By Brian Poelman, VP of KellyConnect
Your goal in building a contact center is to give every customer a forgettable experience.
You read that right.
Customers don't want to be “wowed.” They don't need surprises or delight. They just need their problem solved fast so they can move on with their day. Today, a wonderful contact center experience is one that's so effortless customers forget it happened—and only remember that your brand is one who will make solving an issue easy.
This shift in customer expectations, driven by how busy and chaotic our lives can be, creates an opportunity. When you build operations that work effortlessly without friction, customers keep coming back. The challenge is getting there—balancing people, process, technology, metrics, and culture while maintaining quality across hundreds or thousands of daily interactions.
U.S. businesses risk losing $846 billion every year to poor customer service, and just one bad experience drives away 32% of customers who previously loved a brand. But companies that master contact center operations see the opposite: loyal customers, reduced costs, and sustainable growth.
So let me share what I've learned about getting this right, from the fundamentals organizations can easily miss to the specific strategies that separate high performers from the rest.
Contact centers serve as the frontline for customer relationships across virtually every industry. Whether you're a healthcare company helping patients navigate insurance claims, a technology startup supporting product launches, or an insurance provider responding to natural disasters, your contact center is often the only human touchpoint customers have with your brand.
The scope varies dramatically. Some operations handle routine password resets and billing inquiries. Others manage critical business situations—I've worked with clients where our agents prevent fraudulent content and activity for eCommerce businesses.
Companies can either maintain internal contact centers, outsource operations entirely, or use a hybrid approach where external partners handle overflow, after-hours coverage, or specialized functions. The decision often comes down to scale, expertise, and core competency focus.
Everyone wants to talk about AI and fancy tech stacks, but I've seen too many companies put the cart before the horse. Process is king. You need to begin with the end in mind—what exactly are you trying to accomplish? Are you handling complex, high-touch interactions or routine, transactional support?
Once you define that objective, you can determine the least path of resistance to get there. Sometimes that means sacrificing efficiency for long-term value. A seven-minute call that solves everything beats three rushed three-minute calls where the customer keeps calling back.
Take one of our technology clients that launches new products every year. When we first engaged with them, they wanted traditional brick-and-mortar seasonal staffing—hire hundreds of people, train them quickly over three weeks, then handle the product launch volume. The results were mixed because you had new people, new products, and new processes all colliding at once.
We developed what we call an "Instaflex" model instead. We maintain hundreds of experienced agents year-round, but schedule them at 32 hours per week during normal periods. When seasonality hits, those same seasoned agents flex up to 40+ hours for six to eight weeks. The client gets experienced, ready-made capacity instead of rushed new hires, and agents get extra income during peak periods.
Only after you nail down your process can you decide where people fit versus where technology makes sense.
At KellyConnect, we’ve been deploying remote agents since 2010, long before it became fashionable. Geography shouldn't limit your talent pool. When you're not constrained by a 15-mile hiring radius, you can find the best people wherever they happen to live.
This proved invaluable when an insurance client faced a natural disaster that had customers in crisis. We needed to rapidly hire and train people who could handle tough questions about claims and expectations. Our remote model allowed us to hire people within the affected region—agents who had personal empathy for what customers were experiencing because they were living it themselves. Traditional brick-and-mortar centers couldn't have scaled that quickly or tapped into that specific talent pool.
Most companies assume isolation kills culture with remote work. The opposite is true. When you're intentional about interaction, you get to know people at a deeper level than just passing in the hallway. Virtual break rooms, engagement coordinators, and structured check-ins create connections that agents tell me feel stronger than their previous in-office experiences. As we've explored in our guide to employee engagement activities, meaningful connection doesn't come from flashy perks. It comes from building, consistent, intentional moments of recognition and community.
The water cooler is now on your desktop, available 24/7. The key is being deliberate about creating those touchpoints.
Nearly 87% of contact centers say Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) is their top metric, and they're right to. But what separates high-performing centers is understanding how metrics connect to each other.
Take First Call Resolution (FCR). Only 5% of call centers hit the world-class benchmark of 80% FCR, yet for every 1% improvement in FCR, customer satisfaction jumps 1.4 points. When you solve an issue on the first try, 95% of customers will keep doing business with you.
Average Handle Time used to be king—the faster, the better. That's backwards thinking. The goal isn't speed for speed's sake; it's resolving issues completely.
So you need to balance efficiency with effectiveness. Track CSAT alongside handle time and FCR to see the full picture. Rush customers off the phone and you'll pay for it in repeat calls and damaged relationships.
That's where technology can help, but only if it's used in the right way.
The AI buzz is everywhere, but companies need to be smart about implementation. Most successful AI deployments in contact centers focus on agent assistance, not customer-facing bots that go rogue and give away the farm.
Think of AI as the ultimate coaching tool. It listens to conversations and prompts agents with next-best actions based on customer data and conversation sentiment. A recent study showed AI increased agent productivity by 14%, with less-experienced agents benefiting most.
But generative AI that handles full customer interactions can go sideways fast. Companies that replace 10 humans with one bot often discover the bot goes off script, gives away too much, or provides advice with liability issues. You really need to monitor it closely and step into it slowly through pilots rather than trying to solve everything overnight.
Start small, test carefully, and keep humans in the loop for anything complex or sensitive.
Not every company needs to build their own contact center empire. Sometimes the smart play is partnering with specialists who live and breathe this stuff daily.
The triggers are usually obvious: rapid growth that outpaces your ability to hire and train, seasonal spikes that make permanent staffing inefficient, or simply recognizing that customer service isn't your core competency. We've had clients approach us during digital transformation efforts when their internal teams couldn't keep up with the complexity of evolving customer interactions.
Effective outsourcing focuses on accessing expertise, technology, and scalability that would take years to build internally. And the best partnerships feel like extensions of your team, not vendor relationships.
Ready to rethink your contact center model? Explore how KellyConnect delivers fully managed, people-first solutions.
Companies can make a major mistake when they try to "lift and shift" their contact center operations. By that I mean they want to take their existing call center of 50 people and just have an outsourcer take it over without understanding the nature of the business or what they're trying to accomplish.
You can't just hand over a process document and expect magic to happen. Agents need to understand not just how to do things, but why they're doing them and what they represent. When we onboard new client programs, we spend significant time on orientation that explains the client's history, culture, values, and mission. The goal is making agents feel like they're wearing that client's badge with pride and competency, not just following Kelly scripts.
Whether you're running internal operations or working with a partner, investing in culture and brand alignment upfront saves massive headaches later. When agents understand and believe in what they represent, customers notice immediately.
The companies that succeed at contact center operations understand that scale and quality work together, not against each other. We've grown with that technology client 20% year-over-year over an eight year period because the Instaflex model delivers both the capacity they need and the experience quality their customers expect.
For healthcare clients requiring high-touch service, we hire and train people at a much different level. We help people monitor their medical devices, and you can imagine the sensitivities around the demographics, the ages, and what they're dealing with from a health standpoint. We need professionals in those seats doing that kind of work.
KellyConnect supports industries where accuracy, empathy, and operational flexibility aren't just important—they're essential.
The key is matching your approach to your specific requirements while maintaining consistent operational excellence. That means different hiring profiles, training programs, technology stacks, and performance metrics depending on what you're trying to accomplish.
Building a strong contact center comes down to efficient processes, empowered people, smart use of technology, and relentless focus on metrics that drive customer satisfaction. Whether you build it in-house or partner with experts, the fundamentals remain the same.
Most customers don't want to be your best friend. They want their issue resolved quickly and correctly so they can get on with their day. Give them that effortless experience, and they'll keep coming back for all the right reasons.
🎧 Bonus: Listen to Brian Poelman on the Workforce Advantage Podcast for a deeper dive into the KellyConnect model and how to future-proof your contact center strategy.