Unlike most people, I like waiting in line. No, not because I wouldn't prefer to be served faster, but because I get a lot of ideas on how to improve customer service experience by observing the dynamics of what occurs while waiting.

Contact centers are binary in one particular attribute – there are only two conditions they operate in – the first being a work surplus mode (they have more arriving work than resources) or a resource surplus mode (they have more resources than arriving work). If it were only so simple to always have more resources than work, life in the contact center would be easy. But this would mean overstaffing – and with "human ware" accounting for 70% of the costs of the typical contact center, this approach is both impractical, and ultimately inefficient.

One of the more insightful experiences you can have to test this theory is at your local grocery store. Watch the dynamics on a typical Saturday morning as hurried parents send their children as markers in three checkout lines simultaneously. In contact center parlance, this is known as "multi-queuing". Then watch as fascinated parents realize over and over again that it's not the shortest line that empties out the quickest, it's the one with the most efficient person at the cash register. (By the way, watch the manager try and staff the right number of personnel at the registers with the "false positive" of three youngsters in queue representing one family.)

There's a lot to learn here – especially with the industry's fascination with "intelligent contact routing" and other approaches that have nominal impact unless the right resource is engaged at the right moment for the right customer.

Want to get customer service "right" in terms of your business strategy? A focus on the resource is the best starting point.