| Contact Center/CRM Views and Analysis

May 2010

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Shame On You, Teleperformance!

May 20, 2010

Contact center agents and supervisors are on the front lines of companies' relations with customers, in service, support, loyalty, sales, lead generation, billing and collections. They put on the smiles when they answer and make calls and contacts for their employers and if they are outsourcers their clients, on all manner of shifts. They receive in return more brickbats than bouquets while meeting stringent performance objectives, monitored up the tailfeathers, confined to tiny cubicles except for precisely measured periods. The contact center pay and benefits, while slightly higher and the hours are steadier than retail and hospitality are low yet unlike those fields there is little in the way of advancement, and so accordingly is the status of their work.

The Disinterested Customer

May 13, 2010

For all the "chatter" (my apologies, Salesforce.com) about enabling customers reaching to firms and reaching to them in kind via Social CRM, SMS and the web, and about building customer loyalty, turning customers into enthusiastic unpaid marketers, firms should sit back and realize that most customers: consumers and organizations are not really interested in such engagements. They don't want to be "fans". That they turn off after so much blather on their screen and in their ears.

Moreover, customer loyalty is fickle.

Will United + Continental = Fewer Contact Center Jobs?

May 7, 2010

When companies merge the impetus is to immediately cut costs to achieve the hoped-of financial benefits. And all too often that means consolidation and cutbacks in the back offices i.e. contact centers.

So when United Airlines and Continental Airlines announced their merger earlier this week my radar went on to see if that is going to happen in this instance.

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