Redcats USA to Close Contact Center

| Jim Tierney

Multititle cataloger Redcats USA announced it will close its customer contact center located in Universal City, TX, on Dec. 18. Nearly 500 employees will be laid off.

Contact Center Shared Staff Arrangements

| Penny Reynolds

Some catalog centers with a busy seasonal holiday pattern look to local businesses that may slow down in the fall. Some recruit workers directly with great success from businesses that have a summer peak. You can choose to try to reach these potential staff with wide and well-timed advertising, or you can elect to go directly to the source and work with those businesses directly.

Principles for Contact Center Productivity Measures

| MCM staff

The first thing your contact center management team needs to do when sitting down to create an agent productivity metric is agree in principle about what this is all about. Following are four principles we believe will make your journey on the road to productivity a safer one.

Keep Your Product Vendors in Line

| Melissa Dowling

Multichannel merchants could be doing a better job keeping tabs on their merchandise vendors, according to Curt Barry, president of operations consultancy F. Curtis Barry & Co. Specifically, Barry told attendees at the NCOF show in Las Vegas last month that more direct merchants should be using vendor scorecards.

Furloughs for L.L. Bean Call Center Workers

| Jim Tierney

Outdoor gear and apparel merchant L.L. Bean will furlough about 75% of its staff – all but 50 of its 200 workers – at the Bangor, ME-based call center starting in May, according to the Kennebec (ME) Journal/Morning Sentinel.