Managing Your Cost Per Call
The direct industry has a difficult balancing act to perform. On the one hand, we want to provide a high level of customer service—and that's getting tougher each year. On the other hand, the cost of direct labor per hour has increased from less than $7 to more than $11 per hour during the last five years. In some markets rates are well over that, as high as $14 an hour. Benefit costs have also increased, and now average 15% to 20% of pay....
8 Ways to Conquer Last-Minute Scheduling Dilemmas
Are you prepared for last minute changes that are sure to occur with agent scheduling? This is a universal problem that all centers face. It can be especially challenging for those without an automated solution for agent scheduling—and the ramifications can be significant. ...
Performing a Customer Communications Check-Up, Part 1
There is a customer-power revolution taking place. The pervasive use of the Internet has created a smarter, more buying-savvy customer. For example, J. D. Power reports that 70% of automobile buyers enter the dealer showroom already armed with specifications, invoice prices, and information on dealer margins and promotions. Travelers can go to the Web for travel deals from Expedia, Orbitz, and Travelocity, competing directly with the traditional travel agents and providers. Even healthcare information has resulted in better informed patients asking their physicians for specific treatments and prescriptions. ...
Building Your Battle Plan
Many of you are asking yourself, "How can I make the biggest positive impact in 2007?" The options are endless. To help you determine where you should invest your own mental energy and the energy of your team, ask yourself some focused questions:...
Voice-Direct Picking: Pros and Cons
You’ve probably seen those commercials that extol the reliability of the Verizon Wireless network—the ones with the guy walking all over the world asking, “Can you hear me now?” Every time I see one of those commercials, I picture warehouse personnel talking to anyone in the company who doesn't work in the warehouse: people in sales, in purchasing--even their supervisors. Often warehouse folks talk about ways to improve productivity in the warehouse, but no one listens....
Caveats of Buying Second-Hand Equipment
Buying used equipment can save you money up front. But it can also cost you more in the long run. Keep these stipulations in mind when considering preowned equipment. ...
Survey: Websites Doing More to Personalize the Experience
Consumers’ desire for control—and merchants’ need to provide them with the tools that satisfy their desire—are apparent from the results of the ...
Miles Kimball to Move Contact Center
Gifts and housewares mailer Miles Kimball Co. will close its Las Vegas contact center on March 16 and move more than 100 jobs to Oshkosh, WI. ...
Supporting Telephone, E-mail and Chat Inquiries
Can one agent handle telephone, e-mail, and chat inquries? And is that even a good idea? That depends on the communication skills you evaluated your agents on prior to hiring them and/or any additional training you have provided them since. Verbal and written communication skills are two distinct competencies, and being well-versed in one doesn't necessarily guarantee success in the other....
Four Steps in Selecting a Business System
Whether your company needs a commercially packaged warehouse management system, point of sales system, an inventory control system, a direct-to-customer order management system --or some combination of the aforementioned, selecting of the right system is a major undertaking....
Quick Tip: Behold the Mouse Cart
Are you looking to build a better mouse trap in your facility? You might start with the mouse cart. What's a mouse cart, you ask? The mouse cart is a unique vehicle that can get a picker quickly around the facility. It is ideal for instances that require long travels between picks....
How You Can Harvest Acres of Diamonds
You wouldn't think many operations execs could learn from book but “Acres of Diamonds” by Russell H. Conwell may hold a lesson for distribution center managers. The book tells the story of a man who sells his farm to search for diamonds. He spends his life searching for riches and dies a pauper. After the sale, acres of diamonds were discovered on his farm....
Survey: Outsourcing Still Maturing
A recent survey from Raleigh, NC-based supply chain solutions provider Tompkins Associates finds that despite its rapid growth, outsourcing is still a maturing industry,” according to Steven Simonson, principal and author of the "Outsourced DC Operations" report. “Currently, only a third of respondents to the benchmarking and best practices survey are outsourcing some portion of their distribution operations. Much room exists for continued expansion,” he says....
Four Principles of Strategic Planning
One of the best things about being a consultant is the opportunity to see so many kinds of businesses. ...
Leveraging Technology for Fulfillment Success
Technology is the cornerstone of an efficient fulfillment operation. It’s through technology that guesswork is eliminated from the fulfillment process, human error is reduced, and products and content go to market faster and at a lower cost....
Ask the Fulfillment Doctor: Dashboard Dials
Imagine a series of dials in the corporate cockpit that reflect key indicators in customer service, sales tracking, and profitability. When tightly structured, these dials can give management an accurate and timely picture of the business—a carefully calibrated corporate spot check. ...
Are You Overlooking the Profit Opportunity in Your Receiving Operation?
This is the first of a two-part series. This article examines how establishing receiving practices can increase your bottom line. Part two will discuss how to use this information to improve your operation and your profits....
Vertical Reality and B-to-B Search
Business-to-business merchants have always had a reputation for being slow to embrace new marketing techniques. Their attitude toward the not-so-new channel...
Green Beings
Around the time that the trade press was following the cliffhanger-worthy passage of the postal reform bill in Congress (see our coverage on page 7),...
Upgrading the Contact Center
Businesses that want to get closer to their customers are transforming their conventional call centers into multichannel contact centers that support...
Time to Lock in Paper Supply Agreements?
As we roll into 2007, paper prices are holding steady or in some cases being discounted. But with mill inventories significantly down for this time of...
A New Dimension in Packaging
The U.S. Postal Service's proposed rate changes and new guidelines from just about every other major parcel carrier mean that no matter what type of product...
The Best of Inventory Management Tactics
Inventory management and forecasting are strategic issues. Companies that recognize this fact can typically provide higher levels of service to their...
Best Practices in Inventory Metrics
Unless a company has a proprietary credit program, inventory will generally be its largest balance-sheet asset and knowing standard inventory metrics...
Get in Charge of Your Chargebacks
In a perfect world, merchandise deliveries would never arrive late, be mislabeled, or contain the wrong product or quantity. But ours is not a perfect...
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