Call Center Management posts, articles, and infographics

Why Call Center Training, By Itself, Doesn’t Work

May 14, 2012 by Dr. John R. Miller
with 57 views

Training call center agents in a set of soft skills does very little to actually increase customer satisfaction and customer loyalty scores. In virtually every situation where I have purchased or provided training for call center agents as a stand-alone component, the initiative has had sporadic results at best. [read more]

It’s time to put this sacred cow out to pasture

May 4, 2012 by Barbara Burke
with 57 views

It didn’t take long to realize that “banning AHT” (average handle time) as an agent performance metric was a very hot topic. After an hour (the time allotted) the group was just getting started and could have easily gone on for an hour or two more. [read more]

Quality Calibration: You say it’s 80, I say it’s 90…Let’s call the whole thing off!

April 30, 2012 by Melissa Kovacevic
with 61 views

Image: Blend Images /Shutterstock

As I’ve sat and observed the interactions, including the eye rolling, the almost name calling and the defense of what some participants described to a Supervisor as “your pet Agent”, I wondered where the Customer Experience was in all of this. [read more]

Content Marketing: The Curse of Audience Envy

April 16, 2012 by Todd Schnick
with 55 views

Drawing by Hugh Macleod.

I tell every client and prospect I meet that when it comes to their sales and marketing, they need to focus on developing their content marketing strategy. Here’s the problem with this. [read more]

Interruption Based Selling!

April 13, 2012 by Dave Brock
with 27 views

CREATISTA /Shutterstock

If we don’t want to “Interrupt,” this becomes our world as sales people: We wait for the phone call. [read more]

Help Your Customer Service Agents Boost Net Promoter Score

April 10, 2012 by Jack Dempsey
with 101 views

The typical call center call quality process is anchored in the customer service agent’s compliance with a one-size-fits-all checklist rather than in the creation of an optimal customer experience with customer loyalty as the targeted outcome. [read more]

Valuable Lessons From United Airlines' Customer Service Fail

April 10, 2012 by Omar Zaibak
with 380 views

On March 3rd, United Airlines attempted to merge their reservation system with Continental. It did not go as planned, creating customer mayhem because of ensuing technical glitches on the website and ticketing functionality. The lines to their call center were jammed with irate customers who were dealing with extremely long hold times and problems booking their tickets. [read more]

6 Steps to Brilliant Social Customer Service

April 4, 2012 by Omar Zaibak
with 1,006 views

Social customer service is more important than ever. Follow these steps to get in the game. [read more]

Top 10 Call Center Trends for 2012

March 30, 2012 by Omar Zaibak
with 410 views

Photo: suravid/shutterstock

As the call center industry continues to evolve, here are 10 trends to watch out for in 2012. [read more]

Are Customers Driving Contact Centers Towards Social Care?

March 29, 2012 by Walter Van Norden
with 145 views

Image: Igor Petrov/Shutterstock

The emerging field of social care is being handled differently by different organizations. Some firms are using social media channels to ‘listen’ to customers to improve marketing, products and support. Others are ‘engaging’ with customers to address individual issues and reduce the volume of traffic to other support channels. [read more]

6 Hot Contact Center ‘In The Cloud’ Trends

March 25, 2012 by Adam Honig
with 165 views

Photo by David Blaikie via Flickr

Is your contact center showing its age?Remember the good old days of customer service? From a technology perspective, life used to be pretty straightforward. All you had to do was upgrade Siebel every couple of years.Now, of course, the CRM world is moving away from on-premise technology, and that’s provoked sharp questions from... [read more]

Promoting Customer Service Agents to Leadership

November 28, 2011 by Melissa Kovacevic
with 144 views

Choosing the right agents to promote to front line Leadership roles in our contact centers and our customer facing service offices is often a challenge. [read more]

There’s No Such Thing as “Social Media Samurai” or “Customer Service Ninjas”

November 21, 2011 by John Burton
with 469 views

Image: R'eyes/Flickr(creative commons)

Samurai aren’t experts in search engine optimization or online community management. Ninjas don’t wear hands-free headsets and hide in the call center waiting for you to have a problem with your PC, broadband access or satellite TV. [read more]

Zen And The Art Of Social Customer Service

November 14, 2011 by Esteban Kolsky
with 145 views

Image: Pittaya Sroilong/Flickr(creative commons)Z

I am truly interested in attaining enlightenment in when dealing with customers. This enlightenment is the only way we will succeed at understanding them, knowing them, and serving them properly. [read more]

Is the Office of the CMO the Right Place to Drive Customer Engagement?

October 24, 2011 by Mitch Lieberman
with 74 views

Primary sourced research is valuable, adding one’s own interpretations (which I will) is the added benefit of blogging. The most recent IBM research “From Stretched to Strengthened – Insights from the Global Chief Marketing Officer Study” (URL) is a good read. Research based on CMO conversations is arguably meant for a CMOs. As usual, I... [read more]

How a Social Care Strategy Can Increase Overall Brand Sentiment

September 30, 2011 by Jennifer Bach
with 339 views

As business continues to adopt social media into overall their communications, providing customer service through these networks is an emerging trend. “Social care” involves providing assistance to customers via platforms such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter. I’ve just finished pulling together a new benchmarking study of seven Fortune... [read more]

All It Takes is One Bad Agent Experience

September 8, 2011 by Melissa Kovacevic
with 111 views

We’ve all had this experience. The phone rings at home and you pick it up. If you’re in the Contact Center business, you hear the slight Autodialer delay and know it is a Contact Center call, possibly an outsourced one. You hear the myriad of other voices in the background as the Agent asks for your spouse. You say he/she isn... [read more]

Inside Sales: The Customer is Mad as Hell

September 1, 2011 by Josiane Feigon
with 80 views

Photo: Lara604/Flickr (Creative Commons)

This independent, busy, distracted, and opinionated buyer has something to say and it’s time for salespeople to listen, understand, and know how and why they make decisions. [read more]

12 Actions to Drastically Reduce Customer Hold Times

August 2, 2011 by Barbara Burke
with 366 views

Three years is too long to wait. Statisticians have estimated that in a lifetime of 70 years, the average person spends at least three years waiting. Waiting is an inevitable and even necessary aspect of human life. We wait in line at the grocery store, for red lights to turn green, and for movie trailers to finally stop so we can see... [read more]

Management and Either/Or Decisions...

July 29, 2011 by Dave Brock
with 51 views

Management is about making choices and setting priorities. We have to choose to do somethings, choosing not to do others. We have to set priorities and maintain focus. Choosing everything, setting everything to a top priority, consciously or by default (otherwise known as piling on), is a sure path to failure. Having... [read more]