Call centers have been on the forefront of new and innovative employment models for over a decade. They are no strangers to cost–cutting and outsourcing, and they continue to suffer among the highest voluntary attrition rates in the service sector.

But, this is nothing compared to what’s on its way.

There are a number of unstoppable demographic and social changes that are rocking the entirety of the worldwide workforce. Employers of all shapes and sizes will have to get to grips with these, and call centers are among them.

Traditional forms of outsourcing will no longer suffice as a winning strategy on their own. Instead, the next breed of global contact centers will have to figure out how to keep costs low while raising quality and demonstrating customer benefit. They’ll need to do this because:

1. High quality is the only way to extract value from the investment: Contact centers can be expensive and if they’re not building customer loyalty, they’re eroding it. C-suite executives recognize the value that call centers offer in terms of operational insight, but increasingly they want to see this value delivered back into the business in the form of data points to grow the customer base and market share.

2. It’s your reputation on the line: many brands already know the damage that poorly delivered,outsourced service can wreak. Contact centers require increasingly complex training and product knowledge to deliver great service, and there is a limit to the number of markets that can provide great service with low cost. Traditional outsourcing will not work for every product, nor every brand.

The future contact center simply has to become smarter, more diverse and more flexible. With attrition rates higher than virtually any other job category in the service sector, they are ripe for innovation—and the way forward is going to critically challenge many organizations and management styles.

This post belongs to a new ebook on call center trends. A free version of "Making the Call" can be downloaded here.