plasma displays may have been used often because the price differential between LCD and plasma was so high that "you could afford to burn up a couple plasmas before you would reach the cost of one LCD."

That equation has changed though -- "the price of the LCDs has dropped so drastically that it really is the technology of choice," Baumann says. For more from NEC's Hans Baumann about the technical details behind LCD and plasma screens, read our entire interview with him on callcentermagazine.com's online blog.

Have It Both Ways

Wondering how to decide between highly visible LED screens and information-rich LCDs? Many centers are using both. "[The LCD] has more of a background quality," Inova's Hubbard says, likening it to having a television on at home while you're doing something else. "The LED has more of a foreground quality. It's communicating what we need to do right now." Using both systems can help you to communicate both actively and passively with your call center staff.

Symon is planning to offer a way of controlling both sign systems with a single system. Joe Rabah, Symon's CIO and senior director of product management, explains: "The single controller card would be able to communicate in one mechanism, in one fashion, to both types of product -- LED and LCD -- via a single system, which is the Symon Enterprise Server."

The Small Screen

All agents have their own screens right in front of them. Why complicate things by adding big screens overhead? There are a few reasons for displaying the data on a wallboard, says Symon's Brittan. "For one thing, everybody can see what's going on, especially the supervisors. A lot of call centers put people up there by name or extension so they know exactly who's active, who's out at the time, who's on call wrap-up and who's idle. Having that information is very beneficial, especially if your center has teams. It also boosts morale because you can see which team is doing better or worse, and how the whole center is performing."

Putting information on overhead displays effectively increases the center's screen real estate by limiting the distractions on the agent's desktop screens. What's more, it unites the center and gives the floor supervisors a more central view of operations from anywhere they stand.

Inova's Jason See points out that it's not just supervisors who leave their desks: "We've found that agents are not always at their desks. Many call centers are becoming more mobile. Agents are allowed to get up and move from workstation to workstation, and sometimes, the workstations themselves are temporary."

Both Symon and Inova, as well as other firms (see the vendor list at left), also offer desktop dashboards in which the vital metrics sit right on the agent's screen. Desktop dashboards are ideal for small call centers. (Just because your center only has six agents doesn't mean they don't need to see what's going on.)

But keep in mind that, when we talk about displays, we're ultimately talking about the ability to convey information to call center personnel. Symon's Brittan sums up the importance of displays: "Displays help call center managers keep up the center's productivity, watch agents' performance and do more with less by visually communicating with agents to help them serve their customers."

Display Resources

Here are some of the vendors that offer displays and the technology your center needs to bring information from the various sources to the displays.

Centergistic Solutions

Inova Solutions

NEC Display Solutions'

Spectrum Corporation

Symon Communications

Texas Digital

Accessibility Metrics: Remember, It's About The Customer

By Tim Montgomery, Founder, The Service Level Group

While you're staring at your overhead display, monitoring the metrics, it's important to keep in mind that those numbers are more than just numbers: they represent callers, real people who have relationships with your call center. ICMI Certified Associate and Founder of The Service Level Group Tim Montgomery offers the following advice for call centers (excerpted from "Moving Metrics Into Action," a white paper that he wrote for Inova Solutions):

While the accessibility objectives and their corresponding goals are often predetermined, contact center leaders can refocus their organization to gain a better connection between the accessibility goal and the customer. Doing this requires leaders to rethink everything they know about their accessibility metrics and look at what it really means to the people they are there to serve. Because the accessibility metrics have become so engrained into the day-to-day life in a center, it's often difficult to make this connection. The points below are from the customer's perspective and what accessibility objectives mean to them.

• Is the door open when promised? A service level or ASA objective is the price of admission — if you advertise your hours of operation, you're going to want to have the doors open at those times. Any time there is a delay, it's the equivalent of making people stand outside waiting for admission.
• How much of my time are you willing to take? Your accessibility objectives really measure the amount of disrespect you're providing to a customer. When someone says they need service, every second that you make them wait is taking time away from their life.
• Should I begin to look for an alternative? Making people wait on hold in a contact center allows them to reconsider their relationship with the organization. And, with the fingertip alternatives available via the Internet, an extended hold time can result in a new opportunity for a competitor.
• I'm too busy right now. When people hang up, they are sending a message about what they've decided to do instead of waiting — and that is do something else. The message can be as simple as "I don't have tolerance for wasting time" or "I have alternatives." Either way, by hanging up once placed in queue sends a message — one directly from the customer.

Source: "Moving Metrics Into Action," Inova Solutions (www.inovasolutions.com); The Service Level Group (www.servicelevelgroup.com).

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