A quote from Convention in November really made me think: "there are no nice calls left". As more and more is being managed via self-service, what is often left is the difficult and complex customer interactions.
 
This theme was played out again at Industry Council last week where the consensus was that the 'Thinking People' agenda needs to continue throughout 2011 to ensure it gets the attention it deserves. 
 
We seem to be moving to a situation where there are ever more graduates looking for the first step on the ladder.  Can we meet their expectations?  At the same time, the Government, through its work programme, is trying to encourage organisations to think about recruiting long term unemployed and those that have never worked - challenges indeed for us all!
 
There is a million or so people working in customer contact centres across the UK and Ireland - this really does matter.
 
Will some of our contact centre teams of the future become social media insight teams?  Will we finally see home-working as a norm rather than a niche?  How can organisations innovate more to provide better career paths for those who love serving customers but don't necessarily want promoted out of this space? 
 
All of this and at the end of the day - do any of us really understand what the front-line, our brand ambassadors, our customer champions, really think?