Brendan Read
TMC
10 Lessons from Volleyball, Part 2
Part 1 of the 10 Business Lessons from Volleyball can be found here. In volleyball, the only play you control yourself is...
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CloudTC and N-Able Acquired
"Australian-owned IP PBX systems company, Vixtel, has completed the acquisition of Silicon Valley based glass phone developer, CloudTC, for an undisclosed figure,"...
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ProfitBricks: Where InfiniBand Meets Cloud 2.0
In a recent meeting with William Toll and Pete Johnson of ProfitBricks, the pair were ecstatic to explain how their company has...
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Proactive Care Puts Operators One Step Ahead
By Thomas Fuerst, Senior Director, Multimedia Solutions MarketingAlcatel-Lucent
Monitoring and analyzing network data proactively saves operators time, money, and customers.
When a network service fails, it makes headlines, ticks off customers, and costs that network operator money. When a failure is headed off in advance, on the other hand, there might not be praise-laden headlines, but it's newsworthy nonetheless.
The traditional approach to customer care has typically been: a disgruntled customer calls customer service and complains of a service interruption or problem; the rep, learning of it for the first time, sends out a technician the next day, and eventually finds a resolution. Often, customers are left feeling put out, and the operator has spent significant time and money resolving the problem. Even worse is the customer who doesn’t call and just feels this is ‘typical’ of their network experience. That is a customer at risk of leaving.
Proactive care flips this dynamic on its head by using predictive analytics to identify potential outages or errors in the network and stop them before they occur. It consists of three main parts: one, constantly monitoring and measuring data on the network; two, real-time analysis of the data; and three, the most important, acting on that analysis to fix the problem.
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10 Lessons from Volleyball
I've played volleyball for over 25 years. I have traveled around the US to watch the pros live - both indoor...
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Emerging Threats Combats a Million Plus Pieces of New Malware a Week
There are 250,000 plus new pieces of malware being produced each day equating to one piece per person in the US in...
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NFV-Based Software Telcos Need OSS/BSS Interoperability
One of the goals of ETSI NFV is to allow new entrants to provide solutions to carriers based on software instead of...
Full Story »How To Win Contact Center Agent Loyalty
February 17, 2011Contact center work is important, sometimes interesting but more often than not highly stressful and mind-numbing and the hours are often unsociable. It is little wonder then that agent turnover is high, even in an economic downturn; at the first sign of an uptick, of better-paying, more 9-5 and stable jobs off go the headsets.
And with indications that at last the economy may be turning the corner, more attention should be given to keeping quality staff.
In many cases these conditions described above are inherent in the contact center business.
Tablets as Phones...Are There Signs of It Happening?
February 10, 2011I like cellphones as phones and tablets as e-mail/texting/surfing means. I dislike the reverse: for me and many others cellphones are a terrible tool for communications other than voice. The keyboards may be suited for Tweets and texts but are just too tiny for serious e-mail/chat work for all as are the screens. My wife has a BlackBerry smartphone with the touchscreen pad and the only "smart" task (other than making calls) she uses it for is occasionally checking her e-mails.
A Big Reason To Avoid Credit-Checking Contact Center Applicants: Lawsuits
February 4, 2011I have been critical of using credit checks as contact center screening tools. Not only are they in most cases unnecessary, another excuse by hiring managers who are unable to examine people at their true worth but they are also morally wrong. They act as blows to the kneecaps of highly skilled and motivated individuals--whom through little fault of their own have fallen behind in their bills that is practically inevitable in today’s tough economy—that makes it even more difficult for them to get up. These checks serve then as virtual debtors’ prisons; Catch-22s for which there is little escape.
Mining The Social Channel for Customer Gold
January 25, 2011The social channel appears on first glance to provide a readily-extracted motherlode of information and insights that can help firms retain and build relations with customers and attract new ones. For in the huge volume of conversations: blogs, comments on sites e.g. TripAdvisor et al, Facebook postings and Tweets are concerns, complaints, experiences and ideas about companies’ products and services that are waiting to be mined, assayed, processed, refined and used.
Yet as one spends any time on the channel knows, going through it is akin to mining in another way: there is an awful lot of raw ore that must be processed to obtain a few ounces of valuable commodities.
Governments' "Gifts" to Cisco, Citrix, InterCall, Polycom, Vidyo, et al...
December 23, 2010‘Tis the gift giving season. For the OEMers and resellers of audio-, web- and videoconferencing equipment their presents have come early thanks (unwittingly) to the U.S. and Canadian governments.
For their actions have pushed adoption and use of video especially to their tipping points where they start to become the norm in business but even in consumer personal interactions.
Calling During the Holidays (and afterwards)? Be Nice, Not Naughty
December 17, 2010This is the time of year where all bells should be ringing in tune at and at the right times: church bells, those of the Salvation Army volunteers, those at the cash registers and those at the homes from telemarketers and other contact centers making unsolicited calls.
This is also the time of year where children are reminded to "be nice, not naughty": a reminder that grown-ups should be given too. That includes those who manage contact centers.
For the laws regulating calling hours, whom to call and what devices to be reach are strict and are enforced. The lumps of coal in one’s stocking for being bad is nothing compared to those received from publicity-seeking elected officials: which are in comparison mere taps to those that can be wielded from annoyed customers via comments delivered through Tweets and posts.
Here are some of the common areas that poor judgement in which can make good contact centers into bad ones:
* The U.S.
To Improve Quality and Profits Get Rid of "HR"
November 30, 2010One of the numbers in the combination that unlocks the door to customers and their spending—the others include effective marketing and supplying the right products at the right price--is the hiring, retaining and properly managing problem-solving-empowered top quality contact center agents and supervisors.
No secret there. Bright, helpful, results-oriented motivated individuals generate superior performance both in higher profits and lower costs. Yet how come so few firms do this?
Before Making Your Contact Center Wish List...
November 16, 2010This is the season where individuals—and organizations such as contact centers—make their wish lists. Yet with budgets both household and corporate limited there is no allowance—or tolerance—for unused or misused items; the penalties include reprimands and threats to cut back on how much is given next year.
Therefore it is essential that the items that go on the lists reflect critical and provable needs for which there are no on-hand or lower-cost substitutes. There must also be evidence that indicate these investments will be used and benefits quickly realized.
Remembering and Honoring Our Veterans, And Those Who Serve
November 11, 2010Remember and honor those who have fought and who are fighting, and have sacrificed and are being asked to sacrifice, for the freedoms we enjoy.
Respect these individuals: our family members, friends, colleagues and acquaintances who are in the uniformed services by enabling them to receive the best quality of care they need should they need it; and open the door to top-ranked employment and educational opportunities should they wish to seek it after serving our nation.
Exercise the command that these men and women have given us by protecting our democracy by ordering and remembering to order our elected officials to consider every fact and analysis of these facts before committing their ranks to action…for there is no surer way than that to salute their bravery by making every move possible to make sure that their losses have not been in vain.
Lest we forget…
Dismantling Obamacare Will Hurt Contact Center Employees, Businesses and The Economy
November 5, 2010The new GOP-controlled House should take a second look at their promises to roll back the healthcare reforms initiated and pushed by U.S. President Barack Obama and passed by the last Congress. Why? Because such moves may end up hurting individuals, businesses (like contact centers) and the economy--contrary to these elected officials' claims that dismantling “Obamacare” will "help".
