Effective planning is a central theme in the best contact centers. A major objective of good planning is to get the right number of skilled people and supporting resources in place at the right times, doing the right things.

But systematic planning accomplishes more than that. It also improves communication and culture in the following ways:

• Creating a body of information that wouldn’t otherwise be available
• Forcing people to look into the future and see their work in the context of a large framework
• Necessitating communication about values — issues such as resource allocations, budgeting and workload priorities

Largely due to effective planning, great contact centers work so well that they are almost transparent. The teams concentrate on delivering the organization’s services and on building the organization’s value and brand — not on running the contact center per se. The center just works. As a result, higher levels of value are possible.

Excerpt from Call Center Management on Fast Forward, Brad Cleveland.