Participants Wanted

We have updated our free call center metrics survey. When we get enough data in the database we will produce a report for all contributors. You can download the survey from the site before taking it. For those of you ready to take the metric survey, here is the link. It is now updated and ready to go.

http://www.responsedesign.com/metric_survey

Enjoy!

Join our New, Free Peer-to-Peer Forum

The Contact Center Performance Forum helps an enterprise improve the performance of its contact center by participating in and listening to the dialogue of experienced professionals.

Free events, discussion groups, questions and answers.

http://contactcenter.ning.com/

We'd love to see you there! Come check us out!

Kay

Attendance Management

Join us for a free Webinar on June 5

Discussion of how to manage attendance in the contact center.
Title: Attendance Management
Date: Thursday, June 5, 2008
Time: 1:30 PM - 2:30 PM EDT

Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/916295368

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.3.9 (Panther®) or newer

I know that I have been missing for almost a year now. I got consumed with a consulting project and developing a new call center elearning product. I am going to try to be more faithful. My desire is to now share with you some of the research I've been doing for the training. Please stay in touch. I am really going to! Let me know what you would like to hear about. Have any questions you would like for me to answer. I'll be glad to dig it out for you.

How do your agents handle complaints?

Do they take them personally? Do complaining customers ruin their day? Do they think complaining customers are at fault?

Do you know how to build rapport between your customers and your agents? Organizations create rapport when their agents know how to:
1.allow customers to vent;
2.engage in active listening;
3.demonstrate a sense of urgency in problem resolution; and
4.convey a helpful, willing attitude.

Most centers interact with hundreds or thousands of customers each day—but what do they do with the intelligence they capture? They brag about their reams of data, but if they do not have a use for them, they have no business collecting them. They listen to an avalanche of customer noises, but their ears are not finely tuned to hear the voice of the customer.

Do you really know what service level your customers will tolerate? Why knock yourself out answering 80 percent of calls in 20 seconds if they are just as happy with a wait of a minute and a half? Before you hire more people and pay overtime, determine what your customers really want.

I have come across a piece of research that I would like to cite properly, but I do not know its context. If you are familiar with this research, could you contact me at kjackson@responsedesign.com and help me locate its source?

In your personal life, do you over-promise and under-deliver?

Probably not. If you commit to bring cookies for the neighborhood school fair, the cookies (with icing and sprinkles on top) are there 15-minutes early 100 percent of the time.

I like this quote:

“We trained hard, ...but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn late in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization.”

I’ve seen managers who have used a reorganization strategy to attack problems such as a low first contact resolution. However, before you go there, explore how far comprehensive targeted training will take you in increasing this important metric.

Managing empowerment involves at least four steps:

During a recent best-practice study, I heard an unusual story. It was a call center certification tale that piqued my curiosity. I must admit to becoming a little jaded because of all the call center certifications that have come and gone in my 20-plus years in this industry. But the one was different.

Whenever I work with call centers who want to tape calls for their agent quality monitoring program I always ask, "Are you in compliance with Federal and State regulations when you monitor calls?" Often the answer is, "I don't know."

How often do we hear from our employees about some tragic or time-consuming event in their lives? A child is ill. A spouse is injured. A parent dies.

How often do we ignore the toll that the crisis takes on our employees as they show up to work every day or ask us for time off to take care of the event?