Contact Center Observer

Friday, March 06, 2009

8 things your call center can implement to help offset the impact of a challenged economy

* Reinvest in current customers. Re-allocate resources to take extra care of those customers who have stuck with you.

* Cross train your people. Cross training your call center reps will improve productivity and add flexibility to your schedules.

* Take new approaches. If your customers aren’t spending time on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.com, etc., they will be soon. Make sure your company is visible on these social networks and easy to find. You’ll want to include social network monitoring and response as part of your agent cross-training.

* Consolidate troops. Move all your teams and departments to the same location to save money on technology, energy and training cost. Taking it a bit further, you could combine your purchasing power with other companies to gain greater negotiating leverage and reduce costs. This applies not only to purchase products and supplies but also to services. What contact center does not utilize a cleaning service?

* Reinforce the basics. Simple fine tuning of courtesy skills can have a dramatic impact. Even if you have not implemented an automated quality monitoring system yet, set up some peer evaluation and coaching as part of your new cross-training regimen.

* Reward your people. Innovative rewards and incentive programs can motivate and refocus your team. Make it fun to achieve.

* Personalize your CRM efforts. If you have call handling scripts, think about adding some personalization. Add some fields in your CRM for your customer's birthdays, sports teams, local town, family status, etc. Next time the customer calls in, they will feel special and truly cared about, and most importantly – “they're more than a number” to you.

* Capture the “WOW”. Have your reps add some notes on the "wow" moment - that moment when a customer seems to really show their satisfaction. Save these recorded calls to a "Best Of" media library and share amongst the organization. This will not only beef up morale but can help in training new hires.

Thursday, February 05, 2009

News, RSS Feeds and Social Networks for our supported phone systems

Virtual Observer connects to most popular phone systems, and I've tried to round up some of the latest news from each of them. After perusing the excerpts and links, you will find a list of RSS feeds for each phone system vendor so you add them to your RSS feed readers. If that's not enough, I've also compiled a list of the various social networks where these companies have presence.

LATEST NEWS EXCERPTS:
ShoreTel: Nortel Demise Marks the Beginning of a Huge Category Shift
An excerpt: "As you've no doubt read, Nortel Networks has filed for bankruptcy, marking the demise of a once leading company in the communications industry. Is Nortel just another unfortunate victim of the recession? Does it indicate major problems for all providers of telephony solutions? No and no....click here to read the full article on ShoreTel's Blog.

Avaya: Avaya Unified Communications and Contact Center Solutions "Certified Green" by Independent Test Labs
An excerpt: "Avaya, a leading global provider of business communications applications, systems and services, today announced that its Unified Communications and Contact Center solutions have been "Certified Green" by Miercom, an independent testing organization. The designation verifies that Avaya Communication Manager-based networks are environmentally-friendly designs that can save companies money and boost efficiency....click here to read the entire news release.

Cisco: 1-800 CONTACTS is deploying Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise to help it manage growth and increase uptime. An excerpt: "By integrating contact center, web support and administration on the same platform, 1-800 CONTACTS is now able to expand capabilities of its at-home agents by blending inbound and outbound calls into a single queue, allowing contact center associates to answer calls faster. In addition, the entire system is more stable and uptime has been increased by eliminating technical issues inherent in a patchwork system...click here to read the entire article

PHONE SYSTEM VENDORS' RSS FEEDS:
- Avaya Contact Center News RSS Feed
- Cisco Unified Communications RSS Feed
- ShoreTel news feed
- Mitel RSS Feed
- Alcatel-Lucent RSS Feed
- Nortel RSS Feed

FIND PHONE SYSTEM VENDORS ON THE SOCIAL NETWORKS:
- Avaya DevConnect on LinkedIn
- Avaya DevConnect on Facebook

- ShoreTel on LinkedIn
- ShoreTel on Facebook

- Cisco Ecosystem on Facebook

- Mitel Solutions Alliance on LinkedIn

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

How the Results Group automated their quality monitoring with CSI-Avaya solution

Avaya just published a success story detailing Virtual Observer's impact on the ever-scaling Results Group's quality initiatives.

Some highlights:

* Results Group expanded their operation by opening 23 new contact centers across North America and Europe.

* Results Group needed a scalable call recording and quality monitoring solution that could accommodate their aggressive expansion and still provide excellent value to price.

• The number of successfully recorded calls has risen to more than one million calls per month

• Staffing levels have increased to more than 4,000 agents

• New agent training is completed in a fraction of the time

• Quality levels have risen dramatically

Please read the full Avaya success story here.