Anyone involved in call centers and customer service should be familiar with the differences between so-called “firefighting” and strategic differentiation. Firefighting refers to the practice of attacking problems one by one as they occur without paying attention to the overall goals of a brand. Strategic differentiation does the exact opposite by making sure that a solid vision for company improvement accompanies any changes made that address issues with customer service.

Market research company Forrester (News - Alert) lays out the differences between the two methods of operation in its latest report, “Embrace Continuous Improvement to Power Customer Service Operations.” The report says that companies may actually create their own fires with high call handling times, misrouted calls, and challenges with hiring because they do not follow a consistent vision. It is not intuitive then when Forrester also mentions that the correction to these issues is grounded in the basics of business itself.

“Many customer service organizations spend too little time mastering the basics of high-quality customer service operations,” the report states, “which means they are unable to focus on strategic initiatives such as offering high-quality new mobile or social customer service.”

Basically, Forrester says businesses must spend time crafting a differentiation strategy that addresses the solid governance of touchpoints like mobile, text, voice, and video and define objectives that match up with a future vision for the company. From there, managers can adopt the right software/hardware and can hire the correct type and number of agents to see things through.

Of course, businesses must also pay attention to the needs of their customers by finding out their preferences for communications channels. If they prefer voice and Web chat, for instance, then make sure those channels are readily available. Structured feedback from surveys and unstructured feedback found in reports or call recordings can be useful here.

Call centers should also acknowledge the best practices of process management, proper technology usage, and business culture such as leadership practices, training programs, and performance management practices. Success metrics for agents, such as average call handling time, and metrics for businesses as a whole, such as call abandonment rate, can also offer valuable information about how to align management and agent practices so they line up with goals for their overall operations.

Although Forrester calls the process of improving customer service “daunting,” it also says a business can make improvements if it begins small by creating a vision and finding out what in-house practices can fulfill that vision; building a communication plan that brings together business managers and stakeholders; focusing on one touchpoint and one key business process at a time instead of jumping from one fire to another with no end goal; and consistently reviewing progress while taking in customer feedback to identify problems and take corrective action. These are the basics that can lead to customer service that works well for everyone involved: agents, managers, stakeholders and customers.