Call Center Corner

10 Tips to Keep Smile in Your Voice

2008-10-27T21:57:00.002+07:00

1. Before you speak to a customer on the phone, remember to smile. It keeps your tone friendly and upbeat.

2. As a reminder to keep smiling, place a mirror where you can see yourself smiling.

3. Use the Golden Rule as your guide: Give all the customers the respect and courtesy that you'd like to receive.

4. Keep your cool with tough customers. Listen patiently, apologize for their inconvinience, and work to fix the problem.

5. Take a deep breath if needed so you can refocus on providing the best service you can.

6. Leave personal issues at home. When your at work, let your professionalism shine.

7. Get plenty of sleep each night, exercise regularly, and eat well-balanced meals in order to keep stress in check.

8. Use mistakes and challenges as opportunities to learn.

9. Keep within sight a picture of something that makes you smile.

10. Remember to count your blessings often. Write down something each day which you are grateful.

Managing remote call center agents: 14 best practices

2008-10-16T22:36:00.001+07:00

By Donna Fluss

As companies have come to embrace the concept of at-home (remote) call center agents, managers find themselves struggling with how to oversee this new workforce.

Enterprises constantly struggle to find the right agents to deliver an outstanding customer experience. Some have turned to offshore outsourcers that claim to have an abundance of high-quality agents available for reasonable prices, while others prefer to keep their call center activities domestic, provided they can find agents with the right skills for the job. The remote (at-home) agent business model has proved to be a creative and cost-effective approach to staffing contact centers with skilled, high-quality and loyal employees. It's also a cost-effective method for addressing contingency planning and disaster recovery.

Managers in call centers throughout the U.S. are weighing the benefits and challenges of employing remote agents. As technology is no longer viewed as an impediment, the most significant concern is how to manage remote agents without personal contact from the call center supervisor, particularly for single-site operating environments that have never had agents based in multiple or satellite locations.

Some of the best practices for remote agent oversight have long been used to manage agents in secondary locations. The most important practice is to invest time in hiring qualified agents – individuals who are highly motivated, satisfy all competency and skill requirements, have the right working environment and technology already in place, and are technically savvy and able to troubleshoot at home. My consultancy, DMG Consulting, recommends that contact centers employing remote call center agents use the following best practices for hiring and managing their staff:

1. Use a competency-based assessment tool as part of the hiring process to evaluate potential remote agent candidates. This tool should make sure that candidates have the necessary contact center skills and are highly motivated self-starters.

2. As part of the interview process, ask agents whether they meet all of the criteria on a remote agent readiness checklist.

3. Establish a three-month trial period to determine whether a new hire or a premise-based agent who "transfers" to a remote location can properly perform the job. Whether hiring employees or contract staff, you should make it clear in the agreement that the enterprise has the right to terminate the relationship without cause during this probationary period. (Involve your human resources and legal departments in addressing this issue.)

4. Create an online training program that addresses your products, systems and general corporate information. This program can be delivered via an e-learning mechanism or on paper, but it must test the agent's knowledge. Supervisors must be available to review and assist remote agents with training challenges.

5. Give remote call center agents the same training opportunities as premise-based staff. If you generally put new hires in a protected pod for the first two weeks after they come out of training, do the same for the remote agents. Be sure to make a supervisor available, particularly immediately following the initial training.

6. Establish and document job responsibilities, requirements, procedures and policies. This document needs to address all standard operating policies plus specific remote agent requirements.

7. Establish a formal communication process between supervisors and remote agents. The process should include a daily conversation with the supervisor or manager. It's critical that management adhere to this schedule. Remote agents must also be made aware of the process for escalating inquiries to supervisors. (It's recommended that premise-based and remote agents follow the same escalation procedures.)

8. Use chat for handling the majority of agent inquiries. Supervisors need to be available to respond immediately to chat inquiries from agents.

9. Ensure that remote agents have access to all product and service information, whether it's online or paper-based. If paper-based, the documents should be shipped to remote agents as part of their set-up process.

10. Establish a defined number and frequency of quality monitoring (QM) sessions for remote agent evaluations. Provide regular, scheduled feedback on agent performance, covering both strengths and coaching on performance opportunities. It's important to involve remote agents in all quality-monitoring and training-related activities.

11. Reward remote agents for performance excellence, just as you would premise-based staff.

12. Ensure that remote agents have access to performance management reports and quality assurance (QA) evaluations for self-managing performance.

13. Include remote agents in all team meetings and up-training activities. It's recommended that remote agents be part of an agent team that includes both remote and premise-based staff. If your staff is 100% remote, run team meetings at least once a week to keep staff connected and interacting with one another.

14. If your center is using both premise-based and remote agents, pair agents to ensure and reward cooperation. Be creative in identifying ways to promote a sense of "connectedness" or "team spirit" for agents who work at home. If you are having a holiday party at the site, be sure to communicate this to remote agents so that they have time to prepare and join in, if they choose. Do not leave them out just because they are not on-site.

Five Tips For Handle Telephone Answering Properly

2008-10-12T20:51:00.000+07:00

In call center business phone answering is one of the important key skill require to perform the better results. The call handling skill with the customer is also an important one. The main role of the call center is depends on the types of call center services offers. The way telephone is replied in the call center form your businessCustomer's first printing. These make the phone call for the reply secret to guarantee for the call center that, the visitor knew they deal with business, which wins. Here are the key tips to handle different types of call center services.

1. The first and foremost thumb rule of the phone answering is pickup the phone after the second ring. It is a professional approach and generally inbound call centers people are using this practice generally pickup call at first ring.

2. The second approach is well come to the customer in a good manners with interest. Handling call is one of the important tasks. It requires good listening and answering habits. Finally it leaves your client's impression good or bad depends on your ability.

3. The third important thing is when the reply call center telephone, clearly enunciates, maintains your sound capacity to be moderate and slowly and clearly speaks when
replied the telephone therefore your visitor possibly easily understands you.

4. The fourth one is Completely and accurately adopts the telephone messages. If has something you not to understand or is unable to spell then you can ask the caller again.

5. The last good quality phone answering ability is to do not use the Speakerphone. It will give bad impression on the caller and your client too. After you are representing your client.

Effective communication is one of the essential tasks for the call center agents. It needs lots of training and experience to handle the calls properly.

Source: http://www.1855callcenters.com

CALCULATING SCHEDULE ADHERENCE

2008-10-07T08:19:00.002+07:00

by: Laura Grimes ,

Schedule Adherence is a measurement of how much time an agent spends on a call, wrapping up a call or available to take a call during his shift. In the simplest form, the calculation is:

(Talk Time + After Call Work + Available Time)/Shift Time

The above calculation has a few problems. First of all, shift time needs to be defined by an organization (do agents log off during breaks or do they put themselves in an unavailable mode). Furthermore, it is extremely important that the center defines how all activities conducted by agents should be logged and enforces those rules as standards. It is also of importance that centers define exactly what constitutes shift time. Do you include time spent in “approved and planned” non-phone activities (training, meetings, coaching, etc)? Additionally, adherence does not measure whether or not the agent worked the assigned schedule.

Another aspect of schedule adherence is setting the goal. It must be realistic and attainable or you will encourage agents to attempt to play the system, leading to a distortion of the real activities of the agents. Some centers choose to back all auxiliary time out of the shift time. While this has the impact of not penalizing agents for “approved and planned” non-phone activities, this blanket deduction also allows for a multitude of “sins” to be hidden and creates very high adherence numbers. A much better practice is to define the auxiliary work codes that an agent needs for all aspects of his job (from bathroom breaks to assigned projects) and then determine which if any auxiliary codes should be subtracted from shift time.

If your systems will not allow for tracking at that auxiliary level of detail, take the time to set realistic adherence schedules. Is some centers, it is in the 70's. In most centers it is in the 80's. If you are striving for and reaching a goal in the 90's, it is possible that you are either not looking at the complete picture OR you are burning agents out.

A final note: Consider looking at schedule compliance as a measurement. This measurement allows call center managers to consider how closely agents are working to their schedules.

UPSELLING IN SERVICE CALL CENTERS

2008-09-29T21:28:00.001+07:00

By: Art Hall, NetBank

How to implementing UPSELLING IN SERVICE CALL CENTERS??

This is a very difficult question to answer, but a question that must be addressed. In my experience in transforming a service-oriented call center to a sales and service oriented call center, I was under tremendous pressure to produce results quickly. Senior executives underestimated the level of change management that is involved in taking an entire operation from pure service to an operation that was cross-selling/up-selling to customers where it made sense.

Here are some things that I have learn and done in the process:

1. Develop an overarching strategy for service and sales and communicate that strategy constantly to your team and the customer service agents. The way I had to break upselling down to my team was to ask them if they ever have been asked to super size a combo at a drive through restaurant. That is essentially what they are doing: determining if the customer is in a "super size mood" today. If not, move on, if so, give them the bigger fries and coke!

2. Develop a visual sales process - Everyone in the call center must get a visual picture of the sales process end to end.If you have Microsoft Visio or Excel you can map that out pretty easily.

3. Listen, Listen, Listen. You will find out that there are some customer service agents that are not fit for sales, and that is okay. You have some decisions to face if it is required for the entire call center operation to sell. But you will be surprised what agents will say/not say that impedes their ability for sales.

4. Start slow and establish quick wins. You may want to start with a simple tag line at the end of every call or start with an easy product/service in order to start momentum.

5. Make it fun. In our environment, the Operations Manager created a literal mountain that hung on the wall and superimposed his face on a person that is hiking up the mountain, representing our maturity in the transition.

6. You Need QA (Quality Asurance) and You Need Sales Coaches. This is a "both and" type of deal and not an "either or." QA should listen for the opportunities capitalized as well as missed; sales coaches should be on the floor shadowing the reps and giving them pointers. You may want to take one or two of your best sales agents and make them the coaches if you don't have the budget to hire additional coaches.

7. Need to establish KPI's (Key Performance Indicators) at a strategic and tactical level. A good strategic KPI is cost of service - it is an efficiency measure that will let you know how efficient each rep is in asking for the sale. Another good one is number of cross sells per 100 calls handled. There is a benchmark in financial services of 3 products/services sold per 100 calls. I am not sure if there is a benchmark in your vertical. At a tactical level, measure the agents on number of units sold - it's easy and they can control it.

8. Re-think your incentive compensation - if you are a B2C (Business-to-Consumer) shop, I would extract learnings from B2B (Business-to-Business) companies that have a mature and defined incentive compensation plan and use that to develop your compensation plans and incentives (both monetary and non-monetary).

9. Set up recurring sales meetings with senior execs so that they can understand how well your organization is adapting to the change and the challenges you are facing. This helps level set expectations and establishes your credibility BIG time!

An Underestimated Principle In The Call Center

2008-09-26T04:55:00.000+07:00

As a call center manager or supervisor, you may pride yourself on your fairness. You understand that treating agents with an evenhanded and equal approach is important. However, it's not your perception that matters: it's your agents' ideas about what is fair that matters. If your call center agent pool is comprised of mature adults with long careers behind them, thick skins and a high degree of tolerance for criticism, then you are fortunate. However, chances are, you employ a lot of young people who may be new to a workplace environment, particularly one where a workforce is almost literally elbow-to-elbow, as in the call center.

The causes of high turnover in the call center are not always clear-cut to company management. Sure, you understand why an employee quits if he complains that he's not getting the shifts he wants or is offered more money by another company. But more often than not, it is soft, intangible things that cause friction in the call center. Agents feel their goals are poorly communicated and measured. That another agent was trained better than him or her. That supervisors always choose to monitor on the agent's "bad" days while ignoring the good conversations. That supervisors are keeping a closer watch on him or her than other agents. That company management is stressing training on issues the employee feels he or she has already mastered, while skimping on areas the agent would truly like help in (but is unwilling to ask).

Today's call center technologies go a long way toward creating and maintaining fairness in agents' jobs. Workforce optimization solutions allow for schedule and vacation swapping that is done automatically based on seniority, coverage needs and who asked first rather than supervisors picking and choosing who gets the good schedules and who doesn't, which tends to bring about accusations of "favoritism."

Quality surveys of customers can be done randomly, helping catch a more representative range of opinions. It's well known that in the contact center, if you leave it up to customers to decide when they want to offer feedback, they are generally going to take time to offer it only when they've had a negative experience. And if you allow agents to "push" surveys to customers, they are, of course, only going to "push" when a call has gone well.

Speech analytics, too, can help supervisors become aware of where agents really need help, and where they are strong. Supervisors can take steps to correct errors - or areas where training may be thin for certain agents -automatically by pushing the appropriate e-learning modules to call center agents, allowing diem to learn at their desks during their downtime with no judgmental manager standing over them. In this way, a supervisor need not either publicly single out an agent for a problem; i.e., "Suzanne, you really need to improve your close rate," or take the time out to pull the agent aside for private, individualized learning, which carries its own stigma.

Call recording allows you to record and store all of your agents' calls, if necessary, and access them easily. Not only do many industries today require 100 percent recording of customer interactions, it can be a good idea to avoid agent/customer "he said, she said" scenarios. You can use the recordings to find out where agents are weak, but on the flip side, you can use the recording to let agents know what they are doing well.

Improving the perception (and the reality) of fairness in the call center can go a long way toward reducing agent attrition and nipping the "disgrunded agent snowball effect" in the bud before it blooms into resentment of company management. Because when a group of people is working is working elbow-to-elbow in a call center environment, disharmony is the very last thing that's needed.

By Tracey E. Schelmetic, Editorial Director, Customer Interaction Solutions

Call Center Culture

2008-09-21T21:08:00.000+07:00

By Mary Beth Ingram, Phone Pro Founder / June 2002

Victoria’s Secret Is Out. Dress Barn Is Safe at Home!

Call Centers are mainstream. You see call centers in TV commercials and on the cartoon pages of your daily newspaper. Both are great indicators that the call center is a “household word.”

Ten years ago if you told someone you worked in a call center, they responded by asking, “A call what? What’s that?” No more. In fact, I’m waiting for the TV sitcom to come out because the life in a call center is such “real life” and full of story after story. So it’s no surprise that call centers make the news as did Victoria’s Secret recently, and it’s no surprise that in a letter to its credit card holders, Dress Barn alerted its customers to a change in the location of their call center operations.

On August 23rd in the Columbus, Ohio Dispatch the closing of Victoria Secret’s call center, located in the greater Columbus area, was reported. (The newspaper story can be accessed at www.dispatch.com.)

The fact that they ceased operations makes it a newsworthy story. How they did it makes it a noteworthy story for the call center community. I am well aware that this story most certainly has layers I am not privy to that would shed light on the circumstances that caused the company to cease operations. The story’s headline was, “Victoria’s Secret Sends 470 Packing.” Staff was in the call center, on the phones with customers and the phones went dead. Staff was then called into a meeting and told the call center had been closed. Every person was offered a transfer to one of two other call centers, one in Kettering Ohio, about 70-80 miles west of Columbus, or to the state of New Mexico. Here is a quote from one of the staff: “I started working there in November of 1992 and I just cracked $10 an hour. So you can just imagine how hard it would be to try to move or commute to Kettering”.

The company was quick to point out that they were not like “other American retailers” who were cutting jobs. No, they were transferring jobs. Pay no attention to the fact that the new locations were 70 miles and 1,470 miles away so you could choose between a little over an hour’s commute or a day’s!

A remarkable attempt to appear pure and caring. In all fairness, it’s important to report that they did offer 60 days’ severance pay to anyone who could not accept the transfer. Somehow it would not surprise me to find out that offer had holes in it, but I’ll never know and don’t want to know.

If you taste or smell something foul, it’s the company’s culture. No one denies a corporation’s need to make tough, difficult business decisions. We accept that no decision is good for everyone and in fact, people are often hurt even in the best of decisions that come down from on high.

Now, take a look at a different view of life in a call center. In a letter I received in August from an American retailer, The Dress Barn, was this statement: “We have expanded our telemarketing, website and fulfillment operations and moved them in-house. At Dress Barn we are committed to offering you superior customer service.”

What is remarkable about this letter is the notification of the move “in-house” of their operations. Yes, the call center is mainstream!

The letter goes on to explain that past customer experiences have fallen short of expectations both for the customer and for the company. Now neither you nor I know if the letter is purely a marketing effort or a demonstration of the real essence of caring. What we do know is that Dress Barn didn’t need to inform cardholders of the change. What we can hope for is that this is a real demonstration of exactly who they are and want to be.

We can hope that when the tough and difficult decision was made to bring operations back in-house, they didn’t pull the plug in the middle of the phone call. We can hope that if they face a new tough and difficult decision to close or downsize, they will not pull the plug in the middle of the phone call.

If something tastes or smells fresher, it’s the company’s culture.

It’s gotten very popular to talk about “culture” and apply it to business settings and strategies. While references to good ol’ Webster can be trite and space filling when an author has little to say, I find this one remarkable enough to insert. Pause for a moment and think about your definition of “culture” and then return for Webster’s (On line Merriam-Webster to be exact).

Culture: 1) The act of developing the intellectual and moral faculties especially by education. 2) Expert care and training (beauty culture). 3) Enlightenment and excellence of taste acquired by intellectual and aesthetic training as in the acquaintance with and taste in fine arts, humanities, and broad aspects of science as distinguished from vocational and technical skills. 4) a) the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon man’s capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations. b) the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group c) the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes a company or corporation

What I take as the most common meaning of the word, i.e., the references to customs, beliefs, and all other things sociological, was down in the 4th spot. It didn’t surprise me that “4c” referred to the use of the word in the business world. That indeed speaks to the pervasiveness of its use.

Notice the distinction made in the third definition saying that this is not about vocational or technical skills but about enlightenment and excellence through acquisition of intellectual and aesthetic training. It’s as if the third definition defines both the first and second while the 4th applies it.

Good Call Center Training Creates a Positive Atmosphere

2008-09-15T04:30:00.001+07:00

By STEFANIA VISCUSI
TMCnet Assistant Editor for Channels

In the call center, agents are the touch point between customers and the company. Ensuring they receive proper call center training to handle stressful situations, answer caller requests accurately and portray the image of the company, is critical.

Achieving successful call center training isn’t as easy as saying, "Ok here's a list of what you need to do, do it." For years, call centers have relied on agents who just answered phones and did as they were asked, but this is the same reason why call center training has failed.

Call center training needs to be in place not only from the minute an agent decides to join the operation, but call center training must be a continuous effort to improve and maintain success throughout the entire operation.

Training call center agents on how to talk to customers, what to say and when to say it, and reinforcing all of their decisions with the right mix of feedback and coaching are all elements of good call center training.

One of the best ways to achieve a successful call center operation is by giving agents time to practice. Just simply telling agents what to do and sending them off hoping they will do it right, is not good enough. Showing them and giving them a safe environment to practice what you have told them will yield great results.

Call center jobs can be extremely stressful, especially when callers want answers, or may be upset or emotional. Good call center training provides agents with the skills and tools needed to eliminate the stress of these situations.

If training takes place in an environment that is comfortable and allows mistakes to be made, without sacrificing those mistakes on actual customers, it becomes beneficial to agents and gives them a chance to better develop their skills.

An important thing to remember about call center training is that it is ongoing. It does not end on the first day of the job.

When good, continual call center training is in place, management and supervisors can rest assured that their job and the entire operation will run smoother, customers will be more satisfied with the service they receive, and a positive environment will surface.

Stefania Viscusi is an established writer and avid reader. To see more of her articles, please visit Stefania Viscusi’s columnist page .

Ideal Call Center Suite

2008-09-09T22:31:00.003+07:00

Ideal Call Center Suite is an innovative all-in-one business solution based on latest technology that is designed to ensure significant improvement in contact center productivity and highest customer satisfaction. It offers top-of-the-line capabilities, such as Predictive Dialer, IP-PBX, IVR (Interactive Voice Response), ACD (Automatic Call Distributor), Voice Logger, Unified Contact Messaging, CRM and Reporting. It offers a host of features such as Multiple Campaign Management, Performance Management, Unified Messaging (Chat, E-mail, SMS), Skill-Based Routing, Call Compliance, Centralized Management and many more. It provides a powerful value proposition to its call center customers in form of easy scalability, ease-of-use, low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and ability to work seamlessly over TDM or VoIP. .

source: synergtechglobal.com/sbs_graph.html

The Anatomy of a Call Center Agent

2008-09-08T13:59:00.000+07:00

Learn the Top 8 Reasons to Use a Virtual Call Center

2008-09-04T23:55:00.002+07:00

Companies have spent decades fine tuning the traditional brick-and-mortar call center model. But, it’s tough to make further improvements given the constraints of physical location, people, and complex on premise equipment. And, a major trend over the past decade offshoring – simply chases lower cost labor at the cost of customer service.

The virtual call center model – with on-demand platform and remote agents - offers new options to significantly improve performance and reduce cost structure.

Download the white paper here

Better Communication Skills — Three Tips for Conference Calls

2008-08-26T21:49:00.003+07:00

The conference call has been a way of life in business for many years now. So why are so many frustrating, ineffective calls being held every day? This simple list of reminders is intended to help keep conference calls from becoming wasted time.

1. No multi tasking — I've been guilty on this count, I must admit. But if you force yourself to follow a no multi tasking rule, you get another benefit. You're force to confront the question of whether the conference call is an effective use of your time. It's easy to say yes if you're thinking you can appease someone while you do your email. But if the call isn't worth your time, you need to speak up and say so.

2. It's a meeting, so treat it like one. The call should have a clear PAL (Purpose, Agenda, Limit). Participants should be invited, and attendance taken. Be clear about who is leading the call. Start on time. The leader needs to keep the call/meeting on track, and document actions taken and follow up activities (who, what, by when). End on time. Send an email with the documented action items promptly, preferably before you do anything else.

3. Test for agreement. In face to face meetings, body language and facial expressions provide clues as to whether people are engaged in the topic, even if they choose to remain silent. Not so on a phone call, and while we'd like to live by a rule of silence equals acceptance, that's dangerous. If the number of participants is reasonable, call the roll so everyone has to say yes or no on key decisions. Beware of voice inflections that indicate uncertainty, and tactfully call them out.

Avoid ex partee one to one conversations after a conference call, especially the kind where someone calls you right away to express their frustration or anger. On the other hand, if you're leading a call and you're convinced that someone has been disenfranchised or needs some help dealing with a topic, go ahead and reach out to them.

One more point — the speaker phone is a great invention. But poor quality speakerphones can really bog down a call. People end up talking over one another and sometimes don't even know it. It can lead to repetition and frustration. If you're relying on speaker phones, get high quality equipment. Otherwise encourage people to use handsets or headsets

Article Source: http://www.callcentercafe.com

7 interesting call-center facts

2008-08-25T23:34:00.001+07:00

1. A study by Ventana Research threw up the following interesting facts

• 50% of call centers target less than 4 minutes per call
• 48% track revenue generated by the call center
• 46% employ up-sell or cross efforts
• 12% of call center companies do not measure customer satisfaction at all
• 60% rely on the agent to assess the customers satisfaction

What do these points tell us – mainly that call centers are focusing more on extracting “volume” performance from their employees and customer satisfaction which they all harp about is essentially secondary. Not different from any other business!!

2. An IDC report states that the cost of a home-based agent is two-thirds that of the cost of an office-based employee.

Am sure they must be using different performance metrics too to judge the two types of workers. Going by this piece, telecommuters must be outperforming their office-going counterparts.

3. South America is set to be the dominant global flavor of call center pie according to a report from Datamonitor. The number of agents in Caribbean and Latin American based contact center agents servicing offshore customers to more than triple from 16,200 in 2005 to 44,900 in 2010. Mexico is set to emerge as a major force set to cater to the US Hispanic market.

It’s slow progress for these countries in my opinion; maybe they don’t have a pool of English speakers that an early mover like India had.

4. According to a study by the Yankee Group, 24% of call center employees are home-based and this number is increasing by 24% each year. On similar lines IDC estimates the number of home-based phone representatives in the United States, to grow from 112,000 today to over 300,000 by 2010.

5. VoIP has had a huge impact on how call centers function and according to an In-stat study Asia is where the action is. The study states that the VoIP market in Asia will be worth more than $10 billion by 2009 with a major chunk coming from the developed nations of East Asia.

6. An interesting find by Purdue University – an astonishing 92% of callers/prospective customers form an opinion about a company based on their call-center interaction and a very high percentage – 68% - will not hesitate to switch brands if not satisfied with call center performance.

7. A probable reason why many SMBs remain just that – don’t know the source of this but it says that a staggering 51% of SMBs did not think emails were worth responding to, they didn’t respond to them at all and 70% of these SMBs took more than 24 hours to get back. This compared to 41% of enterprises not responding at all and 61% not responding within 24 hours.

article source: http://www.comparecrm.com

New Capabilities in Call Center Technology

2008-08-24T21:21:00.001+07:00

By:Howard Baldwin

Not all of today’s call center capabilities are new; what’s new about call-center technology is the ability for these capabilities to be quickly and inexpensively integrated. “Small businesses have always needed call center technology,” insists Chris Lyman, CEO of Fonality. “They’ve just never been able to afford it. Not just the call-center technology, but tying it into your back-office systems has been heinously expensive.”

Twenty years ago, telephone company equipment was proprietary — both the hardware and software were created solely for the use of the telephone company, so that when you wanted to integrate computer equipment with telephone equipment (known as computer-telephony integration, or CTI), the costs were exorbitant because the computer systems were probably proprietary as well, so you needed programmers who understood the intricacies of not one but two arcane systems.

In recent years, considerable change has taken place. Call center software runs on industry-standard servers, just as databases do; integrating applications is much simpler than it used to be. Even more important, most telephony systems now also run on industry-standard servers, rather than on proprietary hardware.

Finally, the convergence of voice and data networks — on which voice transmissions use the Internet protocol — makes call-center integration even less complicated, and less expensive to implement.

At the same time that voice and data networks have converged, specialized call-center capabilities have been integrated as well. At one time, you may have had to separately purchase automatic call distribution (ACD) software, which distributes calls into queues for agents, and integrate it with IVR software, which, as noted, routes calls to the appropriate department. It seems silly now, but Bern Elliott of the analyst firm Gartner notes that a major shift in the last few years has been for vendors to offer a full portfolio of such products. “The differences between the products have been reduced, and people want to get them through a single vendor or through a partnership,” he says.

“Any vendor that you select now comes with the complete package,” notes Dan Coen, vice-president of call centers for CallSource, which offers call-center services on an outsourced basis. “You should be leery of a niche player, not because they won’t do that particular thing well, but because they can’t scale” as you need to add capabilities.

And that integration, insists Bern Elliott of the analyst firm Gartner, is what a call center is about. “It’s people supporting people. All you really need is for the most basic call center is a person and a phone. People get so caught up in the technology that they forget what’s important.”

article source: http://www.allbusiness.com

TRACKING FIRST CALL RESOLUTION WITHOUT TECHNOLOGY

2008-08-21T22:28:00.001+07:00

How can you track First Call Resolution (FCR) if your center is not using any kind of technology or support application?

One pitfall of asking agents to mark a ticket as "closed" or "resolved" is that some agents, in order to boost their resolution rate, will mark a case "resolved" or "closed" when in fact, they are escalating the call to a more specialized agent, or when the call is terminated by the customer without resolution (customer does not have time to troubleshoot, or is not at the equipment to try the agent-suggested solution, or the resolution is dependent upon resolving an issue with a third party which cannot be contacted or conferenced in - is not available). In this instance, a completely new case has to be opened by the higher-level agent.

Another ringer - which can skew data in either direction - is the customer with a recurring technical performance issue. If the issue no longer appears at the conclusion of the call, one must ask whether the customer's issue has truly been resolved, or whether the agent has just applied the most recent strategy against a moving target. Many agents will mark the case "resolved", per the (probably-temporary) resolution. Other agents will hesitate to mark the case "resolved", keeping it "open" for the customer to monitor the product's performance for a period of time. Often these cases are never marked "resolved".

Additionally, escalated-level agents may hesitate to mark as "resolved" a case that they have truly resolved, if they believe that their agent IDs will be correlated with an outgoing customer satisfaction survey -- some higher-level agents believe that the customer will only remember the initial agent or agents, who either were unable to solve the problem, or whose actions may have complicated the issue -- reflecting poorly on the advanced agent's real ability to resolve the complete suite of issues and satisfy the customer

Tips for Handling Angry Callers as a Virtual Call Center Agent

2008-08-19T22:17:00.000+07:00

BySusan Gunelius

As a telephone customer service agent, you are often the first contact a customer has with a company. When you're working with customers directly, you'll eventually have to help customers who are irate. During these conversations, it's important to focus on your job and solving the problem at hand. You're being paid to assist customers - the good and the bad. Take a deep breath and follow these tips to successfully handle angry callers.

Don't Personalize

Regardless of the negative attitudes or unpleasant tones of angry callers, it is essential that
you, the customer service representative, do not get emotional, too. The first key to successfully handling these calls is to remember not to personalize anything these callers say to you. The easiest way to do this is to remember not to react to anything angry callers say. Instead, take a moment to hear what they're saying and offer a response that will help calm them rather than incite them. Using phrases like, "I hear what you're saying," or "I understand," can help calm angry callers.

Listen and Be Patient

Don't interrupt angry callers Be patient and let them finish speaking. Sometimes they just need to vent their frustrations then they can relax a bit and work with you as you try to resolve their problem. Sometimes they aren't interested in getting help at all. Instead, they may simply want to voice their anger and complaint. If the customer knows you're listening and want to help them, there is a strong likelihood they'll calm down.

Empathize

Put yourself in your customers' shoes. An angry customer has a problem, and they need you, the customer service agent, to help them fix it. How would you feel if you were in the same situation? What would you want a customer service agent to say to you in a similar situation to make you feel better? Those are the same words any angry caller wants to hear. They want to know you understand, and they want reassurance that you can help them.

Apologize

A critical component to successfully handling angry callers is to apologize to them. Even if you know the customer is wrong, take a moment to apologize for the inconvenience the confusion caused. Many angry callers simply want acknowledgement from the company that a mistake was made. For other callers, an apology is the first step to overcoming their anger and opening a dialogue about resolving the problem.

Offer Solutions

As the customer service representative, it is your responsibility to resolve customers' problems. Once you've identified the problem, you need to take responsibility for finding a solution that not only follows company policies but also satisfies the customer. If you aren't able to resolve the customer's problem immediately, offer reassurance that the problem is being worked on and will be resolved for the customer. Provide details about the next steps you or the company will take to resolve the problem and ensure the customer leaves with realistic expectations at the end of the call.

Bring Closure

Your goal is to bring closure to every call whether that means a completed sale, a change of address or resolution to a problem from an angry caller. By working with this goal in mind each time you answer the phone, you'll be setting yourself up for success, and you'll be offering customers first-rate service.

COMPONENTS OF A QUALITY CALL

2008-08-13T23:22:00.000+07:00

Great question. First, I would say that there are certain components that make up a quality call that are fairly consistent across every industry. There are also many components that will be very specific to your specific industry, customer base, type of call, the overall mission of the center and so on.

In terms of the components of a quality call/contact, the following list, which must be credited to

Brad Cleveland since it comes from his book, Call Center Management on Fast Forward, represents the basic components that span across industries, contact types and customer types:

Customer does not get a busy signal when using telephone or "no response" from Web site
Customer is not placed in queue for too long
Agent provides correct response
All data entry is correct
Agent captures all needed/useful information
Agent has "Pride in Workmanship"
Contact is necessary in the first place
Customer receives correct information
Customer has confidence contact was effective
Customer doesn't feel it necessary to check-up, verify or repeat
People "down the line" can correctly interpret the order
Customer is not transferred around
Customer doesn't get rushed
Customer is satisfied
Unsolicited marketplace feedback is detected and documented
Call center's mission is accomplished

After this, it is really a matter of determining the specifics for your center (as mentioned above). A great way to truly understand and accomplish this list is to ask your representatives...get them involved in defining a quality call. Not only is this a wonderful team meeting exercise (which spurs a lot of excellent discussion and ideas), but since they are truly the main point of contact with your customers they will know better than anyone except for the customers themselves. Which leads me to suggest looking at your customer surveys for what customers say is important or conduct some surveys asking them what is important.

Article Source: Rose Polchin, Senior Consultant, ICMI rosep@icmi.com

MEASURING TRAINING EFFECTIVENESS

2008-08-13T22:36:00.000+07:00

Incoming Calls Management Institute (ICMI) recently published a study guide for CIAC certification on People Management and included information on evaluating training effectiveness. The following is an excerpt:

At a basic level, evaluation consists of defining objectives, specifying those objectives measurably, and then assessing the extent to which learners have mastered those objectives. To determine the results of training, management must establish baseline performance metrics based on the needs assessment. That is, "What measurement is used to identify the gap?" After the training has been conducted, these performance metrics can be evaluated to determine the effect of the training. Of course, other influences (e.g., a change in procedures, new technology) should be noted to ensure the positive or negative effect was due to training.

Training programs should be evaluated on four levels:

Reaction: What are the participants' feedback on the training? This is typically measured through a survey and usually covers such items as program methodology, group and individual exercises, quality of materials and media, facilitator capabilities, facilities, etc.
Learning evaluation: This is the process of collecting, analyzing and reporting information to assess how much the participants learned and applied in the learning environment.
Application to the job: This step assesses the degree to which the knowledge, skills and abilities taught in the classroom are being used on the job.
Evaluating the impact and ROI: This is the process of determining the impact of training on organizational productivity, improved customer satisfaction and the organization's strategic business plan. What is the change in business metrics attributable to training? What is the return on the training investment (typically calculated by dividing the net dollar value of the benefit by the costs of training)?

Article Source: Debbie Harne, Director of Educational Services, ICMI, debbieh@icmi.com

5 Crucial Factors In Call Center Management

2008-08-10T00:07:00.000+07:00

Source : Business News Onlypunjab.com

Call centers spring up everywhere. It's the latest hub in business world. These call centers efficiently connect companies and customers wherever they maybe around the globe. From product inquiries to technical support, call centers offers varying services. It can accept calls from customers ( inbound) as well as initiate calls (outbound). Some call centers even do both.

At the heart of a call center industry lies the wonder of proprietary technology and keen management. If you plan to put up a call center or have been called up to supervise one , here's some crucial management factors you should know :

1.)CAPITAL

If you are a business man and want to diversify your portfolio by putting up a call center, please know that such business venture requires a significant start up capital. Study your options well and take stock of your funds before engaging in such costly endeavor. If possible, do some appropriate researches. Drop by and arrange interviews with call center owners. Leave no stone unturned.

2.)EQUIPMENT

A call center basically needs, office space,phone lines, computers, dedicated servers, and a broadband connection. It also needs a specialized software. These costs money. Anyway, equipments can be tailored to the growing needs of your proposed call center. You can start up with a small office space, invest in four computers or so, some telephone lines and equipments. Just remember to get reliable equipments or your call center will suffer an early demise. Then you can upgrade these devices as the need arises.

3.)PERSONNEL
Call centers requires staffing. And staffing means hiring people to do the job. In other words, call center rely heavily on people manning their jobs. It's the backbone of the call center industry. It's labor-intensive. A large chunk of your investment will go to wages. In addition, remember to give the right training to your call center agents. Your personnel can spell the difference between success and failure of your call center.

4.)LEADERSHIP

To supervise effectively a team of employees in a call center, you must provide the right leadership to them. You see, being a call center agent is a demanding job. Employees gets tired easily. For a start, you should design your office space so would be conducive for workers. Plus, you should build rapport and goodwill between you and your call center agents. Tempers can run high in any given moment and as a manager, you should be knowledgeable enough how to diffuse such situation before it could escalate into a big scenario. Keep your cool. And always strive to talk softly, amiably, but firmly so you will respected. Otherwise, you will get a high turn-over volume that could drastically affect your investment.

5.)MONITORING

If you can, select top-notch, high-end call center software because it incorporates an excellent employee monitoring features. Pick the best. You can make a choice because there are many of them in the market. Again, this type of software costs money. The good thing is , it offers you monitoring tools and real time access to call center agent's conversations with their customers. Thus, you can track their performance as well as institute needed improvement in weak areas.

Is a Call Center Right for Your Small Business?

2008-08-03T00:22:00.001+07:00

By Howard Baldwin

Outsourcing has turned so many services into commodities that the personal touch that used to distinguish one business among its competitors is rarer today than it has ever been. Consequently, that personal touch is also perhaps more crucial than ever for a business that wants to pull ahead in a competitive marketplace.

But delivering that “personal touch” may not necessarily mean that your own employees are responsible for all the contact your company makes with customers. If you choose wisely, you can get a fully outsourced call center service that can uphold your standards for good customer interaction.

You may also decide to develop your call center services in-house, in which case you can support your customer service or sales staff with technology that helps to route calls, offers multiple ways to interact with customers, and manages the information your customers provide. As a third approach to setting up your company’s call center, you may choose a hybrid option, relying partly on outsourced services and partly on your own call center system and personnel to take care of all your customer contacts.

The good news for small businesses is that there are affordable tools and services in all these call center options. Call centers are no longer formal, complex, and expensive solutions only for those with dedicated agents. Managing communications, and integrating the management of that information along with other aspects of customer relations, including customer history, is now available to businesses of any size at a fraction of the cost from five to 10 years ago.

Call centers come with different functions; there are special functions that make a contact center different from the phone-only interaction of the traditional call center. There are different levels of call center service and technology, from fully outsourced solutions to the software and hardware that will allow you to set up your own in-house contact center

Call Center Management: 3 Simple Ways To Drastically Trim Down Call Center Operational Costs

2008-07-31T11:59:00.001+07:00

A call center business demands a significant cash investment. These include employees, key equipment, and business location. You could effectively cut down costs and provide good call center management if you have a clear understanding of these basic sources of call center expenses.

1.
EMPLOYEES ( Staff)

People make up 90 % of your call center investment. They are the frontline fo your business. Hiring the right people and offering them the right incentive could spell success for your investment. Without the proper renumerations, a call center will suffer from a high turn-over. People won’t stay long in the company and it cost more in terms of training lost and resources. How could you trim down the employees aspect of a call center? Well, it’s simple, actually. You implement a sensible hiring process. Screen applicants to weed out the “ unfits” , the “ misfits”, and the people who do not have any customer service inclinations. This way, you hire only people who are best fitted for the job. Go for quality, rather than the
quantity of recruits. It is better to hire 15 best performing call center employees rather than hire, train, and pay 30 mediocre employees. And once you have good workers, constantly monitor and upgrate their productivity. It is worth mentioning that you should also make pro-active plans regarding :

a.) Agents’ Talk Time— you should implement the necessary metrics to gauge an agent’s work output. The longer your employee stays on the phone for one caller, the more costly it will be for your company.

b.) Resources —- the agent should be able to resolve a caller issues and not transfer the call to a supervisor. Provide your employees with comprehensive trainings.

c.) Total volume of contacts— while a call center welcomes calls, there are some call types which are best blocked at the start. This generally refers to prank callers, stray calls, and other unproductive callers. Your call center must decisively handle these types of calls.

2.
EQUIPMENT

Call center operations need dedicated phone lines, computer workstations, and proprietary software. You
will incur bigger expenses if you go for used equipments or worse, inferior hardware. While these equipment may initially cost less at start up, you will be plagued with server downtime, choppy receptions, and costly repairs. Better select the best equipment and software available at the start to have a worry-free call center operation, than suffer from periodical interruptions due to faulty equipment. I n this regard, you should do some research on the hardware vendors. Conduct business only with legitimate and duly licensed vendor companies.

3.
LOCATION

US-based companies pay premium fees on employees’ salaries and building costs. However, outsourcing your call center to other locations— like Philippines or India– results to substantial cost reduction. No wonder companies prefer to invest in call centers abroad. Basically, it costs less building call centers in foreign locations outside USA.

Cutting down unnecessary call center operational costs can be achieved with sound call center management strategies. You should exercise caution, though, on what , where, and how to cut expenses for greater impact and effectivity. Otherwise, you will be spending more than you hope to save in the long run.

Article source :
http://24hourscall.wordpress.com

Preparing for a call center agent job interview: What skills are required?

2008-07-31T11:22:00.002+07:00

Author: Donna Fluss

The call center is a dynamic and fast-paced department. It's a highly-structured operating environment where constant change is the norm. Having said that, a typical call center agent candidate profile includes the following skill set requirements:

Excellent oral and written communication and interpersonal skills
Professional and courteous demeanor
Ability to multi-task in a fast-paced, high-volume environment
Excellent problem-resolution skills
Strong systems skills
Ability to learn, retain and apply large amounts of product, procedure, policy and system information
Ability to meet established productivity, effectiveness, training, sales (if applicable) and quality goals
Ability to work in a highly-structured environment – take scheduled lunches and breaks
Ability to accept and incorporate constructive feedback to improve performance
Flexibility in responding to change or business needs
Ability to accommodate non-traditional work schedules
Patience
Willingness to help peers
Excellent attendance and punctuality
Good team player
Self-starter
While it's not a requirement, it's also an asset for a candidate to like people and enjoy helping them.

The interview process will be focused on evaluating how closely and to what extent you, or any job applicant, meet the skill set of the candidate profile. How this is accomplished can vary greatly among organizations.

Some organizations use a competency-based assessment tool as part of the hiring process to evaluate call center agent candidates. These online tools assess skills as well as personality traits that are critical to being a successful,
happy and satisfied call center agent. Simulation tools – online applications that simulate the actual customer service environment – are another way that organizations can assess your ability to perform as a call center agent. Still others may use behavior-based interview questions. These questions are designed to elicit specific examples from candidate's previous job(s) where they successfully handled situations that they are likely to encounter as a call center agent. For example, a behavior-based question might be, "Please tell me about a specific time when you had to deal with a difficult or unreasonable request from a customer."

VoIP Call Center Solutions

2008-07-22T09:01:00.001+07:00

Author: Kent Pinkerton

In recent years, companies have realized the value of call centers, as they have the potential of effectively expanding a business. Call centers allow businesses to operate on a 24/7 basis and provide customer service to clients wherever they might be in the world. However, setting up a call center involves high costs that most small businesses cannot afford. Fortunately, there are a number of options borne out of developments in technology that businesses can choose that enable them to set up a call center without having to incur huge costs. One of these includes using a recent innovation in communications technology -- Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP -- aimed to render long distance calls obsolete. This technology bypasses traditional telephone company infrastructure to deliver phone services over a broadband Internet connection.

Apart from the benefit of being a more convenient and affordable option for communications, as opposed to having multiple phone lines installed, there are also a number of benefits that VoIP provides its users, specifically for businesses. You can establish a business presence in different locations through the network that VoIP provides that allows a business to set up a number of toll free lines that their customers can access.

In other words, VoIP allows businesses to set up a mini call center that provides immediate solutions to their customers in different locations. Through the network, a business can take multiple calls at the same time. VoIP also has features that give customers a number of options on how to get assistance including click to call capabilities, integrated conferencing, auto-attendant capabilities, call routing and web based voice mail.

Nowadays, businesses are realizing the benefits of a call center to a business, as it allows a business to provide services to their clients in different locations and to operate on a 24/7 basis. Fortunately, recent developments in technology such as VoIP allows more businesses, especially the small ones, to take advantage of the opportunities that having a call center provides. This is because VoIP provides both a convenient and an affordable way for a business to find immediate solutions to their clients anywhere in the world.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kent_Pinkerton

Call Center Morale Boosting Strategies

2008-07-18T15:49:00.003+07:00

Morale is deceptively important in the running of an efficient call center. The reason it is deceptive is because while most bosses acknowledge the relationship between morale and productivity, few call center bosses are able to accurately pin down a decrease in productivity as being directly related to a lowered morale. The reason it is important is the same; namely that a higher morale means happier workers, which in turn leads to an overall increase in call center productivity.

What does it mean to have high productivity in a call center? Well for starters it means a higher level of customer focus, as call center agents with higher morale are going to sound more pleasant over the phone. It is human nature to unconsciously let feelings show through and in a job that involves a large amount of telephone conversation, it becomes easy to see how an unhappy worker can result in customer complaints and unnecessary headache further on down the road.

More than just customer focus, high morale in a specific worker can lead to that worker contributing to a more relaxed working environment, which in turn can have a positive morale effect on another worker. This worker then contributes to an even more relaxed working environment and so forth. Morale boosting can create a positive feedback cycle that benefits the whole staff of a call center, thereby making things easier for everyone involved.

So how can one increase the morale of their call center staff? The first step is in understanding what causes morale drops in the first place. Call center employment, as far as front line services go, is the ultimate emotional roller coaster ride. A worker can receive a compliment from one customer that makes them feel great and thirty seconds later be in tears from an angry client using harsh words against them. While it is impossible to avoid angry clients, attentive bosses can take steps that diminish the impact angry clients and other potential obstacles have on the morale of their staff.

The best morale boosters are ones that understand how humans work and think. Incentives are a good way to start; a bonus for achieving a milestone (such as working a certain number of hours without receiving a complaint) is something that will make a worker feel special, as well as let them know that their boss is looking after them directly.

Recognition is another important form of morale boosting that is frequently overlooked by call center administrators. Human nature is such that even a simple thank you can last a long time. Call center staff that have been working the phones a long time develop a confirmation bias that magnifies one type of call and diminishes another in their memory. If their bias is toward positive phone calls, then half the battle if done. If however it turns out to be toward negative phone calls, they will need help to keep their morale high.

And that is where recognition comes in. Finding a way to recognize workers on a regular basis for a job well done can really keep them in high spirits, allowing them to get through that next bad day with less effort than otherwise. Remember what I said above about the positive feedback high morale can generate? Recognition is a simple way to start that loop.

In conclusion, a good way to view call center morale is to think of it as a tool of the trade that is used to increase worker productivity. Call center administrators need to be savvy enough to realize the important relationship between worker morale and worker productivity. High morale is one of the most important aspects of a good call center and with it the sky is truly the limit to what workers can accomplish.

Trainings in Call Centers

2008-07-14T09:59:00.002+07:00

Author by Hani Masgidi

Source :www.steptocallcenter.com

The remarkable growth of Call Center Industry has ushered to the opening of Call Center Training schools. Training schools may be accessed on line where all claim to be best in the field. There are two constants in the area of training; one is that training costs and it is actually consuming large portion of call center’s resources; two is the accounting of the result of the training, there must be an improvement in the performance that would justify the resources spent.

Training is made so as to improve and further develop the performance of an agent. The training satisfies two areas such the personal and individual professional growth of the agent and his delivery of good productivity to the company. With good training, the call center should expect the following results:
- Agents could handle themselves more professionally and with confidence.
- New hires could no longer be distinguished from the experienced agent.
- Better customer satisfaction. - Better productivity.

Training is not a one time deal, it is continuous. It is an indispensable tool that would help to keep the performance of agents on target. Best agents are those that have both the training and the experience. A call center agent is developed as he faces and handles the widest set of situations in the day to day performance of his job. But an experienced and consistently trained agent performs best. Good training provides additional knowledge and confidence to the agent. An effective training is one that derives its training objectives from the business objectives. There are two truths with training; it could only claim to be effective when the results are seen and it is a continuing program. Training is a part of growth and development resulting to a better performing individual. Here are some good reasons why a call center executive should be an advocate of continuous training:
- It boosts morale. An agent would feel motivated will the newly acquired knowledge and added skills.
- It costs less than recruiting and hiring. Call center have the reputation of having the greatest turn over and this could be reduced if not eliminated through training.
- Training stimulates the desire of an individual to improve.
- Training keeps the pace with the rapidly changing technology.
- It develops teamwork and thus results to better productivity.
- Training is an investment that returns many times over. Because it raises morale it directly boosts efficiency and therefore productivity.
- Training raises the rookie to a professional. Investing in training your staff or agents gives the feeling of being valued that could help build their loyalty to the company.
- It eliminates stress. A good training provides agents with the skills and tools needed to handle stressful situations, especially in dealing with angry customers.

Considering all of these, management and supervisors can rest assured that the call center operation will run smoothly and customers will be satisfied with the service they receive from a motivated call center agent. All Center training is not mere compliance to a system; it is an essential part of development and an absolute requirement, just like computers and head sets to a call center.

Call Center Service Level Matters!

2008-07-10T12:14:00.001+07:00

Can your customers reach the services they need, when and as they want?

Source : Brad Cleveland President, ICMI

Accessibility—providing access to the services customers need and want through the channels they choose—goes to the heart of what call centers do. Yes, the quality of services delivered are what ultimately matter… but you can’t even get started until contacts get to the right places at the right times.

The following are well-established principles of managing call center service levels. Reviewing them often and building them into both strategic and day-to-day operational decisions will ensure that your call center is both efficient and accessible—prerequisites to building high-value services.

Categorize contacts correctly. Service level has a specific definition: “X percent of calls answered in Y seconds”—e.g., 90 percent answer within 20 seconds. It is a concrete and stable objective for contacts that must be handled when they arrive, such as telephone calls, text chat, walk-in customers, etc. Response time is the related objective for contacts that don't have to be handled at a specific time, e.g., handling customer email messages within 24 hours. Differentiating between service level and response time is essential because base staff calculations vary for these two major categories of contacts.

Apply appropriate staff calculations. Because of random call arrival, base staff requirements for those contacts that must be handled when they arrive must be predicted by using either a queuing formula that takes random call arrival into account (e.g., the widely-used Erlang C formula) or computer simulation. To calculate the staff required for contacts that do not have to be handled when they arrive, you can generally use a more traditional approach to planning—e.g., if you have 60 customer email messages to process today, which require an average five minutes time, you have 300 minutes of workload to fit into staffing requirements.

Ensure service levels are in parity across contact channels. Being in parity in this context doesn't necessarily mean being equal—e.g., it doesn't mean you necessarily need to respond to email as fast as you answer calls. But it does mean operating within general customer expectations across contact channels. For example, a customer who expects a reply to an email within a few hours but doesn't get it may pick up the phone and call. Similarly, if the customer ends up in an endless telephone queue, they may send an email. Assessing and meeting expectations across contact channels will keep your center in balance.

Manage service levels by increment (interval). Consistent performance by interval (e.g., half hour), is one of the telltale signs of a well-run call center. (Daily, weekly and monthly summary reports often conceal problem areas.) Teach your team to think, plan, report and manage in terms of what’s happening throughout the day—that’s a key to consistent performance.

Don't force occupancy to unrealistic levels. It’s a well-worn principle that when service level gets better, occupancy (the time agents spend handling calls versus waiting for calls) goes down. Therefore, average calls handled per individual also will go down. But remember, this "unproductive" time is sliced into 12 seconds there, two seconds there, and so on, the result of random call arrival. Don't try to force occupancy within an increment to be higher than what base staffing calculations predict it will be, or you will jeopardize service level.

Ensure that budgets reflect workload dynamics. Today's customers demand user-friendly self-service systems and the means to reach well-informed and capable customer service and support representatives when and as they need them. Yes, it's important to do everything possible to provide and encourage customers to use automated support alternatives where that makes sense… but it's also necessary to be realistic about demand for agent-assisted services in operational budgets.

Support service levels with effective workload planning. Effective workload planning involves the totality of forecasting, staff and system calculations, scheduling and real-time management. The most successful call centers have an established, systematic planning process. And good planning provides benefits far beyond accurate schedules… it is a catalyst for the kind of collaboration across the organization that effective customer services require.

In the end, service level must be viewed in the context of a much larger objective: customer satisfaction and loyalty. Service level does not guarantee a great customer experience. But it cannot be minimized, either. It is an enabler—an enabler to everything else that follows!

As president of ICMI, Brad Cleveland has delivered keynotes, executive briefings and consulting services in over 50 countries. ICMI is part of the UBM family of companies, a global leader in business information services with offices around the world. Brad can be reached at bradc@icmi.com.

Team building games for call center agent

2008-07-08T12:46:00.001+07:00

Bet you didn't know this

This is...
An icebreaker activity in which participants share little-known facts about themselves.

The purpose is...
For participants to learn something interesting about each other. This information may
prompt some small talk later.

Use this when...
- Individuals already know each other at least a little bit.
- A new team is forming, especially with participants who already know each other.
- People seem bored with each other and need a boost of energy.

Materials you'll need...
- One index card for each participant.
- A straight pin (or tape) for each participant.
- A pen or pencil for each participant.

Here's how...
1. Divide the group into two teams.
2. Give everyone an index card.
3. Have all participants write one little-known fact about themselves on their card.
4. Collect all the cards from Team 1 and Team 2. Place the stack of Team 2's cards aside for now.
5. Randomly distribute Team 1's cards to Team 2, keeping them face down (so participants can't read them).
6. Have the Team 2 participants pin the card they have on their back, written side showing (so that everyone can read the card except the one wearing it).
7. All the participants mingle. Each Team 1 member finds his or her card on the back of a Team 2 member and pairs up with that person.
8. When paired up, the Team 2 member asks the Team 1 member yes/no questions to determine (guess) what is written on the card.
9. Repeat the process for Team 2's cards.

Ask these questions...
- How much did you learn about each other? (I had no idea that she . . . ; I don't want to mess with this guy; Looks are deceiving!)
- How difficult (or easy) was it to guess what was on your card? (Harder than I thought, because I kept wanting to ask more open questions; Easy once I figured out it was a sport she liked.)
- What questions helped you the most? (Questions that were broader; Questions that didn't assume too much to begin with; Just asking lots of questions fast.)
- Why do you think it's important to get to know each other here at work beyond just knowing the tasks that each other performs? (Because we work with the whole person, not just a part of that person; So we can enjoy our time together more; It allows us to appreciate each other better.)
- How can we get to know each other back on the job?

Tips for success...
- After each round, give the group a little time for discussion. Many people will have read the cards that others wrote and be curious who wrote this one or that one. Undoubtedly, there will be a few stories that simply must be told!
- Make sure no one looks at or reads the card that goes on his or her back.
Try these variations...
- Have participants write two statements on their card, one true and one false. Follow the same procedure, but, after the wearer has guessed both statements, he or she then must guess which one is true and which one is not.
- At Step 2, rather than a little-known fact, have participants write a provocative question. At Step 7, Team 1 participants do not pair up with whoever is wearing their card. Instead, everyone mingles freely. As participants read the questions on others' backs, they merely respond to the question (without telling what the question was). Team 2 participants are challenged with guessing what the question on their back is.
- At Step 2, have the participants write a fact that is well known about themselves. At Step 7, Team 2 participants mingle with Team 1 participants and ask them yes/no questions about the fact on their back. The challenge is to guess what is written and who wrote it.

For virtual teams...
This activity works well for groups that are able to communicate with each other via instant messaging, e-mail, or telephone.
1. Pair everyone up.
2. Person A keeps his or her information secret while Person B asks the yes/no questions.
3. Each of the variations listed can work for a virtual team.

Steps to Effective Call Center Scheduling

2008-07-07T18:24:00.000+07:00

By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor

Call Center Scheduling can be a challenge in that the manager wants to ensure that the center is staffed to respond to anticipated call volumes, but not overstaffed so that agents are sitting idle. Understaffing can create an even bigger problem as customers are forced to wait longer to speak with a live agent and agents are stressed with a heavier work load while trying to still deliver excellent customer service.

As a result, the call center manager must be able to achieve that delicate balance when scheduling for the center. He or she must consider hours of operation; the mix of full-timers, part-timers, permanent and seasonal employees; volume fluctuations; the support staff; occupancy and service level targets; specific customer service representative skill sets; and multimedia contacts and blending.

In order to effectively schedule for the call center, the manager must follow certain steps. First, he or she must gather forecasted call volumes and types that the call center expects over a given period. Second, the manager must establish what service level objectives have been established for the call center.

The call center manager can then distribute the volumes and contact types across a typical week. The next step for the manager is to calculate the base staffing requirements. This can be done using workforce management applications. This practice will help the manager to determine how many active agents are required in each time interval.

Once base staffing requirements are determined, the call center manager must then add in rostered staff factors. This rostering will ensure that the staff level can account for unproductive or non-contact time such as lunches, breaks, training, vacation and sick time.

The manager should next create various models or dummy schedules and run simulation tests to determine the impact on service level and occupancy. To gain a complete understanding of possible scenarios, the manager should create an aggressive model, a conservative model and a mid-point model.

Finally, based on these test results, the call center managers should select the optimal model for his or her call center. It is at this point that staffing level projections can be translated into agent schedules.

As much as following a process like this can help the call center manager develop accurate schedules, no system is fool proof and the proper resources must be in place to handle unexpected peaks and valleys. The most important consideration should always be the level of service that the center is providing the customer and that scheduling is done to achieve or exceed that goal.

Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.

Smart Way To Get Information From Call Centers

2008-07-07T18:12:00.000+07:00

Supposed you are looking for some information which is very important for you. To get that information you did call to customer care service but you get disappointed because due to some communication problem you could not get the desire information.
Most customers call to the customer care when they get any problem in their purchased products or if they want to take some useful information from the call center. They dial the company's phone number expecting that someone from the company will respond to their needs. Indeed, someone would take the call. But too often, that someone does not originate from the phone company office.

The person at the other end of the line answers from a call center.

If your approach to get the information for your damage products is not right then remember that the customer service representative will most likely hang up the phone.

To get the accurate and full information for your desired query, here are some good manners for customer.

1. BE CALM
When you are calling to customer care stay calm and do not shout. Realize that the call center agent did not manufacture the defective product you just purchased. They are lowly employee paid to answer the calls of the customers. If you come up with angry attitude then you are just dialing a wrong number. So remain calm.

2. BE POLITE
You have to give the answer with politeness when agents will ask you certain questions like your name, address, birthday, etc. This is for verification purposes. Call center management requires this procedure. Don't get irritate by the call center agent. Instead, answer the questions properly.

3. BE SPECIFIC
Give the essential details like the name the product, model number, name of the store outlet you purchased it from, the date and time, etc. Giving this essential information will greatly help and speed up the kind of help you need. Remember you are complaining about a defective product in this instance, kindly state your problem very clearly.

4. LISTEN CAREFULLY
As soon as the call center agents process your issue, they will respond properly. Listen carefully. In this particular instance, you bought a defective product and you either want it replaced or repaired. If you want it replaced, they will give instructions on how to proceed. If you want it repaired, Agent will then set the necessary appointment

5. SAY THANK YOU
After getting all the information on how to proceed, you are requested to confirm what you understand. Most customers simply hang up the phone after hearing the call center agent's instruction, not knowing the basic information given to them. And when customer will get some problem again then they have to call to customer care and do the same process again. But if you want to save your time just check the details before hung up the call. And when you feel now you have get all the point about the process then at last say thank you to the customer care agent. It will show that you are good person.

Article Source: http://www.1888articles.com/author-marketing-team-1210.html

The Journey to a World-Class Customer Service Culture

2008-07-07T17:49:00.000+07:00

Source: http://www.beldingskills.com

Achieving a culture of consistent World-Class Customer Service in any organization is a journey. And like all journeys, there are a few things that need to happen for yours to be a success. A good start, for instance, is to make sure you have a clear understanding of where you are, as well as where you want to end up. It's a good idea to have a map.
Your drivers must have the skill to stay focused on the road, with enough foresight to minimize the bumps, and make the quick stops for things that unexpectedly run out in front of you. They require the ability to navigate through poor conditions. They need to know when its time to step on the gas, and when its time to just sit back and enjoy the scenery.
Your engine should run smoothly with the myriad of specialized, fine-tuned parts all performing independently and interdependently to a common purpose, each trusting the others to accomplish their task. Your vehicle should be proudly cleaned and polished, to protect it from corrosion and the wear and tear of the road.
Keep in mind that stopping to refuel occasionally is not a waste of precious time but a necessity for reaching your destination. Oh - and while you're there, check the oil and change parts that have worn out.
Most importantly, keep reminding yourself why you are on the road in the first place. Believe in the importance of your journey.

20 Tips for Improving Your Contact Center

2008-07-03T16:33:00.001+07:00

By Dr. Gary S. Goodman

Every call center or contact center manager wonders how to make his or her unit more productive.

Here is my list of 20 points of leverage, things you can do and have your CSR's and telemarketers do, that should boost your results.

(1) If you want to decrease turnover in service or telemarketing, double the pay! This sounds radical, but it isn't, if you factor in the true costs of recruiting, hiring, training, and then promptly losing good people.

(2) If you want to create turnover in your service unit, implement outbound telemarketing! Say, you need to downsize, but you don't have the heart to let anyone go. Enlarge the job to include selling duties, and you'll thin the ranks, pronto!

(3) Casual dress in your contact center may be getting you casual results, or worse. A major car manufacturer actually measured differential performance based on casual versus formal dress and found tatters less productive than ties.

(4) Stave off boredom & send the right message by playing “The Please & Thank You Game.” Count the number of times you say please and thank-you to customers, just for fun.

(5) Scripts are inevitable in customer service & telemarketing. Even when we think we're winging-it, we're not.

(6) Don’t be needlessly authoritarian: Let a thousand scripts bloom! There are more ways than one to make a sale or to delight a customer!

(7) CSR’s: “Call me MISTER Tibbs!” Don't lets reps sound too chummy with customers who like to be called, Mr. or Miss, or Ms.

(8) “Dear Customer: I’m Here To Listen.” Supervisors should says this when they take a call that is escalating.

(9) Reduce stress & tone up with “desktop” isometrics & free weights. Push aside those corn chips and replace them with little dumbbells. It will be a smart change that can tone you up while reducing your stress.

(10) Don’t mistake customer fear for anger. Fear is the disease that needs to be treated, and anger or customer aggressiveness is only the symptom. Reassure fearful folks; that's what they need.

(11) When recruiting, avoid using the dumb statement: “No phone calls, please!” This is a VOICE job, so you need to hear their voices. Resumes don't sell or service; people do!

(12) Manage the Three T’s: Text, Tone & Timing. These are the key variables in telephone communication. Most otherwise capable managers don't know how to manage tone, but it's crucial.

(13) Reps should self-score their calls and be scored by supervisors. Participative evaluations are the best kind because they get reps to freely commit to improvement. Assigned scores don't work as well.

(14) Gee, why not write a script that doesn’t sound like one? Use words in your scripts that sound uncontrived, like the word, "Gee!"

(15) Do Tibetan Telephoning: Take a cleansing breath between each call. Don't rush to take that next call! You could contaminate it with the mood of the last one if you don't take a cleansing breath, first.

(16) Defining customer satisfaction is half the battle, but it’s necessary. Most of us talk about "service" but that's something we do. Satisfaction is what the customer GETS and WANTS, and that's what we should be focusing on and measuring, constantly.

(17) Introduce merit pay into service work. Salespeople make commissions when they get results, so why shouldn't service folks prosper when they get results?

(18) Customer retention secret: Make an offer they CAN refuse! The gesture counts when we go out of our way to lend a helping hand even if a customer has two good ones of her own.

(19) It’s great to be a telemarketer! There are ten reasons. See my article on this one!

(20) Remember: Customers “R” Us! If you want to know how to thrill your customers, start by remembering when someone thrilled you!

Every tip is also the subject of an original article.

Dr. Gary S. Goodman is a top trainer, conference and convention speaker, and sales, customer service, and negotiation consultant. A frequent expert commentator on radio and TV, he is also the best-selling author of 12 books, more than 1,000 articles and several popular audio and video programs. His seminars are sponsored internationally and he is a faculty member at more than 40 universities, including UC Berkeley and UCLA. Gary brings over two decades of sales, management and consulting experience to the table, with impressive academic credentials: A Ph.D. from USC, an MBA from the Peter F. Drucker School of Management, and a J.D. degree from Loyola Law School, his clients include several Fortune 1000 companies..

His web site is: http://www.customersatisfaction.com and he can be reached at: gary@customersatisfaction.com. His blogs include: YOUR CUSTOMER SERVICE SUCKS! and ALWAYS COLD CALL! at: http://www.alwayscoldcall.blogspot.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dr._Gary_S._Goodman

Metrics Than Help to Manage Call Center

2008-07-03T12:46:00.001+07:00

Applying metrics than helps to manage call centre may be more advantageous to come up with immediate resolutions.

Metrics than helps to manage call center – what are they and what benefits can they bring to the call center industry?

Helping the call center can be done by hiring analysts and experts to check the performance of call center agents and the environment of the working place. Analysts can be from independent or hired employees of a call center business. Outside help can provide the industry with sound business strategy, which can be necessary to meet its objectives and defined goals.

However, in managing a call center, help from experts may be costly or even ineffective at a certain degree. In call center management, one of the things that managers of contact centers can use to measure efficiency and efficacy of the business functions is the metric system. One of the metrics for measuring the performance of the call center agents, as well as the managers, supervisors, and other employees with direct relation to the business and its functions is the KPI.

KPI is perhaps one of the popular metrics, either financial or non-financial, for measuring the activities that may be too complex to quantify, but are still quantifiable. This metric tool, known as key performance indicator, can be used to assess factors that are crucial to the functions and strategies of businesses. The factors which may be seen as key performance indicators may be critical in meeting the objectives of a business enterprise, in this case, the call centre business.

The factors that may be crucial to a call center business may include the proficiency and competency of employees, particularly agents, the average response time of calls, the rate of abandoned calls, the cost per call, and customer satisfaction.

The things that need to be quantified and measured can be kept at a minimum number. As they say, less is more. Thus, the factors that can be considered key performance indicators should only be those that have direct connection and response to the performance of a call centre business.

KPI of call centers can be used not only to measure the performance, but also to help identify strengths and weaknesses in the work setting. The performance metric can, likewise, be utilized to determine and diagnose the problems and drivers of performance gaps.
Moreover, KPI may also be applied in call center businesses to come up with prescribed actions for performance enhancement. In some cases, it can be benchmarked to industry peers so other players of the call center industry can come up with ideas for performance measurement. Further, the use of KPI can help a call center business in establishing the performance goals for the entire organization.

The balanced scorecard is another metric that can be used in call center management to assess the performance in the call center agent level and other departments in the call center business. It is also a performance measurement that can assess quantifiable and complex activities that have importance in the call center business. Balanced scorecard software is a tool that can help call center managers in determining the performance level and rate in the business.

Assessing performance involves measures than helps to manage call center. Other tools and methods proven to be effective can also be applied in call center management.

Measure & Control Call Center Performance

2008-07-03T12:38:00.001+07:00

To measure and control call center performance, you will need to gauge the rate at which it is performing. These measures can show you how.

Simple call centers evolving into multi-channel contact centers do not just happen in a whiff. Adding or upgrading technologies and expanding staff skills are important following the addition of new applications such as e-mail and web chat. Also, it is necessary to determine which performance measurements should be used for this new kind of operation.

Performance measures that are associated with service are said to be the most important. These measures may work for both call and contact centers or change depending on the type of transaction.

An example of call center performance measure is blockage. This accessibility measure indicates the rate of customers at which they cannot access the center at a specific time due to inadequate network facilities. Measures that indicate blockage or busy signals by occurrences of “busy trunk lines” are utilized by most call centers. Failure of a blockage goal enables a center to meet its rate of answer goal by blocking excess calls. It may appear as if the call center is doing a good job at managing call queues, but it can actually have a negative impact on customer accessibility.

The call center should also carefully know how much facilities are needed for email server capacity and bandwidth to avoid huge quantities of emails from overloading the system. The same goes for the number of lines that support fax services, which must be adequate enough to allow reasonable blockage.

Another way to measure call center performance is through abandon rate. Call centers usually gauge the number and rate of abandons because both correlate in terms of revenues and retention. However, it has to be noted that the abandon rate is not completely under the control of the call center. While the average waiting time in queue can affect abandons, there are a lot of other factors affecting this number, among which include availability of service alternatives, time of day, caller tolerance and many others. Also, while the abandon rate measure is not commonly related with email interactions, it applies, however, to web chat communications.

Self-service availability and utilization is also an important accessibility measure and is commonly gauged by self-service menu points and methodology, demographic group or time of day.

On the other hand, the most common measure for speed of answer in a call center is the service level. Meanwhile, the longest delay in queue (LDQ) is another gauge for speed of answer, which is used to indicate when it is necessary for immediate staffing reactions. LDQ is categorized into two namely longest delay to answer and longest delay to abandon. The former is the delay for a customer’s transaction to be finally handled by the agent and the latter is delay for a customer to abandon the contact.

These measures usually gauge the speed of call center performance. There are still many other performance measures applicable to call centers, both in-bound and multi-channel. These may be used to measure individual agent performance or overall call center operations. In all cases, these measures should be used to determine performance excellence as well as gaps that need improvement with different adjustments.

Privacy Policy for callcenter-corner.blogspot.com

2008-07-02T18:47:00.002+07:00

Privacy Policy for callcenter-corner.blogspot.com

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Value Creation in Call Centre

2008-07-02T15:52:00.003+07:00

by Niels Kjellerup,
The Bubble is ready to burst.
It is only 18 months since the Dot Com bobble burst. Today similar signs are on the horizon for the CRM & Contact Centre Bobble.
Over the last 12 months Customer Satisfaction has been dropping in all Industry categories – the message is very clear : “We don’t like to be treated like cattle; we don’t like talking to machines when we call to get help or assistance, and we hate the long waits on the phone”.
The Companies, which allowed their IT departments to dictate their Customer Service Delivery Platforms and Policies, are finally waking up to the fact, that the promised Return on Investment (ROI) is not going to materialise and the customers are walking to the competition with better service.
It’s easy to point the finger at the Vendors & Consultants who sold this piece of blue sky. Over the past 5 years a minimum of $30 billion was invested in CRM- E-commerce-Call Centres with very little to show for it. Call Centres are failing because they aren’t adding value to the Business Model

Senior management permitted Customer Service to be removed from the Business Model and allowed it to become an appendix, where customers were kept at arms length at as low a cost as possible. The Call Centre became a Call Producing Factory only interested in cost per call, length of call. Adoption of these vendor dictated Metrics gave the Call Centre its False Benchmarks.
Management failed by not applying common sense and asking : “ If the customer is our most important asset and the sole source of our revenue stream – how come Call Centres are not measured on how they add value to revenue”?
Sales were happy, as they didn’t have to share revenue with any one else.
Marketing was happy, as no one had to pay attention to the feedback from the customers via the Call Centres.
Call centre management was unhappy, but nobody had to pay attention as cost centres are normally invisible to Senior Management.
The real challenge.
Corporations need to revisit their Business Model and review the core role customers have in ensuring profit growth above and beyond, what can be achieved by cost cutting. Any Business Model, that does not see Customer Service Delivery as an essential integral part of future revenue creation, will fail. Viewing sales as an interactive process with the customer is the key to this change. Selling is Service and Service is Selling.
CRM fails along side the Call Centre Channel, when the Business Model doesn’t view sales, marketing & service as an integral process.
Only Senior management can review and implement these changes.
Capturing Value Creation in the Call Centre.
The CRM & Call Centre Vendors failed to provide us with the tools, we need to capture & document the Customers Experience. In fact because they only could measure the mechanics of the call, they created a ‘false’ science of how to manage a call centre based on call metrics. Sure you need some operational data to optimise manning and minimise waste – but to make this the purpose of your activity – you gotta be kidding.
The first step is to realise, that these so called ‘Best Practices’ are seriously flawed and led us into the tunnel of no meaningful productivity gains in the first place.
Second step is to realise that High Customer Satisfaction or Excellent Customer Experience matters not at all, unless this is reflected in the customer becoming more profitable to the Business Model. In other words, unless we can develop methodologies and applications, which allows us to document, how the Customer Experience leads to more sales at less cost, we’re still fighting the windmills.
Third step is to realise that the flip side to the coin called Customer Experience is Senior Management Satisfaction. The Call Centre provides Senior Management Satisfaction by Value Creation, i.e. engaging customers in interaction with the Aim of 1) Taking cost & Time out of the process of doing business with us, 2) Marketing & 3) Selling. Ensuring that these values are captured, documented & part of the Business Model is the primary job of Call Centre Management.
Light at the end of the tunnel.
Call me an optimist, but in the last 12 months I have travelled the world with this message and been in front of 100’s of major corporations with large Call Centre operations. Every single senior manager, I spoke to, understood and accepted the need to integrate the Call Centre with the Business Model and focus on Value Creation.
Restore Customer Values to all your activities and trust your common sense more than the Vendor-Metrics and you have a head start on the competition. I have located technology (Eyretel) which enables capture & documentation of Value Creation and lets the Call Centre deliver senior management satisfaction for a change value to the Business Model.

Productivity Measure in Call Centres (Quantity versus Quality)

2008-07-02T15:39:00.002+07:00

By Editor Niels Kjellerup, Senior Partner in Resource International

The Unites States Government Bureau of Statistics was measuring productivity improvements incorrectly during the 90’s. This is one of the fascinating facts uncovered by Bob Woodward in his new book “ Maestro: Greenspan’s Fed and the American Boom”. It details Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan’s search for an explanation why the official statistics showed declining productivity in the Service Sector while employment was increasing dramatically. In September 96 Greenspan finally had proof that the measurements Models for service delivery were plain wrong. In Greenspan’s words “ There is a real world out there and they are not measuring it properly”. As a result the Fed kept interest rates steady and the US Economy continued to boom.
Why is this discovery important to the Call Centre Industry ?

More money has been invested in Technology to improve service delivery & customer satisfaction in the last ten years in the Industrialised World than ever before, YET customer satisfaction is dropping , in the US, in the UK, Europe and Australia/NZ .
The only answer is that we’re measuring Call Centre productivity incorrectly. By adopting our measurements from Vendors and their models for productivity improvements we’re letting the customer down.
Most vendors present a business case outlining how the investment will lead to Call Centre Productivity Gains and a satisfactory Return on Investment… but in most cases these ‘Investment justification documents’ are not related to organisations Business Purposes, ie more revenue at less cost or improved complaint handling at less costs. These so called Business Plans view the Call Centre as a ‘ Call Production Factory ‘ and only looks at quantitative measures – such as : Number of calls per Rep( always called AGENTS), Call Length & Wrap up Time. Vendors rarely understand your business or the role of the Call Centre in the Customer Contact Process, yet we let them define the key measurements of the Call Centre. Sure it is easier to adopt such ready-to-use measures, but what happened to our own understanding of the Call Centres role in the organisation ?
Better Measurements are available.
The TARP Teleservice Research from 1997 for the first time established that Call OUTCOME was a senior measurement to ensure the Call Centre was fulfilling its mission.
Sure you need to have operational measurements for no of calls and average call length, how else can you use your Erlang tables to produce rational staffing schedules. But who said these measures were the deciders if the Call Centre is successful or not ? Only the vendors.
To introduce better measures for success or failure for your Call Centre and your staff , in teams or individually, you had better start looking at the business purpose of the Call Centre and its role in the Customer Contact Process and how value is created and added to companies bottom line.
Individual Performance Based measurements.
In a recent Case Study I meet with a young Manager for a Call Centre in Australia, owned and run by a US based conglomerate. His story : “Last year (2000) I scrapped the quantitative measurements which we had been given by our US Parent, as Best in Class to manage and supervise our 60 reps. Instead we introduced Individual Performance Based Measures, which reflected the reps success with the customer. Naturally I was called to US to explain, but when I showed it had led to a 20% increase in revenue & a fall in cost per order, the change in key performance measurements was accepted.”
We’re (Resource International) currently conducting a series of Case Studies to document how Individual Performance Based Measures helps focus the Call Centre on call outcome and help demonstrate to senior management, how the Call Centre is actually adding value and an acceptable return on Call Centre Investment.
You need to question those ' wrong-measures': " which should determine and drive your Call Centre's future?" - "Are we actually delivering better outcomes to customers?"- " How do we measure that, and how do we introduce Performance Based Measures for our reps and supervisors ?."

Call Center Staffing & Hiring

2008-06-30T17:09:00.002+07:00

A call center is operated by a company whose function is to handle volume of calls for different companies. Being a centralized office handling considerable volume of calls, a call center is usually housed in an open workspace that could handle individual work stations for each call center agents. A call center’s main product is the service these call center agents deliver, needless to say that the most important staff in a call center are the call center agent themselves. The demands of the job require specific skills and since an agent is expected to handle different cases together with the different personalities of the callers, patience is a requirement. With this condition it is necessary to handle the staffing and hiring carefully.

The enormous demand for call center service is the reason for the increasing growth of the industry. However, one of the most difficult and crucial part of call center management is finding and keeping the right people for the job. This is the industry that has the highest record of turnover rates. Some estimates say that it suffers more than 50% turnover. Filling up vacancies, immediately or in a rush is not a solution to this kind of problem. Some call centers employ agencies to do the hiring for them, while some are handled by their human resource department. But since these people are going to work under the call center manager, hiring is still his primary responsibility. It is therefore imperative that a manager participate in the hiring process.

Here are few helpful guidelines in hiring that may help reduce if not avoid the large turnover rates.

• Clearly define the skills needed for the job.

Emphasize on the great need for excellent communication skills, customer service skills and sales.

• Interview and acquire evaluate overall personality.

Excellent patience and good sense of responsibility are two essential factors a call center candidate must posses.

• Involve your managers and supervisor in the process of selection.

• Make the applicant speak his mind out. Know his expectations and endeavors. Know what he thinks about an ideal call center and what would satisfy him.

• Be an excellent an effective interviewer.

It would be helpful to understand by heart every job description in your organization. This would be your guide in the process of hiring and staffing. Basically the most numbers of turn over happens in the call center agent position. So it would be best to understand the details of the job of a call center representative.

Hiring and staffing costs. Executives and contact call center managers must be able to design a program that would enhance agent loyalty. They should also look into creating plans and implementing programs that would prepare regular agents to a call center professional. This would build the moral of the agent and enhance his loyalty to the company since he would feel their concern in his professional growth. This would save a lot of expenditures in recruitment and training, lost management time, training new staff and other training programs.

What Is Call Center ?

2008-06-30T16:36:00.005+07:00

Author: Hani Masgidi
A Call Center is simply a place where a group of highly trained agents sit and interact with customers using a telephone.
Call Center is where agents are making and/or receiving calls to and from customers for different purposes like
- Customer Service,
- Sales,
- Telemarketing,
- Technical support,… etc.
Call Center is a genetic or umbrella term that refers to Reservation Centers, Help Desks, Telemarketing Centers or Customer Service Centers, regardless of how they are organized or what type of transactions they handle. For example:
- Airline Reservation Center,
- Catalog Ordering companies,
- Problem solvers such as Microsoft Window's Customer support services.

So, the Call Center functions vary from one center to another, according to the nature of business and objective of Call Center. The Call Center could be a place for receiving customer enquiries and complaints or to place an order or to get help. It could also be a place from where customers are contacted for surveys, marketing or selling products.
The Call Center is equipped with various advance technologies that qualify it to handle high volume of calls promptly and efficiently.
The technologies are such as:
- Automatic Call Distributor (ACD),
- Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
- Computer Telephony Integration (CTI)
- Centralized Database System
Nowadays the Call Center has been recognized for its importance in both
- Increasing customer service and customer retention.
- For revenue generation.

Call Centers have become a business enabler or engine that allows customers to access the business when it best suits the customer, rather than the business contacting the customer when convenient to the business.
This new business concept has become possible due to acceptance of business telephony that improves customer service and provides for both inbound and outbound customer contacts. However, to improve business efficiency and increase profitability, Call Centers require good support systems and services.

Article Source: http://www.1888articles.com

7 Techniques for Creating a Motivating Workplace

2008-06-30T16:26:00.003+07:00

Creating a motivating environment for each agent is one of the supervisor’s most important jobs. It is important to remember that everyone can be motivated, but they are motivated by individual reasons. There are seven techniques for creating a motivating environment:

Guidance and Support

The key components of motivation include being a role model, providing coaching on a regular basis, “listening” to the agents, clarifying expectations, and providing objective feedback. Agents need to know what is expected of them and how they are performing. Without coaching and feedback, they have no way of knowing if they are on-target or missing the mark. It is also key to remember to provide feedback to the agents who are performing at or above standards, and not spend all of the time with those who are under- performing.

Recognition

Recognition is one of the most effective ways to reinforce the call center’s culture, support its objectives, and retain top performers. The supervisor should provide recognition for improvements along the way, for initiatives, as well as recognition for results. The goal is to recognize desired behavior so it will be repeated. Recognition can be given for perfect attendance, volunteering for a tough assignment, helping others meet their goals, cost or time-saving suggestions, or going above and beyond for a customer. Recognition should be provided “on the spot” and should be in verbal and written form. The supervisor should create a mix of both public and “one-on-one” recognition strategies and encourage agents to recognize their peers. One way to do this might be to create a recognition box and fill it with sticky notes, smiley faces, gold stars, and other stickers for all employees to use. Or, write the word “recognition” on a calendar and make this a trigger word to quickly think of people who deserve recognition. Look at these excuses listed below and see if any of them sound familiar.

Top 10 Excuses for Not Giving Recognition

1. I don’t know how.	1. It becomes meaningless if done too much.
2. I don’t have time.	2. I’m very limited in what I can do.
3. People don’t care about it all that much.	3. Sometimes it’s awkward and uncomfortable.
4. It’s not my job.	4. People will think they’ve ‘made it’ and stop working hard.
5. I don’t believe in rewarding people for just doing their job.	5. I don’t get it. Why should I give it?

Take a moment and make a list of all the people who work with or for you. When was the last time you gave recognition to each person for a job well done? If you can’t remember the last time you recognized or praised most of the people on your list, you’re probably not doing it enough.

Rewards

Rewards should be unique and relevant to the participants, so they fulfill their need for acceptance, recognition and personal esteem. When using rewards, it is important to remember that if an employee expects it, it may no longer be viewed as a reward. Also, rewards need to match the employee’s needs and wants and should be used for specific accomplishments or efforts. It is common for call center managers to use lack of budget as an excuse for having no reward system, but the universal reward is praise, and it’s free. Cash, or a monetary reward, has the advantage of being easy to administer and simple to handle. Cash is understood by everyone, it is desirable, and can provide an extra boost to a long-term program. The drawbacks to using cash include the fact that there isn’t a “trophy” or lasting memorial of the award, it’s not considered exotic, can’t be enhanced, and tends to become an expected reward. Cash is typically confused with other compensation and is therefore easily forgotten. A non-cash reward is memorable and reinforces the relationship between the reward earner and the reward provider. In defining a reward and recognition program it is important to create excitement at the program launch. Make sure the objectives are clearly defined, take time to explain the rules, awards, and provide ongoing communication. The program should encourage continuous improved performance by providing ongoing measurement and feedback. Progress reports should be distributed in a timely and consistent manner. The reward and recognition program should provide a wide range of positive consequences, encourage recognition by management and peers, and include rewards that have value, choice and are easy to administer. Providing positive consequences using a reward and recognition program help call centers achieve business results. In order to change behavior, participants must understand what it is the management team wants them to do and what they will receive for doing it. Participants must also receive constant feedback to know where they stand in relation to the goal.

Sense of Belonging

The best way to create a sense of belonging is to use teams. With a team structure, the team members assume responsibility, creativity and potential are recognized and fostered, trust and camaraderie develops.

Most supervisors use competition between teams to build effectiveness and efficiency. Competition should be positive, free of ridicule, and non-threatening. The competition should optimize the number of rewards by providing rewards for both outstanding and improved performance. The criteria and standards used for competition should be based on the performance goals each team is expected to meet.

When designing the competition, involve the agents in the evaluation process. Have them play a key role in establishing the competition and rules. Be sure to set up individual and team challenges and to give awards to the winning team and individuals. Competition brings team members together for a common goal, provides a sense of belonging, and creates a spirit of cooperation. If the competition is not carefully designed, it can reinforce the “end justifies the means” thinking, limit learning/sharing between teams, and can shift the focus away from performance to “winning”.

Development and Challenge

One of the ways to provide growth to agents is to create a learning environment. This can be achieved by combining tasks, forming teams, and rotating assignments. Regardless of the method selected, the goal is to build in feedback, to encourage widespread participation, and to nurture creativity.

Employees should have a career plan and know what they need to do to progress toward their goals. This may require outside education, a chance to work in different areas of the call center, or a training class. But as long as the steps to achieve the career goal are well defined, the employees can move at their own pace toward realizing them.

Fun

Which of the following statements are false?

Professionalism and fun are incompatible.
You need toys and money to have fun.
Fun means laughter.
You have to plan for fun.
Fun time at work will compromise results.

The answer is that all of the above statements are false! You can have fun and still maintain a professional work environment. Also, you don’t have to have a good sense of humor to have fun – you can support rather than create fun.

Using games is one way to have fun in the call center. Most games are meant to involve every employee. Games can soften the rough edges of trying to work together in unfamiliar ways and can engage the employee in some kind of action, or by leading the employee to an intellectual revelation or change of attitude. Games can help boost morale, generate a positive atmosphere, and create enthusiasm.

Events and themes can also be used as a way to have fun. Some events and themes include asking agents to create a holiday mural on large sheets of white table paper that is taped to a central wall in the call centers. Another event or theme is to promote a physical fitness week with all of the agents coming to work in their exercise outfits and bringing healthy snacks.

To recognize diversity in the call center, some call centers celebrate an International Day. Agents are asked to bring food (morning/afternoon snacks) from their country or region by assigning theme countries/regions by queue type. During this celebration, agents decorate their cubicles with regional/international photographs and dress according to the theme. Another event is to celebrate Customer Service Week by creating a different theme for each day of the week.

Other types of themes include a poetry contest, back to childhood day, crazy hat day, and a sports day for the agent’s favorite professional sport team (football, basketball, hockey, soccer).

Employee Satisfaction

Employee satisfaction is tied closely to motivation. It is important to find out if employees are happy or not, because a satisfied employee will remain with the call center longer than a dissatisfied employee. Lack of motivation is one of the major reasons why employees leave. To find out if employees are happy, ASK! An employee satisfaction survey can be created and distributed to find out what employees think about their jobs. The survey should include questions related to what they like about their jobs, what they don’t like, and what motivates them.

In summary, supervisors can create a motivating environment by providing guidance and support to the agents so they will know how they are doing and by providing feedback through coaching. A motivating environment includes recognition since it not only builds self-esteem, but also fosters job satisfaction and reinforces the desired performance. The universal reward is praise. It doesn’t cost anything, so use it! Teams help create a sense of belonging in the call center. When competition is used, it can bring team members together to create a spirit of cooperation. Supervisors should strive to create a learning environment to encourage agent development and to provide growth opportunities for agents. Keep in mind that a fun-loving workplace generates enthusiasm among the agents and teams, and the end result is increased productivity, lower turnover, and better service for the customer. And finally, if you don’t know what your agents think about your call center, be sure to ask.

How To Become A Call Center Agent ?

2008-06-30T16:15:00.001+07:00

Author: Jayson

A call center is a good place for people with sales background. Even for people without sales background the training may suffice for the requirement. Before you apply however, research the call center you want to apply to.

Do you want to apply as a call center agent? Does it excite you to enter this exciting field because many of your friends do? If you are interested in a call center job, let this article guide you. This article will give you a clearer understanding of what a call center is and what call center agents do.

Before we move on, let us define what a call center is. Knowing the set up and the prime responsibilities of a call center agent will help you decide if this is the job for you. It may be good for some of your friends, but is it good for you to work in a call center? You decide.

What is a call center?

A call center is a centralized office where volumes of calls are handled. It may be a call center for a large marketing company or a call center for a collection of companies where products and services vary.

A call center handles sales, sales support, debt collection, lead generation, and other customer service functions.

Call centers operate 24/7/365. This is the reason why you will hear people working starting at wee hours and ending in the morning. This is specially so for call centers serving overseas clients.

What does a call center agent do?

A call center agent is the person that answers calls or generates calls. They either handle calls singly or transfer it to higher level if her expertise does not suffice.

They sell products, offer services, or act as technical support for their clients customers.

Products training are necessary for call center agent in order for them to be able to provide the assistance necessary for their callers or clients as the case may be.

Problems encountered by call center agents

Safety is a foremost concern. Some agents end their shift at 2:00 a.m. while others start their shifts by then. If you will travel to and from your home at this hour, it may be dangerous. To answer this problem, some call centers provide quarters where agents may stay over to avoid traveling too early in the morning.

Unrealistic targets – because some call center agents are good, the pattern of setting targets made it difficult for some call center agents to follow.

Cramped office environment – some people find it difficult to work with limited space.

A call center is a good place for people with sales background. Even for people without sales background the training may suffice for the requirement. Before you apply however, research the call center you want to apply to. Do they protect their employees with a place to stay after a wee-hour shift? Do they give good benefits?

If they do, hop on the call center bandwagon, join the many call center agents happy with their job.

Article Source: http://www.1888articles.com

Why you need a contact center partner?

2008-06-30T13:18:00.003+07:00

A contact center is a centralized area where overall customer relationship management is their prime responsibility. In a contact center, email inquiries, catalog distribution, website inquiries chats, and collection of information from customers happen.

Are you in need of people to assist your customers 24/7? Do you need people to handle telesales and customer support? Is your communication with customers or potential clients limited to voice support? If you want to diversify, as many large companies do, you may need a contact center. Now, what is a contact center and how will this benefit you, the business owner? Let us answer this question and understand why a contact center is necessary in a globally competitive environment.

First off, what is a contact center?

A contact center works similarly like a call center except, contact centers are not limited to call center agents attending to inbound or outbound calls with your customers.

A contact center is a centralized area where overall customer relationship management is their prime responsibility. In a contact center, email inquiries, newsletter distribution, catalog distribution, website inquiries chats, and collection of information from customers happen. This is not limited to these items alone, a contact center is your overall customer relationship tool.

This is where it is different from a call center. It manages your customers’ data other than customer service alone and they do it in all possible mediums.

What are the benefits a contact center provides the business owner?

• Attends to your customers anytime and anywhere
• Your customers can reach you in any form i.e., email, chat, phone, mail or even mobile internet.
• You can attend to your customers wants and needs easily without irritating your customers for long call in queue.
• Improve customer service because the efficient customer routing in a contact center assists your customers without much delay.
•Contact Management you will not loose any contact because the contact center will be managing it for you including periodic update.

You will therefore be able to satisfy the demands of your customers. It will lead to trust in your products and service.

Trust from satisfied customers spreads like wildfire in the internet.

If you are perceived as a customer oriented entity, customers will flood your website and money will keep pouring in even as you sleep.

Contact management is helpful in many ways; however, for some businesses who want control over their customers, this may be a difficult change for you. However, many large companies and successful businesses use contact centers advantageously.

Do not be left behind, serve your customers in the media they are comfortable with. Your competitor may be using many forms of customer relationship management programs; it is high time for you to do the same.

Take advantage of the ecommerce including call centers and contact centers. You may also outsource your needs overseas where cost is lower as compared with domestic contact centers.

Article Source: http://www.1888articles.com/author-jayson-11500.html