The emphasis in most contact centers is to keep costs down. And in a downturn such as we're now experiencing that emphasis becomes even more pronounced. For most contact centers this means keeping each call as short as possible. Yet for many companies the center is the only direct interaction they have with customers, and only a handful of times per year. At a time when customers have more choices and diminished brand loyalty, does trying to get them off the line as quickly as possible really make sense?

Take a call I made to my cell phone service provider a few months ago. The agent efficiently answered my question (my plan does not cover roaming in Canada) and I was off the phone in less than a minute. I'm sure the agent's performance metrics on average handle time (AHT) looked great.

But that call was only the third time I had contacted the provider in the five years I have been a customer. By focusing on AHT, the provider lost an opportunity and a customer. With the right tools, training, and mandate, the agent would have known that I was a perfect candidate to upgrade my plan to one that covers Canada, since I travel there frequently. A new plan would be more expensive on a monthly basis, but would have saved me money on those roaming fees. I would have upgraded to the more comprehensive plan if the agent had made me aware of it.  Instead I switched to another provider that offered me such a plan.

Why didn't that agent mention a different plan? He was probably being measured on traditional contact center metrics such as AHT instead of sales per call. In addition, he likely didn't have the tools to identify me as a high upgrade opportunity or have the sales skills to make the offer.

Best-in-class contact centers have made the leap from stressing cost reduction to capitalizing on each customer interaction by providing their agents with context, training, and the mandate to do so. According to McKinsey, credit card companies that have made this transformation generate up to 25 percent of new revenue through the contact center. For telecommunications providers, that number is as high as 60 percent. How have they done this? They've successfully overcome several key challenges.

First and foremost, organizations need to establish commitment from the top down. Senior management, including the CEO, CFO, and vice presidents responsible for marketing, sales, and product development must recognize that marginally higher contact center budgets can result in significantly higher customer value from increased loyalty, higher revenue, and retention. Without this buy-in from the management team, an organization will fall short of making the transformation a success.

Organizations must also be prepared to support a change in culture throughout the contact center. Contact center managers and supervisors must create a workplace culture in which agents initiate customer dialogues rather than just answer questions.

With that culture change, comes a change in agents' skill sets. Contact center agents must be trained to engage customers and to upsell and cross-sell, as well as be educated on their company's products and services so they know which products to promote to which customers. As a result, how a manager monitors and ranks agents' performance must also change. Agents must be rated on a scorecard that recognizes different AHT targets, for example, for different customers. High-opportunity calls would be expected to last longer and result in a higher percentage of upsells than shorter, lower-opportunity calls.

Finally, any organization that wants to initiate a program that focuses on truly improving the value of every customer contact needs to be prepared to make a financial commitment. Training, longer AHT, and other changes cost money. Senior management must be committed to maintaining this cost of increasing customer value in both the short and long term.

Of these challenges, four out of five are focused on changing how people think. Only one requires a technological solution: performance rating change. Without a contact center performance management system that can highlight which individual agents are excelling in the new culture and which agents need coaching to meet the new expectations, even the most committed companies will still struggle to make the most of each customer contact.

About the author: Ron Hildebrandt is cofounder of Enkata. Contact him at ron@enkata.com