Top 10 Tech Tools for Call Centers
Technology has revolutionized the contact center in recent years, and there’s no shortage of must-have systems to choose from. But what’s the equipment centers can’t or shouldn’t live without? ...
Voice Recognition Technology Hits the Desktop
Voice recognition software has long been used to collect customer information for the customer service agent prior to the live connection of the call. But voice recognition software in use on the agent desktop is now showing promise in its ability to lower costs by reducing call handle times and provide a better service experience for the customer and agent. ...
Making a Budgetary Case For Your Contact Center, Part Two
Multichannel contact centers must be prepared to perform at a high level, which requires funding. But you need the support and buy-in of senior management to make your case to get the funding. ...
Is this New Delhi?
Haband is doing it. So are Home Decorators Collection and Creative Irish Gifts. Dell's still at it — even after customers told it to stop. What are these merchants doing? They're outsourcing all or part of their incoming calls to overseas call centers....
Making a Budgetary Case For Your Contact Center, Part One
Today’s changing contact center is multichannel, multimedia, multisite, multitasking, often creating multimeltdowns. The leaders in today’s centers must be prepared to perform at a high level, which requires funding. To access the funding, you have to make a case. But we must have the support and buy-in of senior management to accomplish our goals. ...
Eye on Offshore Call Center Outsourcing
The worldwide market for customer service outsourcing hit $12.2 billion in 2007, compared with $8.4 billion in 2004, according to Gartner Research.
The main reason it’s so popular? Marketers can save around 40% of their call center bills by outsourcing overnight or overflow calls, says Art Hall, principal with management consulting firm Marsel and Alvarez. ...
The Skinny on Call Monitoring
Managers typically monitor their agents' performance in responding to telephone calls, e-mail, etc. for purposes of quality control and training. Research shows that best-practice contact centers monitor 5 to 10 calls per agent per month. ...
Customer Intimacy: Getting Past the First 15 Seconds
Most call centers these days are tailoring their opening by balancing the requirements of their strategy and what their customers prefer. The best-in-class standard is not so much "agent first and last name" or "first name only" but rather what fits into the company strategy and customer segment. ...
Dark Days for Offshore Service?
Have you off-shored any of your customer contact operation? If so, how do you ensure there are no “dark and stormy” nights in your agents’ or customers’ experience?...
Should customer service reps sell?
Customers love to buy. We love when someone helps us solve a problem, meet a need, satisfy a desire, or do something nice for ourselves. If it's true,...
Study: Southerners more likely to register a complaint
According to a recent Customer Experience Impact Report by Harris Interactive on bad call experiences 80% of customers will go to competitors after a bad call--up from 68% in 2006. But an interesting breakdown in the report was the bad call experiences by geographic regions and the behavior associated with geography....
Optimizing the Customer Experience
A recent survey published in USA Today, indicates that 45% of customers identify customer service as the biggest influence on remaining loyal to a company. Clearly customers will stop doing business with companies due to the quality of the experience. ...
Transforming Agent Training Through Performance-Based Learning
An approach called “performance-based learning” provides companies with a better alternative to traditional, academic style training. PBL improves and accelerates the learning experience, thereby shortening time-to-proficiency, which results in training cost reductions, quicker revenue capture, improved agent satisfaction, and increased longevity on the job....
9 Quick Tips For Being an Employer of Choice
Does your contact center have what it takes to be the employer of choice in your area? Kathryn Jackson, founder of Ocean City, NJ-based Response Design Corp. lists just some of the must-haves to attract the best contact center candidates ...
Giving FEEDBACK
Why put yourself through the agony of giving performance feedback when 1) the problem really isn't very bad, 2) she's probably not going to change anyway,...
3 Ways E-learning Pays
Once thought to be too expensive for the call center, e-learning is hot. Through the Web, E-learning allows your customer service reps to brush up on customer service skills or training between calls and shifts. This is the first in a three-part series on the value of e-learning....
5 Steps to Disaster-Proofing your Contact Center
Contact centers have become the arteries of organizations, enabling customer care, retention, inbound and outbound sales, fundraising and donations, and direct response. So before a disaster threatens or strikes, take effective measures to protect your centers and the services they provide. ...
10 Secrets to Optimizing Your Workforce
Everyone is struggling to do more with less – to make the most of the resources they have in place before making new investments in implementing technology or adding additional staff. So where do you begin in optimizing your call center workforce? Here we'll outline some of the best kept secrets of making the most of your precious resources. These strategies will help position your call center for both today’s lean times and the better ones that will surely follow. ...
Customer Care and Employee Care Go Hand-in-Hand
Without creating an environment where your employees feel valued and good about coming to work, you can't hope to deliver a level of service that will build true customer loyalty. ...
19 Ways to Reduce Employee Turnover
Employee turnover is a fact of life in the contact center. The better armed you are with strategies the more effective you'll be at managing it. ...
"Lies, Damn Lies, And Statistics"
Mark Twain once said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.” While statistics are an important component of becoming excellent. But watch out. You have to watch the correlations that are made between different contact center data elements....
Making Screen Pops Pop
Screen pops are basically any technology, including interactive voice response (IVR), automatic number identification (ANI), or computer telephony integration (CTI), that presents corresponding data ...
Home Is Where the Rep Is
You've heard time and again how consumers have more choices now than ever and have access to more information than ever. Technologies such as the Internet...
Calculating the High Cost of Employee Turnover
What does it cost you every time you lose a valued employee? Have you considered all the factors (hard dollars, soft dollars, direct costs, indirect costs) you should include? If you haven't, then it will be very difficult to assess which retention strategies will be profitable for you....
9 Questions for Choosing the Right Home-Agent Provider, Part One
In evaluating providers of home-based agents, many organizations make the mistake of focusing on tangibles such as skill-based routing, digital recording, real-time reporting, e-mail and chat capabilities, and redundant system configurations. ...
