Call Center

Precision monitoring is a process that is enabled by the introduction of speech analytics into contact centers.  According to a new DMG report, managers set up special QA searches in their speech analytics application – it is a best practice to set up multiple searches to address various aspects of QA. Here are some recommended searches:

1.Greetings – define all of the appropriate ways agents should perform a greeting, and capture interactions where this does not happen.
2.Closings – same...

As the contact center landscape changes, so too must the reporting and analysis solutions that drive decision-making and performance management. Each contact center is a unique mixture of systems, applications, people and culture serving a specific customer or client segment, each will need a different roadmap to their destination.

There are four common reasons that contact centers are driven to undertake this journey in the first place:

1. Current reports don't meet requirements: Typically,...

According to a new Knowlagent sponsored DMG white, a growing number of leading contact centers are putting their agents to work during idle time. They are using an emerging set of workflow-enabled applications to identify agent downtime and deliver work items and tasks to fill those idle periods. These emerging solutions are helping to speed up and reduce the cost of processing.

Most contact center agents know a great deal about what happens throughout their organization because of the training...

According to the comScore 2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review, social networking sites accounted for 12% of all time spent online in 2010, and the average American spent more than 14 hours watching online videos in December, a 12% increase over the previous year.

As social media continues to gain popularity in our culture.  Many call center agents are comfortable with social learning in their personal lives and, as a result, more and more companies are adopting social and informal learning platforms...

Quality management (QM), with its ability to drive agent behaviors that impact the customer experience, is a valuable tool for contact centers. Technological advances have increased QM process efficiency by replacing paper forms and making recordings more readily available. Significant areas of inefficiency still exist, however, increasing the cost of quality to the business.

According to a new CXM white paper,   integrating workforce automation and quality management offers opportunities for...

Features commonly provided by unified desktop solutions are as follows:

Single login/logout - Once the agent logs into the application they have unified access to multiple applications. There is no need to log in and out to access data bases or other applications.

Pre-populated screen pops - Unified desktops rely on the CRM as well as other sources, such as IVR entries and data gleaned from enterprise data bases to fully populate screens before the agent takes the call. All unified desktops pop...

Since the emergence of multi-channel self-service, there is a growing disconnect between the typical strategy employed in telephone self-service design and what many customers actually need. A new Nuance report details the results of a commissioned survey which attempts to uncover customer channel preferences for an array of banking tasks, including recommendations for optimizing the IVR to both accommodate those preferences and minimize the frustrations associated with today’s multi-channel...

These devices are variously called, "smart desktops," "intelligent desktops," "universal desktops," and "unified desktops."  However, all these products seek to condense required call processing information onto a single desktop application and organize the sequencing of screens to coincide with workflow. For ease of communication we will use the term "unified desktops."Demand for these products is still in the formative stages but growing rapidly.

Behind the interest is the same fundamental...

The current legal landscape for call recording consists of numerous state and federal laws, along with industry mandates. These rules and regulations have been written primarily to protect individual rights to privacy and to protect individuals and businesses from fraud and abuse.

It is useful for contact center managers, among others, to have a common resource that offers useful guidance on best practices necessary to achieve and maintain both compliance and verification. “Call Recording and...

The following are some more information on the vendors who attended the IQPC event.  

Analytics

For companies frustrated with isolated or disparate data sources, 360'CRM's latest advances in its InSight data analytics tool provides new levels of actionable information for the Call Center or Channel Management practitioner.  InSight not only automatically draws call center performance data in to a common, universally comparable dashboard and report analytics library, it also integrates internal...

The staff of CRMXchange was present at the IQPC Las Vegas Call Center Week. IQPC did a commendable job with the content and speakers in the event. The exhibit hours were long, running close to 11 hours on day one, but the vendors were pleased with the amount of interest that people showed in their products and services. 

We traveled the exhibit hall. Below are some vendor highlights.

Analytics

Contact Solutions – The Continuous Improvement Practice (CI) is based on a unique methodology and supported...

The use of web-based pre-hire assessments to help identify quality job candidates has become more and more widespread in recent years across all industries and job types, including contact center agents. Although many contact center recruiters use pre-hire assessments to help identify quality candidates, they sometimes express concerns that the time to complete the assessments may cause candidates to drop out of the assessment process prematurely.  They propose that shortening testing...

Sharing updates with call center agents during downtime is an ideal way to improve your staff’s knowledge and skills. This can be done at minimal cost and without disrupting the flow of operations – which is what happens when agents are pulled from the phones to attend a training/coaching class. The contact center has to be able to send out training/coaching or other information as soon as a slow period is identified, as these lulls generally do not last long.

This means that you will need a...

Even in the best-managed and busiest contact centers, where workforce management solutions are used to optimize agent schedules, there will always be unexpected downtime without calls. Using this idle time productively will improve agent satisfaction and service quality while reducing agent-related costs. Delivering real-time, targeted training, coaching and communications during slow periods can alter your contact center’s dynamics – boosting productivity, quality and customer perception. A new...

CRMXchange recently launched a two-podcast series by Interior Concepts featuring ergonomics in the call center. Discussion topics include ergonomic injury statistics, employee productivity, turnover reduction, and a case study review.

First, what is ergonomics in the contact center? Essentially, call centers ergonomics means designing the workplace to maximize productivity, and to reduce user fatigue and discomfort. This includes furniture and workstation design and meeting the government...