Thursday, October 30, 2008

5 questions every call centre manager needs to ask themselves

Are you a manager in an organisation faced with the challenges of meeting targets, increasing performance and retaining staff in a competitive climate? It is no wonder many of us leave the building in the evenings, our heads in a spin after a day of heavy fire fighting but without any feeling of real accomplishment.
Think back to why you became a manager in the first place. What inspired you to step up to this role? and have your expectations been met?
1. Are you in the zone?
Are you in a positive place, mentally, yourself? It is an important question because if you are not, it is almost impossible for you to motivate and inspire your team. On a recent airline flight I was told:“Fit your own oxygen mask first before helping others.”
Check your own levels of motivation, loyalty, performance and commitment. Give yourself a hit of oxygen – are you happy with the direction your organisation is going? Are you feeling inspired and motivated yourself?
If not, fix these problems first by getting yourself a mentor or coach who can encourage you. Open up the lines of communication with your boss. Embark on some personal development for yourself. Find the value in what you do and how your organisation helps the wider world.
Check your own loyalty and commitment levels. If you are not genuinely loyal and committed to the organisation, your department or team then your staff will spot it immediately and your attempts to generate loyalty and commitment from them will fail. “Walk the Talk. Be a good role model.”
2. Who was your best boss?
Now think back to the last great boss you had. What was it about them that made them so great?We have conducted research and asked this question to over 150 UK managers. The answers frequently show the same patterns each time we ask.
The top ten responses are as follows:
They showed genuine interest in me as a person.
They were always approachable.
They made time to really listen to me.
They asked for my ideas, opinions and input.
They were firm but fair with everyone.
They did not have an ego problem, power or control issues - they put the organisation and the team before themselves.
They were open and honest; if the answer to a request or idea was no they explained why.
They showed respect, both for themselves and everyone else. They treated everyone equally – regardless of ‘status’ or role.
They coached me through questioning, not ‘telling’.
They were sociable but always ultimately professional.
It is interesting to note that the qualities shared about great bosses are similar to those identified by Avolio and Bass in their ‘Transformational Leadership’ model and by Alimo-Metcalfe in her model of what is needed for true ‘Employee Engagement’. The concepts are both robust and have the same purpose - to develop leaders that will motivate and inspire employees to give their discretionary effort. Towers Perrin Research (2004) found that organisations that achieved employee engagement showed a 17% improvement on operating profit.
3. What do you do with that extra 20% of effort?
We know that each of us have in us approximately 20% discretionary effort each day. On a good day we may choose to give that effort. On a bad day we hold it back – we just cruise through the day in survival mode.
Are your staff giving that discretionary effort or is cruising allowed?
4. How might your team’s performance be different if you changed your focus?
As an effective manager you must give feedback – both positive and adjusting, so that your staff know the standards required. Positive feedback should be specific, public and genuine. Look for something to praise a member of your team every day and rotate the team member receiving the praise fairly. You may have to go looking for things to praise but it is a good habit to get into. Ask their internal customers for feedback, earwig into conversations, and ask for ideas, opinions or volunteers. All of these create opportunities to praise.
5. Do you have a clear understanding of the ‘psychological contract’?
That is the mental set of expectations that new starters have when they join the organisation. This is different to documented terms and conditions and may include a whole set of feelings, ideas and opinions about what it means to work at your organisation. If the psychological contract is breached then people will be miserable and will leave – and you may not even be aware of what is wrong.
Consider Stacey*. She joined a blue-chip organisation as a graduate. She had a psychological contract that included being in a nice office environment (where she was interviewed) and having the latest laptop, mobile phone and exciting training and travel opportunities. When Stacey arrived on her first day no one seemed to know she was starting, then she was taken to a different building out the back (a Portacabin) and told to find a desk for herself and look in the store cupboard for a ‘phone that works’. When she finally got a computer, the system was three versions behind what she expected and she had to research and negotiate her own training opportunities. In terms of travel she never went further than the county border on business. Stacey left within 12 months of joining at an estimated cost of £18,000 to the organisation.
Review the data from exit interviews and take action! Ask new starters what their expectations are and have quality inductions.
It costs approximately half of the first year’s salary to recruit and train every new starter. What is it currently costing your organisation?
If you invested this in reviewing salaries, benefits and conducting training it might stop the continuous cycle of recruiting and replacing people.
This could leave you with less fire fighting to do and more time to focus on the strategic elements of your role that were the reason you became a manager in the first place. Remember those?
*Stacey’s name has been changed.

It’s a wrap: 10 top tips for quick and efficient after-call work

Wrap time, after-call work, post-call processing - these are just some of the names for that important bit of time once a call has ended when the advisor can update the system with the caller’s resolution, next steps, details or order notes. They may also need to make some outbound calls or send emails during this time to progress the caller’s resolution. In one of our previous articles on ‘Balancing Customer Service and Efficiency’ we discussed how important it is to ensure that this time is used properly, and that advisors are not pressured into ‘doubling up’ this time as ‘ready’ or even worse, going through the greeting of the next call whilst still typing up the notes of the previous.
In this article we will show you how to make the most of just a few precious minutes to ensure wrap time is used properly and effectively. There are some wrap horror stories you may also wish to avoid…
1. The importance of quality call text
Train your advisors clearly on what is required in call text, logs or notes. This is critically important when another department, level of escalation or field operatives may be picking up the next steps.
2. Make it part of the induction process
Train your advisors as part of their induction on how to use call text, what level of detail is needed and which abbreviations are acceptable – provide them with a list. Show them the bigger picture, i.e. explain who else looks at their call text and how the information is used. Explain the consequences (preferably with real case studies) of when poor call text has caused problems for the customer, organisation and advisor.
3. The need for speed
Teach them to proof read backwards and to type quickly and accurately. After six months of service hold a short ‘Call Text Etiquette’ workshop that refreshes the key points from induction.
4. Weed out any bad habits
In this workshop you can introduce training activities that include ‘spot the errors’ in sample call text paragraphs. In the workshop discuss what the implications of such errors could be, a) for the caller/customer, b) for the organisation and c) for them.
5. Manage time classifications
Wrap time is wrap time. If advisors are not using wrap time for the purposes previously listed (updating the system, making required outbound calls or sending emails relating to the call, etc.) then they should be in ‘Not Ready’, ‘Make Busy’ or your equivalent. As a team leader or contact centre manager your overall wrap times will be hugely inflated if people are using these for loo breaks, chat time, drink refills, etc. Most contact centres do have targets on wrap time, which can vary depending on the type of centre, but often around 5% of average handling time is used. Explaining this diplomatically at a team briefing may be all that is needed for you to see an improvement in metrics.
6. Reuse and recycle
Calls can be quite repetitive, and this is something that can be used to our advantage in wrap time! Show advisors how to cut and paste chunks of call text between screens.
Consider making a process document of common best practice call text paragraphs, classified into the types of calls your advisors receive and send this to them electronically so that they can have it open on their desktop and paste across without re-writing standard advice/actions every time. Some of this text may also be useful to paste into emails, saving further time. However, do train them to use it with caution, details of individual calls (reference numbers, dates, names, amounts, etc.) should still be personalised and added to the standard information.
7. Get feedback
Find out how useful the call text is to the people that depend upon it (other departments, levels of escalation, field operatives, etc.). Are there details that are being entered that are not needed or are there key elements missing that would reduce chasing and follow-up to your advisors? If something is essential or not needed let your team know.
8. Analyse the Good, the Bad & the Ugly!
Review the statistics and quality of call text from a cross section of team members. What are the good ones doing that could be shared as best practice? Are there certain people that continually take longer in wrap or produce poor results? What coaching might they need?
9. Watch out for the horror stories
Are there any downright horror stories about wrap time that need to be tackled? For example, an IT helpdesk required advisors to complete call text about each call and the advice given. Call text could be accessed by the clients paying for the IT support service. Therefore when an advisor wrote ‘caller is a know-it-all and has made problem worse by trying own fixes – stupid w**ker’ he thought it would only be read by the 2nd line support desk. In fact, this was read by a senior decision maker in the client’s buying team. Not good when it comes to gaining contract renewals.
10. Watch out for wrap-up games
Equally, ‘games’ in call text that are devised to break the monotony of a team’s day are not good. For example. trying to get as many professional wrestling slang references into call text in a day was one example we found; ‘Have slammed this babyface’s problem. Call closed, clean finish.’ Whilst hugely entertaining for the advisors themselves, naturally it was not professional and anyone unschooled in the slang could not later decipher the meanings. Ensure you coach your team on what is efficient and effective use of wrap time and use specific praise to highlight good work.

Developing empathy in the call centre

Here Caroline Hardwicke shares her thoughts with us around the importance of developing empathy in the call centre.For the last 16 years I’ve worked in or with contact centres. I’ve taken calls, supervised, managed, trained, consulted and puzzled over how to operate every coffee vending machine. I’ve seen and experienced what works well and learned from blunders (mostly mine). The most significant part of my learning curve has been the importance of the link between customer experience and how employees who interact with customers are treated.
The call centre manager who values, respects, motivates, and empathises with every member of their team will reap an abundance of delighted customers.
Spend time with peopleI worked in one large organisation where the Managing Director would regularly spend time in the call centre, getting to know the advisors, sitting with them, empathising with them and offering support. His philosophy was that the success of the business depended on understanding and meeting customer needs.
To do this well, he believed he needed to regularly spend time with “the most important employees in our organisation – the people who communicate with our customers”. He encouraged the rest of the senior management team to do the same and many of their strategic decisions evolved from conversations they’d had with the staff on the front-line.
Business boomed under his leadership – he was an inspiration to everyone he worked with and highly respected.
It’s not rocket scienceWhat he did wasn’t rocket science – it was simple – he valued people, spent time with them and rated their opinions. If anyone questioned his approach he would say - “Knowledge talks, wisdom listens”.
Empathy is all about standing in someone else’s shoes, putting aside our own ego and trying to see, understand and respect the other person’s perspective. It is the first part of achieving a connection with someone and vital if we want to build rapport.
Improve empathy with your teamTo improve empathy with customers the first step is to improve empathy with the people who deal directly with those customers. If our call centre teams feel that no one is particularly interested in their day-to-day challenges or their ideas, this has an impact on how they communicate with customers.
There are two key components that happen in an empathetic interaction with a customer - Attitude and Understanding.
Attitude – the behaviours listed below form the backbone of an excellent contact centre manager or advisor, they are the foundation upon which effective communication is built:
Interested in others
Desire to do a good job
Taking personal responsibility
Positive can-do mindset
Energy and enthusiasm
Warmth and kindness
Openness and honesty
Understanding – the skills and behaviours needed for an empathetic approach:
Putting oneself in the other person’s position
Personalised questioning to understand need
Active listening
Appreciating the needs of the individual
Contact centre advisors react positively to being valued, respected and listened to but this is only one part of creating successful customer interactions. Another influencing factor is how we measure and coach individual performance. People respond to targets, especially if those targets are linked to financial gain or loss. If, as a manager, you are not happy with your customer experience – ask yourself what you are measuring and how you are coaching. If the focus is on quantitative measures (e.g. average handling time) rather than qualitative measures - like the ones listed above - therein lies your answer.
Specify the behavioursIf you want advisors to demonstrate empathy in their interactions with customers, provide them with quality measures that have clearly defined skills and behaviours. We often make the mistake of defining the skill we’re looking for but omit the useful detail of how to achieve it. For example ‘Build rapport with customer’ states the desired outcome but doesn’t tell us what we need to do. It can be more helpful to specify the behaviours that enable us to build rapport - such as matching the customer’s style, tone and pace - being flexible, interested and responsive.
Encourage team leadersFinally, encourage team leaders to coach their team empathetically. Ideally they should be allowing advisors to take ownership of their performance, assess themselves and set their own development goals. An excellent coach facilitates development by asking questions – they avoid telling the coachee what to do.
Customers won’t always remember what you said – but they will remember how you made them feel. Empathy works!

How to improve your training department

Peter Laurie of Power Partners Development reports on the secrets of building a performance-focused training department.
Avoiding “The Sheep Dip”
It is a fact that many call centre agents are still being subjected to the age-old training ritual of “sheep dipping”. This is a process by which employees are “refreshed”, “cleansed” and “re-invigorated” by ensuring they attend set training courses or, perhaps, are placed on the ubiquitous “refresher” course. This refresher course is, of course, necessary, because most call centre agents forget what they have learned on similar previous courses, don’t they?
Companies just love “the sheep dip”. Easy to create, easy to administer and can cut costs. Simply, get your training department to devise a list of courses that link to the company’s priority areas; decide who needs what training; tell which employees to go on what course, and then give everyone a “big pat on the back” for achieving the Training and Development Plan. Easy!
Simple, Yes! Effective, well what do you think?
Consider the following:
Does your list of training courses remain static from one year to the next?
Has your business/industry moved on?
Are the courses that you provided two to three years ago still valid?
Are there new skills emerging from one year to the next?
Do you perform a yearly audit of the skills and capabilities that are needed to deliver the company business plan?
Do you chop and change the programme to suit the requirements of the business?
Does your competition take a more effective approach to training than you?
Can you afford the time, money and disruption to deliver training that the business no longer needs?
Assuming the recruitment policy is up to scratch, quality line managers, being close to the operational end of the business, should be actively involved in deciding that the team’s training has an appropriate content and structure. The line manager’s attendance is a must to ensure that the delivery is of an appropriate quality and that the trainer is satisfying the needs of the company and the individuals’ different learning styles.
It is also a manager’s job to spend time with their team members to work out learning objectives before the course. How many managers operate a development programme that is aimed to achieve a specific purpose? This is an essential element of a serious business, and it should be an integral part of any business plan that requires people power to achieve its objectives.
Effective measurement is crucial to success. How can you measure the effectiveness of any training intervention if it isn’t connected to an action plan? How can you expect any new skills to be implemented properly if you don’t follow it closely with an effective action plan? People rarely come out of their comfort zone – if they have done something a certain way for the last three years don’t expect them to implement consistent change following a training course, even if they do agree it’s better than the old way and fill in the happy sheet accordingly.
Not surprisingly, for companies that operate the Sheep Dip approach, training often represents a cost. This is because the training is often not appropriate to the business needs and not followed up effectively via a regular review that consists of a detailed analysis of after-effects.
If the correct approaches to training are exercised and the effects are measured and managed correctly another statistic then becomes thankfully evident. The bottom line.
Sure, you don’t get any training free, not even sheep dip, but training that achieves the objectives and improves the bottom line with a return over investment has got to be worthwhile, hasn’t it?
BAAHD Motivation
If you have struggled with motivation remember this: the “sheep dip” can be very de-motivating for some call centre agents. No change from one year to the next (assuming they stay that long) and no innovation or creativity being exhibited by the company can lead the employee to think that the future success of the company could be in doubt. Would they want to stay with such a company? Also, if the line manager takes little responsibility for the true development of their employees and abdicates all training and development responsibility to the training department, then the employee will quickly become disillusioned with the lack of support and encouragement. Their skills will not improve as quickly as they should, either.

A complaining customer is your most important customer

They may be complaining because service levels are deteriorating, because the product no longer performs to their expectations, or even because they have heard that one of your competitors are doing things better than you.
The complaining customer is here to stay and knowing how to deal with them is especially crucial in competitive, service-based industries.A recent ‘Cutting Edge’ documentary broadcast on Channel 4 painted a very bleak picture of call centres across the UK, and even suggested that the average Briton spends one day a year on the phone to a service provider. Whilst the programme was undoubtedly guilty of sensationalism, it did underline a key point: customers only get in touch when they have a specific issue to resolve, and as such expect an efficient, prompt response.
A surprisingly high proportion of large, supposedly customer-led organisations do not have a formalised complaint handling system. Indeed, one very well known telecommunications firm recently told me their complaints department could only be contacted via post! The result of such negligence is a row of front-line employees manfully fire fighting against a tirade of unhappy customers, a thankless job at the best of times. What is required is a company-wide commitment to handling complaints in the most timely, professional manner possible.
Some level of customer complaints is inevitable; a famous academic once suggested companies aiming for 0% complaints were ‘chasing the rainbow’s end’. No matter how standardised the product, how consistent the customer service, there will always be a segment of your customer base who simply expect more. Just because we believe a customer complaint to be unreasonable does not mean we should dismiss it out of hand.
So, what happens when a complaint is not handled well, or even worse, the customer doesn’t even bother complaining in the first place? The following gives you an idea of what can result from customer neglect:
Customers go elsewhere: Even the best performing companies lose between 10 and 30% of their customer base each year; imagine what that figure could be if a complaining customer is simply passed between departments?
They talk to others about you: On average, a dissatisfied customer tells 10-15 people of their negative experience, each of whom who then tells their friends, and so on. It’s remarkable how many people can develop a negative attitude to a company despite having never used them!
They won’t come back: Negative experiences are rarely forgotten, especially when they have resulted in financial loss or emotional hardship. Such lapsed customers are likely to look at your future marketing communications with astonishing levels of cynicism: “they never did that when I was with them”.
Now we have established the consequences of not handling customer complaints effectively, we can consider how things should be done. There are a number of basics that every customer will expect: not to wait in a queue or be passed around departments, not to have to repeatedly provide personal details and account numbers, etc. But the key to effective complaint handling is listening: only when we can precisely define the problem can we consider how to remedy it. Therefore all front-line staff need to let the customer guide the conversation and only interrupt when further clarification is needed. It can sometimes be difficult for staff to ‘bite their lip’ if customers are being unnecessarily harsh or aggressive, but the customer will feel a lot better simply by venting their frustration.
Once the nature of the complaint has been understood, careful judgement is required to evaluate its validity. Can we actually fix this problem? Is it really the organisation’s fault? Is it best to accept responsibility anyway? At this point it is worthwhile looking through previous complaint records to look for any precedents: has this problem occurred before and how did we deal with it? The customer will not necessarily expect their complaint to be resolved instantaneously, so don’t be afraid to consult colleagues and then get back to the customer with a decision.
At this point it is all too easy to assume that throwing money at a customer will encourage them to forgive and forget. Sometimes it might, although sometimes the customer will not be contacting you to make a profit. Often a genuine apology (ideally in written form) or a commitment to improve the product/service for future users will suffice. A large part of customers’ evaluations is how seriously the complaint has been taken; if they feel their opinions are valued and will be acted upon their bond with the company increases.
The emotions associated with complaining (anger, upset and even embarrassment) don’t disappear when the act of complaining ends. As a result, some sort of follow-up contact is crucial in maintaining relationships and ensuring any problems have been resolved. Most call centre software should allow customers to be ‘flagged’ for future contact, meaning a follow-up takes little effort from the company but can have a big impact on the customer. We may not always be able to resolve their complaint, but we can at least show that we appreciate their feedback.
What type of people actually complain?
Much academic research has noted that complainers tend to be:
Better educated (which brings experience and a knowledge of where and how to complain);
From Western cultures (for example, Chinese customers are less likely to complain because Confucianism encourages them not to vent negative emotions in public);
Assertive and self-confident;
Experienced consumers.
A knowledge of who the complainer is can help us manage the process more effectively (for example, an experienced customer may well be familiar with technical jargon, so we can use it to describe the problem). As our customer databases are unlikely to hold such information it is up to the member of staff to quickly decipher the characteristics of the complainer and tailor the communication to their specific needs.
Summary
Handling complaints is never an easy or enjoyable challenge. That said, if management can promote a pro-active approach to dealing with dissatisfied customers then there is every chance such negative situations can be turned into satisfying and memorable encounters for the customer. That’s the same customer that will tell all of their friends about you if you don’t handle their complaint appropriately.
To develop such a pro-active attitude to complaints, companies should:
1. Not just tolerate complaints, but actively encourage them: Complaints can be uncomfortable, even hostile, encounters and this can lead front-line staff to dread them. However, the customer is the best source of feedback so they should be encouraged that “there is no such thing as a minor irritant”.
2. Develop suitable avenues for consumers to give feedback: Channels of communication need to move with the times; gone are the days when customers are happy to do things via post! Angry consumers expect a response, and they expect it quickly. Free telephone lines and regularly checked email addresses should be an absolute minimum.
3. Use the Internet: Don’t assume all negative feedback will come directly to you (research suggests up to 60% of dissatisfied consumers don’t complain to the company involved). There are countless consumer awareness websites/blogs out there for disgruntled people to spread news of your mishaps. These provide a ripe source of information that can help you improve future service provision, and will also give you an insight into the weaknesses of your competitors.
4. Offer the right form of compensation: As we have discussed, not every consumer wants to get money out of you, but some form of tangible gesture shows that you value their custom and feel they had valid grounds to complain. Simple product vouchers can perform this role whilst also encouraging the customer to give your company another go.
5. Share complaint data with other departments: If a complaint department learns of a product defect, what good is this information if it is not passed on to Production and R&D? Complaint data should be reviewed at senior management level and shared with those who can actually use it. A good complaints department is one which uses customer feedback to improve performance, which could in turn reduce the number of dissatisfied customers. After all, surely prevention is better than cure?

Customer loyalty: ten top tips to make it happen

How do you build a loyal customer base?
In these tough economic times, when customer loyalty is hard to win and harder still to maintain, customer service providers need to find new ways of reaching and engaging with consumers. James Le Roth tells us how.
1. Make your existing customers feel loved
Keeping existing customers is much less expensive than winning new ones. It’s a big mistake to focus so much on the costly business of persuading new customers to sign up that you forget all about keeping your existing customers happy.
Maintain regular contact with existing customers. Check that they continue to be happy with what they are being offered. Make sure they are aware of other products, services and opportunities available to them. Take every opportunity of asking, ‘Is there anything else we can do for you?’
2. Live the customer experience
Put yourself in the customer’s shoes. Whenever possible, use the products and services of the company you represent. If it’s a food manufacturer, eat the yoghurt, if it’s an auto manufacturer, drive the car.
3. Predict the future
Try to predict customers who might be considering leaving. Identify key customer behaviours that indicate dissatisfaction, such as a lowering of spend. Then be proactive, asking, ‘I’ve noticed your spend is down. Is there a reason?’ A timely, helpful and appropriate intervention at a critical moment could make all the difference.
Today’s consumers are not shy in pushing providers into offering them better deals and moving on if they are not satisfied. Retention advisors should have all the information and authority they need to offer that extra something – whether it is an upgrade or a discount – that will convince callers to stay.
4. Fast-track complaints
Prioritise complaint handling, so issues are identified and dealt with quickly. Put your best people on the case, those with the best interpersonal skills, experience and brand knowledge. If circumstances require, assign a dedicated resource to a particular consumer or group of consumers, so callers always get through to the same advisor, building up trust.
Take ownership of every issue. Advisors should never say, ‘Sorry, that’s not my responsibility.’ They should make certain that problems are resolved, even if it’s not directly their responsibility. If a customer is calling about an erroneous bill, for instance, even if they are not involved in accounts, they should deal with the complaint, speak to the accounts department and keep on the case until the issue is satisfactorily settled.
5. Perfect the art of listening
Train advisors to really focus on what the caller is saying, so they listen out for clues in the tone and emotion of the voice and match their response accordingly, calming an angry caller, reassuring a worried one. They shouldn’t jump in too soon or interrupt but let the caller have their say before clarifying any points or asking questions.
Encourage the use of positive statements. ‘What I recommend is …’, ‘I completely understand …’. At the same time, pick up on negative signals. ‘Maybe …’, ‘I’m not sure …’ are danger signals and might indicate you risk losing a customer.
Believe it or not, your posture affects the way you come over to a caller. Sitting up straight makes advisors feel more businesslike and alert, so they sound more professional and efficient.
6. Mimic your customer’s style
Telephone style should be adapted to the customer, so advisors bond with them more readily. Agents should paraphrase what customers say, using similar tone and language. If the customer is businesslike, they should respond appropriately. If he or she is more casually spoken, they can afford to be a little more informal in return.
Accents are a moot point. It’s not normally a good thing to try to mimic a caller’s accent. However, if, say, a company’s customer base is mainly in the north, it might be practical for it to establish a contact centre in the region, so the manner of speaking is familiar. In general, soft regional tones are preferred.
7. Access all areas
Today’s consumers love to communicate. Make sure you make two-way dialogue easy. Reduce the number of menus for inbound calls so they can get through easily. Increase the channels for contact, so they can get in touch, not only by telephone, but also by email, the web and sms.
Monitor chatrooms and web forums to find out what customers are saying. Their comments can give you early warning of impending issues. Better still, set up a forum which can be monitored and moderated from the contact centre.
8. Incentivise your advocates
Use super loyal customers to do your selling for you. Incentivise these advocates. Use their experiences to inform what you do and promote them in advertising and on websites.
They don’t necessarily have to be rewarded with money-based incentives. Automotive customers, for instance, appreciate invitations to special owners’ events and hi-tech consumers just love getting their hands on pre-launch products.
9. Get personal
Whatever you do, personalise it. Every campaign should be appropriate for each customer and every communication tailored to that individual. Call centres have the capacity to capture comprehensive information on customers, building up sophisticated profiles. The more information advisors have, the better their rapport with customers.
10. Remember the bottom line
Make sure you’re getting value for money. Use segmentation to target your marketing, offering services and access points that are fitting for each customer, according to their annual spend or lifetime value. There’s no profit in running a ‘business class’ programme for a ‘no frills’ customer.
James Le Roth is contact centre director at Eclipse Marketing, a full-service marketing agency formed in 1988 by two experienced marketing professionals who still run the business today. Since then it has grown to become one of the UK’s top 40 agencies. The agency’s broad range of household-name clients, many of them who’ve worked with Eclipse for ten years or more, include Alpro soya, Honda, Panasonic, RBS, Toyota and Vauxhall.

operation of the call centre?

to answer the following questions: -
Is the service meeting the callers needs?Are there clear opportunities for up selling and cross selling?Are the agents adequately trained?What opportunities are there for Customer Relationship Management?
Monitoring calls can help to identify the difference between the service you are offering and the needs of the customer. A good example of this has been the need to confirm details in writing. All businesses have the need to maximize security and minifies risk. But there is a price to this. The smarter companies have eliminated the need for the customer to put anything in writing - except for the signature on contracts. They fill in the form during the telephone conversation and send the customer a copy to check. Call recordings can then be used in dispute arbitration - usually without the need to go to court. Once a caller is played back a telephone recording, misunderstandings usually become clear.
Up-selling or cross-selling opportunities become clear from call centre monitoring. In many sectors between 2% and 10% of service calls have direct sales potential. These could range from a direct customer query, or a clear cross-sell opportunity. By listening to calls as you try out new sales methods, it will become apparent which techniques work and where deficient ones can be improved. The campaign can then be refined to gain maximum effect.

Call Centre Monitoring

If "the proof is in the pudding", then in a call centre the pudding is the telephone calls. Listening to calls provides the biggest indicators on how to make dramatic improvements in the call centre.
Over the years, I have often found that it is possible to gauge a call centre's efficiency by its attitude to listening to calls. A bad call centre usually has no facilities for listening to calls. In a well-run call centre, senior management will listen to calls on a regular basis and provide immediate feedback to agents.
Mel Mason, Call Centre and IT Director of Great Universal stores agrees, "If you're in the Call Centre business you must regularly listen to calls to and from customers. Monitoring calls is the only way you really find out the important issues for customers and how they feel about your company, its products and its services."
"I typically spend about 4 hours per month listening to live calls - a small sample of the 50 million we take each year. I urge the whole management team to listen to calls on a regular basis, with the Chief Executive also participating."
There are a number of ways to listen to calls. My preference is to sit next to a live agent and connect an additional headset to the agent teleset. Many ACD systems have a facility to silently monitor agents from a supervisor's set. Call recording devices can allow wholesale recording of all calls into the call centre and can be used to assess performance of the agent. Mystery shopper calling (where you pretend to be a customer) enables you to gauge how the customer views service, and can be carried out on your competition.
All of these methods of call centre monitoring allow you to develop a picture of the call centre. Monitoring from the caller's perspective will give you an overall impression of what it is like to call your centre. It will demonstrate how frustrating it can be to wait in a queue and how friendly or annoying your voice messages really are. Sitting next to an agent will help to alert you to deficiencies in the contact management system and general workflow.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Industry Services

For Fortune 500 clients, private and public companies we provide an extensive range of services covering various industries from banking, finance, manufacturing, consulting and other professional services.We work very closely with our clients to better understand their business needs and we deliver the right solutions, that meet their expectations.The services we provide to our commercial clients range from enterprise-wide strategic planning to development, implementation and management of Information Systems.In our pursuit to share our expertise with our clients and provide efficiency and cost-savings to them, we also have two on-line applications, Professional Services Automation Software and i-Timesheet.

Data and Network Management

Many Infosys International personnel have vendor certifications and direct experience in data base design and administration and network infrastructure design and implementation. We have personnel ready to assist our clients with experience and credentials in the following areas:Data Base AdministrationOracleMicrosoft SybaseNetwork AdministrationMicrosoftCiscoBanyanVigilante

Systems Integration

In addition to performing custom application development, Infosys International personnel have extensive experience in implementing enterprise application software solutions from several leading vendors. This includes extensive experience with PeopleSoft Human Resources and Financial applications, SAP Supply Chain Management applications, and software solutions from Oracle, Manugistics and Cognos. Infosys International personnel typically assist our clients with systems integration tasks such as modification analysis, data mapping and conversion, interface design and development, and report design and development

Application Development

When its time for organizations to upgrade or replace important information systems, they will typically need additional personnel to complete these projects. Infosys International has the ability to provide our clients with the quantity and quality of the resources needed to complete these projects without adding to our client’s permanent headcount. We have personnel who are experienced in working with the latest web-based and wireless technologies, as well as legacy client/server and mainframe architectures. We can assist all phases of the application development life cycle, including requirements definition, functional design, technical design, programming, testing, conversion, implementation and ongoing support.

Business and IT Consulting

Infosys recognizes that our client base of businesses, government and not-for-profit organizations is consistently faced with problems and opportunities, constraints and goals, risks and rewards. Our consultants help our clients see where they are and where they can go in today’s ever-changing business and information technology (IT) environment.We organize our consulting projects around a three-step approach that is designed to provide you with practical, usable information. Our “Analyze, Advise, and Act” consulting services model answers the following types of questions:
ANALYZE
What do I have today, and where do I want to go?
Products, Services, Markets and Locations
Financial Status
Information Technology Infrastructure
Human Resources, Morale and Knowledge Capital
Current Tactical Opportunities and Plans
Strategic Vision
ADVISE
How can I get to where I want to go?
Alternative Courses of Action
Risks, Costs, Schedules and Benefits
Recommended Direction and Blueprint
ACT
What do I need to do to get where I want to go?
Master Program Plan
Project Plans and Milestones
Resource Requirements
Change Management Plan
Funding Requirements

about infosis Overview

Infosys International Inc. has a solid reputation as a business and information technology consulting company.
Our Vision
To help our clients meet their goals through our people, services and solutions
Our Mission
Infosys International Inc. is dedicated to providing the people, services and solutions our clients need to meet their information technology challenges and business goals.
To do this, we:
Infosys International Headquarters
110 Terminal Drive, Plainview, NY 11803

Work to understand the needs and requirements of our clients before proposing a solution

Develop responsive proposals that provide cost-effective solutions to our clients needs

Deploy the right mix of people and products to deliver value-added services and solutions to our clients

Follow-up on the quality of our services and solutions to our clients

Appreciate the trust that our clients put in us as we work with them to improve their business and information technology.

whos.amung.us

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