It is a conceit of the business of customer support that numbers are indispensable. But has so much emphasis been placed on numbers in the contact center that organizations are losing sight of the customer experience, going so far as to turn their managers into little more than statistical enforcers?

"[When] agents are only measured on average handle time, coaching just does not occur," says Debbie Qaqish, vice president of marketing for contact center solution developer Knowlagent. "These managers believe in the power of coaching, but they don't know how to make it happen and then measure the impact of it happening."

There are myriad tools to support experience-based coaching, but their ROI isn't as clear as those that measure such activities as average handle time. "Technology has given us the ability to truly know what we're doing from a quality standpoint. We can have the system go out and capture the interaction, we can have a quality expert listen to that and see exactly what the agent is doing on the screen," says Bob Furniss, president of contact center consultancy Touchpoint Associates. "But when we can measure talk time down to one tenth of a second, it's hard to break that expectation and look beyond the cold numbers into the quality of the customer experience."

Some companies are making a concerted effort. "When we decided to purchase Witness Systems [for quality monitoring], with that came the commitment to set aside time to ensure that quality was our chief concern," says Scott Evenson, director of customer care operations at telecommunications provider Knology. "We schedule agents for time off the phone, with a coach, to talk about why they have been scored in different ways and what areas of opportunity they have to do it right the next time."

Knology uses quality scoring not only to gauge hard and fast operational performance goals, but to review and, when necessary, correct agent approaches to the customer, including the use of technical jargon, the friendliness of the call, and the agent's dedication to first-call resolution. Coaches use the agents' off-hook time to review those customer experience elements. And Knology has made those coaching improvements without losing sight of core operational metrics: The company's average speed to answer has dropped markedly over recent months.

The customer experience coaching approach works for Knology because both coaches and agents are held accountable for the results -- results that managers measure by the numbers, just like answer speed. "Our agents have six to eight quality monitoring [sessions] per month and a score with each, and we have that roll up for each coach, [who] has a quality score at the end of each month. Those ranges are within 8 percent, but there is a difference and it stands out," Evenson says.

Still, many call centers stand by their operational numbers and devote the lion's share of coaching time to them. "There's a lot of discussion out there…but the bulk of [companies] are still wrapped up in internal measures of efficiency," says Maggie Klenke, partner with consulting outfit The Call Center School.

The problem may run deeper than measurement. A recent survey conducted by Knowlagent found that contact center supervisors and their firms' top executives have opposing views of the requirements of coaching (see above). Without bringing expectations closer in line, it may be difficult to make a dramatic shift in coaching priorities. Touchpoint's Furniss suggests that companies take a close look at how well their internal agent scoring maps to post-call customer survey responses. "If our score was only an 85 but the customer gave the agent a [perfect score], ask if maybe our 85 isn't right, because the most important part is what the customer said," he says.

Adding to the confusion is that other enterprise business units like marketing and product development are vying for agent coaching time to share the benefits. "The demands [on coaches] make a lot of sense, but many of them are coming from outside the call center," Klenke says. "Those departments benefiting from that information need to help fund the process."