Keyword traffic helps to understand reader interests

Much of our traffic to this blog is from customers and partners, looking for company and product updates. We also serve a number of readers from the wide-ranging call center industries. In order to serve them better, every now and then I'll examine our recent keyword traffic to see what web users are searching for...what brought them to our blog? Can I develop content to speak to their specific searches?

First thing I'll do is categorize the phrases.

Call Recording:
"why record contact center"
"call center call recording"
"benefits of call monitoring system"
"call center recording blog"

Screen Capture:
"call center agent screen"
"benefit of recording screening"
"call recording with screens"

Customer Service:
"Customer Service Call Center Industry"
"Great customer service stories about health benefits"
"CSI marketing customer service"

Agent Performance:
"call center agent quote"
"quotes for call center agents"
"Virtual customer service agent"
"employee phone performance call center"

Questions:
"How do companies use SMDR?"
"why is a call center important?"
"what is another name for the call center?"
"what makes a good call center agent?"
"how to create call center training material?"

Tips:
"questions call center tips"
"tips for call center agents"
"tips for call center solution"
"Call Center Agent Tips and Techniques"

News:
"call center news"

Motivation:
"motivational quotes customer sales"
"5 most motivational quotes"
"call center motivational stories"
"call center motivational speech"
"motivation quotes of call centers"
"call center motivation"
"inspirational speech for call center"

Phone system references:
"asterisk queue call volume allocation percentage"
"cisco ipcc express call recording DNIS"
"shoretel compatability ip phones"

Related technology:
"SMDR business that use"
"call center operations VOIP solutions"
"benefit of cti"
"CTI triggers"

Companies mentioned:
"applications for costco call center jobs in yakima washington"
"harry and david supervisor eugene call center"
"sitel call center erwin"
"costco call center yakima"
"LinkedIn connecticare"
"harry & david"
"verizon call center wireless"
"harry and david hebron ohio phone number"
"call center costco"

Reader is most likely coming from the UK:
"how to speak correctly on phone in a call centre"
"recording tips for call centres"
"call centre standard reports"
"the effect of call centre management in telecommunication in industry"
"call center projects in uk"
"call centre training and development blog"

International:
"Philippine call center blog"
"call center philippines blog"

Keyword searches simply related to our website address:
"call center customer service stories"
"call centre stories"
"call center true stories"
"call center story"
"call monitoring stories"
"call center blogs"
"life in a call center blog"
"call center stories"
"call center management blog"
"call center blog"
"call center jobs good stories"
"call center stories christmas 2007"
"call center technology blogs"

Virtual Observer Tips: Dynamic User Layouts

Do you ever want to change the layout of your screen area during playback of calls?

With Virtual Observer's (VO) dynamic views, you can eliminate data windows, resize certain components, and save your current layout as a different or preferred layout.

The next time you go to use VO, the screen will appear as you saved it the last time.

If you need to bring back a screen element you had previously removed, don't worry, it is always available from the drop down menus.

Every VO user can thus have their own unique preferred user interface.

More call center news sources

Occasionally, I try to take inventory of all of the various call center news portals, blogs and news sites which I have managed by Google Reader (a great tool for reading RSS feeds), and remove the ones whom I never read.

Here are some of the newer ones I've found which I'll be evaluating. If they provide interest, I'll then add them to Google Reader. If you've read them, let me know what you think by commenting below. Also, comment with other recommendations:

T1 Rex’s Business Telecom Explainer Blog

Call Center and Call Center Outsourcing Information and News

Light Reading: Networking the Telecom Industry

Total Telecom

New York Times Bits

Telecommunications Magazine

Automating and creating custom call center performance reports

Do you run certain reports every day, week, or month (agent performance, question performance, etc.)?
It's easy to use our automated report scheduler and have the report run automatically according to your schedule. You can then have the report print to paper, create a .pdf or attach to an email. Need to send weekly progress or team reports to the boss? This can be automated and delivered to their email address on a weekly basis (or of course, any frequency you prefer).

How do I create custom reports in VO 3.0?
Besides being packed with many standard performance and agent reports, using Virtual Observer's Custom Report Writer, you can design your own reports that will display the data you are looking for in the specific way you want to present it.

> Select "Reports" from the main menu
> Select "Custom Report Writer"
> Pick "Create New Report"
> Click "Next"
> Select "Primary Table" for the data you'd like to report on.
> Select "Supporting Table(s)" for any related data.
> Add "Additional Options"
> Select "Finish"

Happy Friday: Call Center News Stories

A Healthy Work Environment
Sitel Philippines, a call center organization, possesses a distinctive healthcare program that takes great care of its employees. “Our Health, Our Wealth,” was created to assist the call center agents with all of the hardships that they have to deal with. When it first began, the program insured 1,600 employees at two sites, but has now spread to three more sites. “Our Health, Our Wealth” allows agents to attend lectures concerning catching sleep during shifting schedules, maintaining a healthy heart, correctly utilizing ear devices, and avoiding unhealthy habits. Along with this, they receive blood work, bone screening, electrocardiogram tests, and nutrition surveillance. These services don’t stop with the agents, though. It also includes the communities and families of the employees. Sitel is also working with Baguio city government, Lingap Center, and HopeHouse to provide a multitude of services. It was the only company in the call center industry to be awarded the Corporate Social Responsibility Excellence Award by the American Chamber of Commerce Philippines. Read the full story in the Business Inquirer

Flourishing Costco Opens New Call Center
Costco Wholesale Corporation has officially outgrown its call center in Issaquah, Washington, forcing the company to open a new one to accommodate other employees. The new center is located in Yakima, and ran Costco $2.6 million for the 36,000-square-foot building. There is no exact amount of employees the organization is looking to hire for the location, but Jim Sinegal, CEO of Costco, plans to hire locals. Currently, Costco Wholesale Corporation has 529 warehouses in the United States, Canada, England, Mexico, and Asia employing approximately 236,000 workers. Read more in the Yakima Herald.

New Call Center Needs Agents
Alorica, Inc. has recently opened a new call center in El Paso, California, and is encouraging people to apply. For the month of January, Alorica is seeking to hire 250 employees and 700 by the end of 2008. These positions could lead to higher-skilled positions, the company said. Alorica currently employs 7,100 people and is headquartered in Chino, California. Read more in the El Paso Times

Erwin Agrees to New Call Center
Governor Sptizer has decided to place a new call center in the town of Erwin, New York. Sitel will place a call center in an Erwin building formerly used to be a photonics facility. It will provide people in the area with about 600 jobs. Read all about it on News10Now.com.

What makes a good partnership?

In selecting good partner candidates, we have to be extremely particular. We want to make sure that the relationship will be mutually beneficial. At CSI specifically, we are work with industry leading phone system integrators who have sales teams with experience and proficiency in solution selling.

Another quality of a good business partner is the mutual desire to meet the true business need of the customer. Not everything has to be common, though -- true synergy is determined by what each company has to compliment each other’s strengths.

Both companies in a partnership need to gain substantial value from the relationship. CSI’s partners receive substantial resources to help them include call recording and quality monitoring in their projects. We often provide help qualifying, configuring, quoting and closing projects for our partners. In return, we gain some additional feet on the street for our products and more exposure for our brand.

The greatest value a partner receives when working with us is in the fact that from the very first project, they gain the confidence that their project will complete within expectations and their customers will end up extremely satisfied.

Employee Development Tip: Do You Hear What I Hear?

Today's "Employee Development Tip" is a tried and true method for training call center agents.

Allow your agents to hear themselves.

Typically performance gains realized from listening to themselves speak to customers are one of the first benefits recognized after implementing Virtual Observer.

Often, the agents will be more critical of themselves than even their supervisors would be.

Supervisors can make a playlist of all of their recordings available to them and they can listen to them when they have downtime. You could give them a goal of self-evaluating eight of their own calls a month.

Supervisors can share scoring improvements from month to month since they've begun listening to themselves speak

Submit your telecom company for consideration...

One new feature in our blog this year is a "Featured Integrator of the Day" - where we will profile telecom companies who are leading the way with integrated services and unified communications, offering a wide range of services complimenting their supported phone systems. At the heart of these companies will be their central telecom solution: be it Avaya, Cisco, 3com, Nortel, Siemens, or any of the many available VoIP flavors out there.

Featured companies will benefit from a link to their website and a paragraph summarizing their value proposition.

Initially, we'll find them via Google News, but we also are requesting that companies submit themselves for consideration using the form below.

IMPORTANT: Please include your website url, contact name, title, company name and core product line (Avaya, Cisco, 3com, etc.) within the general comments area of the form.



* Note: these companies are not endorsed or affiliated with Coordinated Systems, Inc. in any way. While we use this blog to publicize company and product news, we also use it to identify trends within the industry and to discover complimentary products and solutions.