A friend of mine told me a story about his travels to a faraway country. Apparently, there was ongoing trouble with rats in parts of the city he was visiting.

A simple solution was suggested – introduce the mongoose into the local ecology. In this country, the mongoose was known as a fearless enemy of the King Cobra snake (in large part due to its thick skin and ability to resist the poisonous venom of the King Cobra), but also as an animal that actually detested rodents. Problem solved, correct? Not exactly. What wasn’t understood was that this locality’s version of the mongoose preferred the daylight, whereas the rats were nocturnal.

In many ways, this city’s rat-mongoose predicament mirrors the perpetual battle between efficiency and effectiveness in the contact center. Now we won’t ascribe which of these two contact center attributes aligns with what animal, because there are differing opinions. The point is that there are very few instances where efficiency and effectiveness play a complimentary or supportive role with one another. And the reason is that they approach the use of contact center resources from opposite starting points.

One thing is for sure – the lowering of telecom costs over the last five years has provided some breathing room in balancing the inflationary expectations of pay by human beings against many customers’ desire for “deeper relationships” (effectiveness). The latter would require new investments in technology, business process and integration.