Quick Tip: One Word That Infuriates Customers (and You Use It Everyday)
Are your agents saying the right thing? If you are like most call center leaders, quality assurance requires a lot of your attention and...
Top 5 Quick Tips for 2016
Our Quick Tips posts are just that—brief posts providing advice or actionable items from industry experts. These are tried-and-true practices that have proven successful...
Quick Tip: Show Appreciation for Agents Working Holidays
Working on a major holiday is tough for anyone. Your agents’ bodies may be in the contact center, but their thoughts and hearts will...
Quick Tip: How to Get Support from Other Functions
Departmental silos will stop a customer service initiative dead in its tracks. Silos also throw wrenches into daily service delivery goals when the contact...
Quick Tip: How to Prevent Hiring Failures
I often ask leaders of award-winning contact centers what they think is the key strength of their operation. They almost always point to their...
Quick Tip: End Team Huddles on a Positive Note
Taking the time to show frontline agents how much they’re valued is a critical role for the center management team—or should be. Jill Houghland,...
Quick Tip: Evolving Beyond Automated Alerts
Mention the word texting in a B-to-C context, and most people think of automated alerts. Some text alerts allow for a basic level of...
Quick Tip: Consider an Internal Advocacy Program
Employee advocacy can be very impactful if there is a really clear and articulated business case for the program, and if every element of...
Quick Tip: Try a Phased Approach to Tech Implementation
What is a common issue that prevents organizations from realizing the full value of their contact center technology investment? Usually, when a new contact...
Quick Tip: Training Home-Based Agents
Training programs for home-based agents, especially new-hires, should include ongoing personal contact with a support team member—a supervisor, team leader or senior agent—who they...
Quick Tip: Act on Employee Feedback
Berlin Packaging has a long history of business success, which its leaders attribute largely to its focus on employee engagement and a culture of...
Quick Tip: Give Agents a Voice in Process Improvement
Despite the growing popularity of the collaborative corporate culture, the more traditional directive model is still common today. In a directive organization, leaders give...
Quick Tip: Promote Agents with the Right Qualities
While many top-performing contact center agents desire opportunities for growth and development, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re cut out to be supervisors or...
Quick Tip: Give Agents a Voice in Customer Initiatives
Successfully transforming into a customer-centric culture requires agent buy-in. Anna Convery, CMO & EVP Strategy at OpenSpan recommends getting agents more engaged in customer...
Quick Tip: Engage Supervisors with Targeted QM Goals
In centers that suffer from high absenteeism, you'll typically find disengaged supervisors. Like agents, supervisors who are performing the same coaching tasks day in...