Quantitative vs. Qualitative
I think for a call center/hd to be successful, they first have to know what the purpose for having it is going to be; and then hire to that end.
If you want high customer satisfaction and high staff morale, make sure you get technically proficient people that have personalities, and give them alternating tasks in addition to the phone support.
If you are more concerned with call stats, get extremely technically proficient people, hope they have good personalities, and make them go at it on the phone non-stop...just be ready to replace them on a continual basis.
I personally don't think that running a 'qualitative' helpdesk is necessarily exclussive to running one I'd call 'quantitative'. However, it would seem to me that post-dot-bomb call centers believe this to be the case, and opt to go 'quantitative'. I suppose it is easier to justify your career existence by serving up "10000 calls, 9057 ROFC, 500 escalated' on a presentation as opposed to saying, "Larry over in accounting says we're 'kick ass'" come review time as the center manager.
