While it’s easy to decide your CRM
software is no longer suiting your needs, it’s not easy to
implement an entirely new system. However, proper CRM software is
critical for any customer care team or call center, whether
in-house or outsourced.
So, instead of jumping ahead of yourself, it may be smart to
perform some auditing on the software to determine the root cause
of your CRM problems in the first place. Some potential problems
include:
- Over-customized software
- Outgrowing of the software
- Basic...
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I'm the new kid on the block here at
CRMXchange,but since I've been involved in customer-related
issues since the prehistoric days when CTI was
the golly-gee tecnhology and it was still acceptable to
use the dreaded 'T" word to summarize the industry as a whole,
I'm not all that new and hardly a kid.
I've seen the terminology
migrate from customer service to customer
care, to customer relations management--before it became the
acronym we now all know and love. But the growing demand
for immediate...
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The main topics of interest at the IQPC Call
Center Week Las Vegas were ‘cloud’ and ‘multi-channel’.
Attendees were also concerned with the use of social media.
How customers connect to companies is evolving. Customers
want to connect on their own terms with the channel that suites
them best. Vendors are attempting to respond to the
customer’s needs with a variety of new solutions. Below is a
recap of exciting technologies and solutions that were at the
event.
360'CRM is
a full spectrum CRM...
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When you hear the term “contact center” today, the image that
may come to mind is a large operation with hundreds of agents in
headsets busy on calls. However, if you were to visit the
most typical call center, you would only see a couple of dozen
frontline staff. That’s because most call centers are
actually small in size with three out of four centers employing
fewer than 20 agents.
According to Pelorus Group statistics, 75% of call centers have
between 1 – 20 staff and another 15% have...
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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...
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The measurement of performance is fundamental to contact center
operations of all sizes. The contact center quality assurance (QA)
measurement process is often one of the main performance data
collection vehicles for management. With the power of
analytics-driven QA, organizations can see the quality of their
operations and customer interactions clearly at all times, along
with early warnings of problems and bottlenecks. However,
many contact centers do they have adequate resources in place...
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after nearly three decades, the contact center quality management
(QM)/liability recording (also known as workforce optimization
(WFO)) market continues to evolve and progress at a surprisingly
rapid pace.
While many consider QM and recording solutions to be commodities,
the
2010 – 2011 Quality
Management/Liability Recording (Workforce Optimization) Product and
Market Report reveals quite the opposite. The core concepts of
QM, recording and WFO have certainly become standardized, a clear
benefit...
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The agent’s to‐do list provides opportunities for call centers to
operate more efficiently. It is designed to make agent available
time more productive. Agents can learn a new skill set, read up on
new policies or complete mandatory HR assessments.
According to a new
Knowlagent white paper “
Create
the To‐Do List”, the most challenging part of
creating the to‐do list is gathering all of the tasks that need to
be done for all agents and figuring out which tasks need to be
completed first. Most...
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A most often asked question is “Where do you begin your search for
the KPIs and supporting metrics you need?” The starting point
may not be in any particular contact center system, application or
report. It isn’t in the contact center at all…. it’s in the
executive suite.
The contact center’s KPIs from strategic targets and goals is
set for the company as a whole by its leaders. An hour spent
with the vice-president of sales and marketing or the chief
financial officer — or the CEO — can go a...
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The operational planning process evolved to solve the core
inbound contact center business question: given the seasonality
of call volumes, the seasonality of agent attrition, the
seasonality of agent sick time, vacation requests, and other
shrinkage items, the seasonality of handle times, given that all of
these items are different by center location and type of staff
required, and given learning curves, training times, and other
important and complicating characteristics, how does...
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Back-office operating areas that process orders, applications,
claims, white mail, payments, etc., have historically been left to
develop their own staff planning approach. Senior management
perception was that little could be done to improve the performance
of these people-intensive, but non-strategic operating areas. So,
these departments have received limited attention and investment
dollars, or have been outsourced.
Call centers used to confront similar challenges before new tools
and...
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Operational metrics like call containment rates and average handle
time (AHT) are commonly used as key performance indicators in
contact centers, but these metrics mislead managers from the
business goal of increasing customer satisfaction.
These indirect metrics mask problems that cause customers continued
frustration, and contact center managers risk making decisions that
could actually worsen the experience.
Task Completion Rate (TCR), is a metric that promotes caller
success to provide a...
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I don’t know how many times I have heard contact center
professionals extol the virtues of using remote (at-home) agents to
extend their agent resources beyond the infrastructure of their
organizations. But apparently, (in my brief survey),
many companies with centers in multiple locations have not taken
the benefits of virtual contact centers to the next level.
Combining these resources into one big agent pool allows an
organization to balance the demand fluctuation across...
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It shouldn’t come as earth-shattering news to anyone that the
experiences customers have when interacting with a business have a
major impact on satisfaction, and ultimately the company’s
survival. Before you can effectively manage customer experience
though, you need to know where your organization stands today. The
old adage, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure”, still
applies.
One good way of measuring current performance is through a
formalized benchmarking process. A major benefit of...
continue reading this post »
It shouldn’t come as earth-shattering news to
anyone that the experiences customers have when interacting with a
business have a major impact on satisfaction, and ultimately the
company’s survival. Before you can effectively manage customer
experience though, you need to know where your organization stands
today. The old adage, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure”,
still applies.
One good way of measuring current performance is through a
formalized benchmarking process. A major benefit of...
continue reading this post »
Your company’s brand and
reputation depend on your team’s ability to deliver a superior
customer experience. Yet, people, processes and technology often
conspire to create headaches for management and unsatisfactory
interactions for customers.
Do these problems sound
familiar? You receive calls from management demanding answers about
why a host went down or why customer complaints are up. You may be
off for the weekend but you still worry that a problem will not
be detected as quickly as it...
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In a recent Blog, we reviewed a report from Ovum that analyzed
the growth of the hosted contact center market and ranked its
leading vendors.
Today, we’ll look at a new white paper from Contactual, a global
leader in hosted contact center technology, which concludes that
rapid technological changes make on-premises contact centers
obsolete soon after they are installed, and suggests how
enterprises can eliminate capital expenditures, increase customer
satisfaction and stay on the forefront of...
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Blind spots to back-office performance – due to a lack of proven
processes for managing multiple types of tasks consistently and
efficiently – can cost an organization more than productivity.
Contact center interactions may leave customers delighted, but
processing delays, billing errors and other inefficiencies can
sabotage even the most positive experience. To contain the
financial risk of customer attrition, you need to reduce the
considerable costs of suboptimal staffing.
“What If?” Insights...
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When furnishing your call center, certain call center cubicles
and call center furniture can help in the 'greening' of the contact
center. Here's how.
LEED Standards
Selecting MAS Certified Green call center cubicles and
other furniture can help to create a greener call center.
MAS Certified Green furniture meets the LEED (Leadership in
Energy and Environmental Design) indoor air quality standards after
rigorous product testing. It is approved as a low-emitting
furniture system by compliance with...
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Call
Centers For Dummies serves as an easy reference resource for call
center managers. Concentrating on revenue generation, efficiency,
and customer satisfaction, as well as how to enhance the customer
experience, this book helps managers improve their results and
affect their company's bottom line. With new tools and tactics
specifically designed for call center managers, Call Centers For
Dummies helps put a value on customer relations efforts undertaken
in call centers and helps managers...
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