Contact Center Pipeline Blog

Q: How do you know if you work in a call center?A: You hear the term “shrinkage” and it doesn’t make you laugh.—Greg Levin Human...

Contact centers rely on technology to meet their business goals, manage their operations, and interact with customers in a variety of media. Unfortunately, they...

Proper questioning and inquisition has become a lost art in modern society. For many, it has gone beyond being a lost art in society...

One of the advantages of a small startup business is the flexibility to quickly adapt and respond to your customers’ needs. On the other...

Every year after the start of the 2nd quarter, I begin preparing next year’s staffing models in anticipation that someone on the executive team...

Are you promoting your best agents to supervisors and managers? If so, you may be promoting to failure. Those of us in the contact center...

One of the key advantages of a voice of the customer (VoC) platform over a traditional quality monitoring (QM) program is the ability to...

We asked that question in a recent poll on Contact Center Training. The majority (84%) of participating contact centers reported providing ongoing training for...

Every year, we Workforce Managers get to play with unique and exciting situations around holidays. This year the special one to look out for...

We operate in a fast-changing business environment. The processes that work well today can quickly become unwieldy and undercut your center’s performance tomorrow. Leading-edge...

In early March, workforce management topped the charts on the Pipeline blog, with Human Numbers’ Tiffany LaReau blogging live from the SWPP Annual Conference,...

You are a bad customer. We are all bad customers… now. Or we at least have greater potential to be bad customers. Many years...

In this month’s Inside View column, Berlin Packaging’s Senior Manager of Business Development and Strategy Paul Mansour discusses how the company’s rapid growth through...

People are surprised when I tell them I was a History major in college. They typically laugh nervously and say things like, “But… you’re...

Technology and employee demographic shifts are changing the way work gets done in America. Some of the most compelling evidence can be found within...

In my last post, I mentioned a Purdue University study on decreasing attrition in a contact center environment. The study found that contact centers...

I travel often, and so I am generally at one of the highest status levels for the airline I fly, the hotel where I...

Whether you’re a technophile or a technophobe, you’re in the technology business when you have responsibility for running one or more contact centers. And...

We have a great many data points at our disposal in contact centers. The best ones, though, are not necessarily those that are the...

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...

If your applicant intake process involves fogging a mirror, you may be hiring, not selecting. According to a Purdue University study on decreasing attrition in...

Globalization has become a key growth driver for many organizations—and it’s a trend that will continue to increase. Research by The Hackett Group has...

A successful theater production requires precise timing and teamwork from the players both onstage and backstage. The stage crew, director, choreographer, costume and set...

March 2009… that was our first issue of Contact Center Pipeline. It’s been six years since we launched our publication. I looked back to...

Dealing with irate callers can wear down even the most motivated agent. That can result in burnout or turnover. Since the cost to hire...

When agents leave there is a tangible and measurable cost to replace them. What cannot be measured easily is the effect of turnover on...

Many customers prefer to forgo the human interaction and opt to self-serve through a company’s website or IVR system. The rapidly growing popularity of...

Today is National Employee Appreciation Day. It's a day to show your staff how much you appreciate the value that they contribute to your...