Mike Aoki
Mike Aoki is the President of Reflective Keynotes Inc., a training company that helps contact centers improve their sales and customer experience results. A contact center expert, Mike has been chosen by ICMI as one of the “Top 50 Customer Service Thought Leaders on Twitter” for the past six years. He has also received the GTACC Award for social media influence, and co-authored the Amazon #1 bestselling leadership book, “Called to Action.”
Create a Sales Incentive Program for Your Center in 3 Easy Steps
“Trinkets and trash!” That was the description a contact center agent used to describe their company’s sales incentive program. This company had recently mandated...
How to Handle Post-Holiday Returns & Cancellations
January is the toughest time of the year to be a new agent. Early in my career, I worked at a mobile phone company...
Being Your Personal Best as a Contact Center Leader
Being a contact center leader is a demanding job. You have a large number of people to lead. You have an overwhelming array of...
10 Common Retention Mistakes
Some of the best lessons about customer service happen when you are the customer. In my case, I spent 20 years as a loyal...
New Year’s Resolutions for Contact Center Managers
These seven New Year’s resolutions will give you a head start in making 2016 your best year ever! 1. I will remember that customer calls...
5 Ideas for Effective New-Hire Training
When I managed the call center training department at a major wireless phone company, we invested six weeks in our new-hire training and coaching....
5 More Tips to Boost Engagement During New-Hire Training
In my last post, I offered five tips to reduce your new-hires’ training jitters, while increasing their knowledge retention and engagement. The following are...
5 Tips to Improve Engagement During New-Hire Training
I remember my first day as an agent at a major phone company. It was at the start of my working life. I was...
7 Tips for Effective Upselling
I have had the same home phone provider for 25 years. I subscribed to that same company’s Internet service 18 years ago. Three years...
Basic Training for New Team Leaders
“Congratulations! You have been promoted to acting supervisor.” It was 1993 when my manager pulled me aside and gave me the good news. I...
Dealing with Irate Callers: Providing Post-Call Support
In a previous blog post, I provided tips to help managers and team leaders prepare their frontline agents to handle irate callers. It’s also...
Dealing with Irate Callers: How to Prepare Your Agents
Dealing with irate callers can wear down even the most motivated agent. That can result in burnout or turnover. Since the cost to hire...
