Call Center Resources

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 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...

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...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...