Some good stats from contactcentrelink.com.  They above estimate per seat includes salary, technology, and support.  That number does not surprise me in the slightest, and in fact might be low.  In Canada we used a rule of thumb of $75 – $100K per seat.

What is more worrisome is the effectiveness of the investment, which they describe here.  40% of agents time is involved in non-customer facing activity.  This is is partly because of follow up on customer questions, but he next question, is whether expensive and highly trained call centre folks are the right ones to be be performing those activities.

In addition, what is the negative impact on customer service during the customer calls (the 60%) when the employee knows they have the support things pending (worrying about the 40%).

The Report indicates a drop in the percentage of calls resolved by the first agent over the past three years: from 82.1% in the 2005 Report to 80.7% in 2006 and 69.8% this year. Also, contact centre agents spend around 60% of their time speaking to customers, responding to e-mails and handling queries.

These two findings are concerning: 40% of the investment made in agent seats is not directly linked to customer interaction and when it is, only seven out of ten calls are resolved by the first agent.

Source: Show