A call center agent will interact with more customers in a single week than most employees will touch in their entire career. Therefore, who could be better to listen to the customer's input, assimilate it, and feed it back to the rest of the enterprise?

The challenge is to effectively listen to the customer not just about the contact issue at hand, but also product likes/dislikes, wish lists, competitive data, etc. Then it must be collated into useful reports that can be shared with the appropriate departments throughout the enterprise in a way that is accepted and not viewed as "finger pointing" when it is negative.

Using this Voice of the Customer information and Acting upon the needs and desires of customers is a critical factor in competitive success.