[mikael]

1. "Some of your comments are without merit."

Which ones? Why?

2. "cost is far from the basics of managing a centre."

If I go to Senior Management to ask for a budget allocation for the purchase of a knowledgebase tool or phone switch -- and I don't have verifiable cost data, how can I present a valid business case with ROI? Use the vendor's data? If I want to add additional staff so that I can bring the AWT down and provide better service to the customers -- and cannot show how this will bring in more revenue -- is it any wonder that my request will probably be denied?

The basics of a business are about money. If you don't make money, you won't stay in business.

3. "Not being accorded respect - and "earning" that standing of a professional. "

Ezra Pound had an interesting observation which I think has some relevance. "A slave is one who waits for someone else to free him." If you wait for "Management" to recognize you as a professional before you consider yourself to be one, your wait will probably be very long indeed.

Some years ago, I asked Scott Cook, the founder of Intuit (and a serious customer support quality fanatic), what a support manager should do if he/she couldn't practice their profession to their own standards because of a lack of Sr. Mgmt support. His reply was succinct. "Put their resume on the street."

No one can make you a professional - that's a status you can only give to yourself. If you commit yourself to that goal, in time you will find that others start to recognize that commitment and treat you accordingly. You begin by choosing to be a professional. You then do the things that professionals do, beginning with acquiring and polishing your skills. The end result is that you come to have the things that professionals have, among them being recognition in the community as such.

4. "Lets say the director of a centre has a "strategic" responsibility, rather than an operational one. What benefit is Erlang, or even the basic concepts of WFM? "

-smile- Yes, let's. What you get out of that scenario is a senior executive who tells the center manager to reduce the AWT by 50% with no increase in headcount. Or one who decrees that henceforth there shall be no more than 5% abandons -- with no additional staff allocation. Or even better -- one who makes unrealistic promises to the other members of the senior management team and/or to the customerbase, and *then* tries to dictate to the manager.

How can you hope to be effective strategically if you have no clue about costs and basic operational realities?

I realize that this may be uncomfortable for some. It would have been very uncomfortable for me back when I ran a center, because I didn't know anything about costs or WFM or process optimization then myself. But I wouldn't have called myself a professional back then -- that choice came later, and with it the commitment to development.