He postulated that there is a clear progression of generations taking place in the contact center, and if these customer hubs don’t watch out, they may be left behind. He used the AMC hit TV show — and one of my safer guilty pleasures — Mad Men, to illustrate his point. (Assistant Editor Jessica Tsai, a Wesleyan graduate, would like to point out that creator Matthew Weiner is also a Wesleyan alum. Cardinal pride!)

Just as the main characters in Mad Men are smack between the post war, World War II times and the late ’60s/early ’70s and don’t realize they are about to be captive spectators in a tremendous generational shift, the same is occurring in contact centers. Dawson says most contact center managers are Generation X (between the ages of 32 and 43), while most agents are smack-dab in Generation Y, in their mid-20s. “As there is a growing disconnection among the employees, it can also spread to dealings with customers,” he said.

Technologically speaking, Dawson said that we can see the changes coming to the contact center. As more customers want to use email, chat, Web, text messaging, and more to interact with agents, contact center managers need to recognize the shift and reevaluate how agents are used and measured. Generation Y-ers are generally more apt to be able to text and communicate via email quicker than resolving issues on the phone, and consequently Dawson said these agents should be used accordingly.

It seems that a change is needed in contact centers, as attrition rates have been as high as 50 percent in brick-and-mortar facilities. Agents need to feel empowered to use their native abilities to deliver service to customers. Summarizing his points, Dawson left the attendees with seven steps essential to giving agents the werewithal to delight customers:

• map out customer access strategy;
• un-silo customer data;
• reevaluate performance metrics;
• build strategy for negative interactions;
• reevaluate how to measure customer satisfaction;
• use analytics; and
• figure out modality.