contact center tag
25 result(s) displayed for contact center (1 - 25 of 62):
The (Social) Customer Isn't Always Right
There appears to be a tendency with social media as a new and highly visible channel to overstock the value of the sentiments expressed in the posts and Tweets, that they do accurately represent the voice of customer and that the complaints are accurate and well-founded. And that those who made them must be supplicated to keep them as customers, lest they tell hundreds of others never to do business with one's company ever again.
These set of attitudes with social media reflect the cliché "the customer is always right."
Nonsense. Balderdash. Rot.
The "social customer"--like any other customer--is not always correct.
The Dangers of Social Media Commentary
The impacts of poor social media commentary was brought home in March by a pair of 'misTweets', one by an employee of an ad agency the other by a well-known comedian--individuals who know the power of language--that embarrassed their organizations and which led to their dismissal.
To Improve Quality and Profits Get Rid of "HR"
Bright, helpful, results-oriented motivated individuals generate superior performance both in higher profits and lower costs. Yet how come so few firms do this? Why do despite new methods, technologies and best practices in e-screening and interviewing, e-learning and in-person training, voice and screen recording and quality monitoring and speech and desktop analytics and in supervisor management so many get it wrong: resulting in poor service, substandard sales and high and costly turnover?
The answer lies in "HR": not just human resources departments but in the corporate "cost-center" mentality that staff are merely material: biomass to be sourced, transported (by themselves), sifted, processed, used and when finished, discarded.
Dismantling Obamacare Will Hurt Contact Center Employees, Businesses and The Economy
The 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".
Curing the Pareto Illness
One of the most serious illnesses to strike organizations is the Pareto Principle: the notion that 20 percent of customers create 80 percent of the value, which is embedded in CRM methodology. To maximize profits the object is to focus resources on retaining and attracting the top 20 while giving minimal least-cost service to the bottom 80.
The Pareto Principle offers firms short-term gains through cost reductions while building greater loyalty and hopefully revenue from elite buyers. Yet it inflicts the medium/long-term pain from rising expenses, shrinking customer bases and individual income and spending declines.
NBC's Outsourced: Amusing, Little Edgy, Mildly Inaccurate, Has Possibilities
As one who has covered and worked in the contact center industry for the past 15 years I admit I had my reservations about NBC's new show Outsourced...Yet NBC to its credit balanced these issues that touch on the edge i.e. the bricks being thrown into and collected in the now-vacant Kansas City contact center for Mid America Novelties. It did so by focusing on the cultural clashes in both directions: accents, food, ways of life, interactions and yes humor.
If The U.S. Is Finally Cheaper Than India, Don't Foul Up The Opportunity
Is the U.S. finally competitive with India for contact centers and IT?
That's the spin on the word from BPO outsourcer Genpact. Company president and ceo Pramod Bhasin was reported in Hindu Business Line saying that his firm is doubling its U.S. workforce to 2,000 in the next two to three years to provide BPO, help desk and other services.
Making the IVR Ogre Customer-Friendly
Customers may not exactly be a fan of IVR systems but if they are programmed right, with their needs in mind, they can actually do some good by enabling them to get the services and items they need with minimal waits: and aggravation.
Shame On You, Teleperformance!
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.
So when I read the release that Teleperformance USA, a unit of French-owned SR Teleperformance had to pay nearly $2 million in back wages to almost 16,000 contact center workers for overtime violations under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FSLA) my reaction was one of disgust.
Will United + Continental = Fewer Contact Center Jobs?
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. The suspicion is yes, to some extent, but not as great as it would be if both firms were head-on competitors in major markets.
Can Outsourcers Bring Social Media Home?
Outsourcing firms, especially those in the contact center space have to be that one-half-step ahead of their clientele, which tends to be fairly conservative, but which expects their suppliers to be on top of trends. This is a tail-perched-on-the-picket-fence situation because outsourcing is a notoriously highly-competitive thin-margin business and outsourcers have little spare cash, which means technology investments must have strong and immediate ROIs, yet companies find the money for them to have the tools to meet clients' needs.
And that sharp point is about to become even more uncomfortable with the rise of social media.
Don't Start Bulldozers Yet On Contact Center Expansion
"The survey confirms something we've known for years: the contact center industry is one of the most dynamic and fastest-growing sectors in the U.S. economy," said James K. Noble, President and CEO of Noble Systems. "The overwhelmingly positive response reflects the strong diversity and innovation in the field today. Contact centers are an integral part of customer relationship management in an increasingly global and virtual marketplace."
This is great news. Yet is it time to finally fire up the bulldozers on that new center?
The hard reality is that the U.S. is still in the economic doldrums, with high unemployment and underemployment and long-term indebtedness that has squished consumers' pocketbooks. Bottom line: less spending resulting in fewer calls to contact centers for orders and service.
Cracking Down On Dumb Telemarketing Tricks
If one thinks that the rise of e-mail and the ease of spam has drawn all the mutts, skels and bottom-feeding marketers and clients from telemarketing, think again.
The trick du jour is spoofing phone numbers to make CallerID-savvy consumers and businesses think the callers are not telemarketers or are from other and reputable companies so that they will pick up the lines.
Make Customers Smile? Give Them Low Priced Half-Decent Products
A Nov.11 Los Angeles Times column by David Lazarus makes more kicks at the commonly stated (if not truly believed, and for good reason) assumption of organizations, their contact centers, and their suppliers that customers really give a rat's hindquarters about customer service especially in this tough economy.
Do We Need Contact Centers?
Are contact center agents, which are still known as 'operators' in the answering service world going the way of elevator operators? For every contact center opening and expansion heralded there have been the understandably less trumpeted closures and cutbacks thanks to automation.
Three Must Attend/Participate Webinars
Here are three Webinars coming up over the next two weeks that promises to be in this league: in timely information, knowledge, and insight
Rx For Organizations and the Economy: Axe The Incompetent Managers
The hard reality is that in many organizations is that there too many managers who drive performance down because they make lousy decisions and who waste scarce resources. These personnel lack the abilities for their jobs. What typically happens is that they get hired or recommended because they were good at their production tasks: which has nothing to do with how they will perform in supervisory rules. That sets up the "vortex of incompetence": bad longer-time managers bring on board underperforming newbies--they would never approve someone who is equal to or who outperforms them--who when they get promoted selects the next generation of nincompoops.
Needed: Improved Data Management--Forrester
To get a full view of your customers to utilize your CRM systems so you can retain and obtain more value for them, especially in this challenging and highly competitive economy you need realtime access to complete quality data on your customers.One of the biggest barriers to getting value from CRM initiatives is this need for improved customer data management, according to William Band, Vice President and Principal Analyst with Forrester Research.
Needed: A Contact Center Makeover?
Unfortunately if reports are accurate, contact center turnover continues to be higher than one might have expected in these difficult times.To fix these issues a contact center makeover may be needed. A good hard look at why those that are experiencing staffing issues cannot attract and retain the quality people they or more accurately their customers need, and take steps to address the problem areas.
Security Concerns And BPO/Contact Center Locations
Research firm Datamonitor recently came out with an intriguing report about Sri Lanka as a potential business process outsourcing (BPO)/offshore contact center hub.
Intriguing in that there may be a strong case for that island nation to become a BPO center despite its small (relative to neighboring India) population of 20 million. Intriguing is that it has been the media lately on account of an ongoing civil war: which is not exactly the kind of development that assures potential investors and clients.
Attention Airlines: To Avoid Calls and Customer Losses, Keep Washrooms Free...
Call avoidance saves money and bolsters revenue by reducing contact handling costs and by improving customer satisfaction and retention by tackling their issues head on before they become problems.
Outbound messaging and notification, which will be covered in the April issue of Customer Interaction Solutions is one technique.
Another, and much more effective, is discovering and preventing the problems and issues that prompted the calls in the first place.
In the spirit of aiding the already beleaguered airline industry and its roster of many fine people still working for it, including in contact centers, here is a great opportunity to practice call avoidance: flush into the 'blue ice' chamber consideration of charging customers to use in-flight toilets that was raised last week by Irish deep-discount carrier Ryanair.
Offshoring and Homeshoring
There has been a lot of fanfare lately of contact center work being brought back to the U.S. from other countries, most notably India. Yet unless the additional demand is managed effectively, the result could be higher costs, less service, and more automation and fewer jobs. There will still be offshoring, though at lower levels because many firms are satisfied with its cost/quality equation. There will also be if fewer live agents because self-service cannot replace people where high thought and touch are needed; some of those individuals will be traditional centers mainly because some organizations don't want or see the need to change.
Yet a growing percentage of agents will be at home, because there is no place like it to supply quality, cost-effective customer care and sales.
Smoot-Hawley...It's Baaaack! Will It Infest Tech And Destroy The Economy?
The ghost of Smoot-Hawley is baaack...and it is a real horror that spread misery worldwide, and could do again unless elected officials have the guts to drive a stake in its latest resurrection.
Forrester's Practical Solutions To Growing Business and Cutting Costs
There has been much and understandable wailing in the current economic climate about 'yes I need to retain and grow customers but my CFO has axed my budget'.
Now Forrester Research has come up with five practical, leading-but-not-bleeding edge recommendations that will make CFOs, CMOs, and ultimately CEOs happy by shrinking costs and increasing business.
Rx For Downturn: Better Marketing, Better Customer Service
One would think that in a marketplace that is being buffeted by the nastiest economic downturn in years and by a shift in customers' attitudes from passive respondents to becoming active, empowered, participants that companies would step up their marketing and backed by strong customer service.
Yet there is unfortunately evidence to the contrary. And companies that fail to get the word out, and deliver effective service risk failing, period.
