Flying Through the Turbulence
The ability of contact centers to provide an excellent customer experience (CX) is being buffeted by two key winds of change.
Challenges in attracting and retaining quality staff.
Meeting the needs of the new generation of...
Answering the Call
Contact centers seamlessly bridge the gap between companies and customers, forging strong connections across multiple channels. Operating at the intersection of cutting-edge technology, relentless energy, and a kaleidoscope of human emotion, contact centers emerge...
Unlock the Power of Inclusion and Equity
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are vital components of an effective workplace and are necessary for any business’s success.
When implemented correctly, these pillars can lead to increased productivity, improved customer service, and a...
The Path to Healthcare ACCESS … Trends for 2023
Healthcare has experienced massive disruption due to the global pandemic. In 2019, just before the shutdowns began, Healthcare was getting comfortable with Contact Centers. Non-clinical operations such as Appointment Scheduling and Billing were centralized...
How Tech Can Help Meet Staffing Needs
Businesses continue to grapple with high turnover rates — 4.1 million people in the U.S. quit their jobs in September 2022 alone — and contact centers are far from immune.
Even in more favorable...
Staffing in the New Normal
Customer contact organizations are being pushed by strong tailwinds yet are facing powerful headwinds.
Customers increasingly and understandably insist on top quality service for complex and/or high-touch matters that are moving centers to provide...
The Hiring Game Has Changed
While many jobs come with a fair amount of stress, few positions are as taxing as that of an associate in a busy contact center who must regularly handle difficult customer service issues.
According...
Setting Up Your Reps for Success
The retail industry has always been marked by its unpredictable sales peaks and valleys—and that can make managing retail customer service a significant challenge.
The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent repercussions (like supply chain disruptions...
Avoiding Agent Underhiring and Undertraining
My first professional exposure to contact centers came in 2005, and it didn’t take long to fall in love with the industry.
The pace, challenges, and mission piqued my curiosity and inspired me to...
How to Make Holiday Hires More Productive
It’s time to staff up for the holidays!
Yes, it’s hot out there. But contact center managers know that winter is around the corner and what these holidays mean in their business: call volume...
From the Heart
Too many Americans and Canadians have been, or will be at some points in their lives, impacted by heart disease and stroke either directly or indirectly through their loved ones.
And that includes us...
How Contact Centers Can Help Change Lives
If you Google prison-staffed call centers, the coverage isn’t good and rightly so. Companies have misused prison labor in the contact center for little more than their own greed.
As a result, there is...
The New Resource for Contact Center Staffing
Contact center labor markets are tight. Employees are re-imagining and re-engineering their lifestyles, their perspectives, and their prospects for shaping their careers. It’s a pretty exciting time for them.
In turn, many employers have...
Top 5 Posts in November
This month's top 5 blog posts highlight two of our most in-demand topics: customer experience (CX) and expanding your workforce. In our CX posts, our authors touch on everything from CX management programs, platforms,...
How to Leverage the Power of an Older and Younger Workforce (and Why You...
Everyone knows the workplace is now dominated by millennials, with Generation Z close at their heels. But that doesn’t mean baby boomers (or Generation X employees, for that matter) are leaving anytime soon. In...
Executive Interview with Mario Fernandez, CEO of Pinoy Data Capture
Pinoy Data Capture Inc. (PDC) is an outsourcing company that provides data conversion, medical coding and contact center services for clients seeking to improve their efficiency and reduce their costs. Contact Center Pipeline recently...
Are There Better Ways to Staff the Contact Center?
Executives regularly ask contact center leaders to explore new operational paradigms that could benefit their organizations. Some of these ideas come from things they hear from peers or vendors. Others result from their own...
Inside View: Televerde’s Prison Workforce Development Program
Ashley Cruz was just 21 years old when she was incarcerated at Perryville Correctional Facility in Arizona. She was a mother with two young children and a first-time offender. Cruz knew that she had...
The Consolidation Trend Will Further Hurt Quality in the Contact Center
I was talking to Jay Minucci, a long-time industry veteran, consultant to the industry, and contributor on these pages. He was telling me about the trend he’s seeing with his large clients—that consolidation is...
Don’t Make Customers Wait: Smart Solutions for Balancing Demand with Finite Resources
Some people believe that changing technology is behind the disruption that’s roiling markets. But attributing disruption to technology is dead wrong—disruption is really driven by changing customer needs. From fast fashion to smartphones, only...