10 Ways to Boost Customer Retention

Came across a great read from CallCentreHelper.com on tips for customer retention.

There are many forces at hand trying to weaken your customer retention rates:

- Increasing competition
- Economy
- Emerging technologies
- Changing customer expectations

I've taken the liberty of rewriting their list of tips and condensing the article down to some strong bullet points.

Adopt two or three of these ideas for a boost in customer retention:

- Prep the customer for what's coming next, prior to tranferring to another agent

- Add space in your CRM for interesting notes about the customer. Hobbies, Kids, Music, etc.

- Provide a comprehensive yet abbrieviated recap of what's been discussed.

- Compile an easy-access list of save opportunities for different categories of customers and calls.

- Use analytics at hand to anticipate customer behavior based on experience and trending.

- Music on hold keeps the customers tapping their feet as they await pick-up.

- Be consistent in all channels: phone, email, web chat, social, etc.

- Place a higher value on FCR (first call resolution) as opposed to AHT (average hold time).

- Share successfull calls/stories among agents

- Let the customers know how happy you are to have solved their issue or answered their questions.

You can read the entire article from CallCentreHelper.com in its' original form here:
http://www.callcentrehelper.com/ten-tips-to-improve-customer-retention-16719.htm

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Automating the call scoring process with speech analytics

Speech analytics used to be a big, intimidating, expensive undertaking, offered only by the call recording industry giants.

Now we've seen 8 or more other call recording vendors release their version of speech analytics.

Almost all of them have decided to invest in a technology from the UK rather than developing their own product - including my company, CSI.

It's a good business decision -- why reinvent the wheel when an existing, proven technology is out there with OEM / white label availability. Saves time and resources.

Some of the call recording companies have decided to just go to war with the same out-of-the-box vanilla features which come with the API.

A few, like CSI, have fully integrated the speech engine within their own optimization suite.

Some have taken it a step further and created unique, differentiating features. One such feature is the automated scoring feature from Virtual Observer Call Insight.

As soon as a call is indexed by the phonetic speech engine, Call Insight scores the call based on scoring forms built by the customer.

10,000 calls recorded on tuesday? 10,000 calls are scored.

It's pretty dramatic when compared to a live supervisor, who can score, maybe, 30 calls a day. Of course, you'll still want to use a supervisor to evaluate your most important calls. The speech technology can also help you more efficiently identify which calls are those "most important calls".

The automated scoring process works best in a script adherence format, where questions can be answered with either a true/false or yes/no type of answer. Most existing scripts can be refashioned into workable scripts for Call Insight to do it's thing.

It's extremely powerful for telemarketers, who are typically script-driven to begin with, but as we're seeing with more and more different types of implementations, it can be applied in many different industries across many different types of contact centers.

Leading Publisher Leans on Call Recording System For Training New Reps

HarperCollins Publishers is one of the world’s leading English-language publishers. Headquartered in New York, the company is a subsidiary of News Corporation.

HarperCollins was founded in New York City in 1817, publishing a range of Bibles, atlases, dictionaries, and reissued classics, expanding over the years to include legendary authors, such as H. G. Wells, Agatha Christie, J. R. R. Tolkien, and C. S. Lewis. In 1987, as Harper & Row, it was acquired by News Corporation.

Founded in 1819, William Collins & Sons published a range of Bibles, atlases, dictionaries, and reissued classics, expanding over the years to include legendary authors, such as H. G. Wells, Agatha Christie, J. R. R. Tolkien, and C. S. Lewis. HarperCollins has publishing groups in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia/New Zealand, and India.

Today, HarperCollins is a broad-based publisher with strengths in literary and commercial fiction, business books, children’s books, cookbooks, and mystery, romance, reference, religious, and spiritual books. Consistently at the forefront of innovation and technological advancement, HarperCollins is the first publisher to digitize its content and create a global digital warehouse to protect the rights of its authors, meet consumer demand, and generate additional business opportunities.

"At HarperCollins Publishers, Virtual Observer has become an important means of training our new customer service reps as well as keeping the experienced ones up to par. We use the VO system to demonstrate how a call could have been handled differently, and we share calls that were handled excellently as a training tool. The system is a must for companies that are serious about proper and professional customer service."

- Roberta Clemens, Manager, Customer Service
HarperCollins Publishers

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