Recruiting & Hiring

Despite their increasingly important role in attracting and retaining customers and revenues, contact centers continue to face high agent turnover. Yet to keep delivering excellent customer service and support and making sales, centers must...

Going remote was just the beginning. If 2020 was about transitioning and uncertainty, consider 2021 the year of acceptance and innovation as contact centers embrace the new reality. Eighteen months into the COVID-19 pandemic...

According to the U.S. Labor Department, a record 4.3 million Americans quit their jobs in August, 2021 and experts predict this trend won’t slow any time soon. This phenomenon, known as the Great Resignation...

The idiom The New Broom Sweeps Clean is great for the New Year since it essentially means to get rid of the old and bring in the new. It appears in John Heywood’s 1546...

More than a year after COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic, the impact has greatly affected how all of us work and live. Due to the need for social distancing, many businesses closed—some for...

More and more consumer interactions are going to online channels, making live-chat support the fastest-growing business segment for contact centers and business process outsourcing providers worldwide. As businesses digitize, the pace of this growth...

For more than a decade, a push toward virtual contact centers with work-from-home (WFH) agents has been moderately successful. However, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated that trend at lightning speed as contact centers around the...

We all at one time have fallen victim to the clickbait trap. You see an enticing notice that reads something like, “10 Full-Length Photos of Sasquatch Making Snow Angels.” Who can resist? This happened...

Chances are you have pivoted toward remote agents, and maybe not by choice: Most organizations were forced into work-from-home situations. You scrambled and had little choice. The race will soon be on to either replace...

Contact center leaders often find themselves faced with the challenge of having to quickly staff up to accommodate business growth and expansion. Identifying a top candidate who has the passion and skills to deliver...

As an initial point of contact with your brand, customer service reps must be able to provide an excellent customer experience and resolve problems fairly and efficiently while showing empathy to every caller. It’s...

It’s currently a job-seeker’s market with contact centers in tight labor markets facing stiff competition for top talent. Add to that the industry’s high rate of turnover and it is easy to see why...

The competition for top talent is heating up. Contact centers in tight labor markets already are experiencing a shortage of skilled job candidates. For many employers, it’s either settle for less qualified candidates and...

Many brands and organizations are focusing on recruiting and retaining younger workers, typically thought of as the millennial generation. On college campuses, however, professors and foodservice executives have noticed the arrival of a new...

What leader wouldn’t love to fill his or her contact center with highly skilled customer service professionals who will stay for a while and help to grow the business? That might be easier to...

In late 2017, ICMI surveyed the contact center community to ask about their challenges for the year ahead. What came out on top? Hiring, training and retaining agents. People-related problems are an age-old struggle...

On a single night in 2017, 553,742 people were experiencing homelessness in the United States, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Millions more live on the brink every day—one life event...

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 people. Many also stress that the “secret sauce” is hiring...

Rapidly evolving technology and expanding product lines have contributed to an environment in which many frontline agents are finding it increasingly difficult to keep pace with constantly changing tools, processes and expectations. A new-hire’s...

Everybody loves Susie. Customers rave about her, her adherence rate is off the charts, her quality percentage is among the highest in the organization… and she hasn’t missed a day of work in over...