Today’s Contact Centers must go deeper into the organizational labyrinth and transform to be considered a strategic asset. This installment of Lost in the Labyrinth discusses how business leaders need to understand current state Call Center operational deficiencies and management issues. Challenge yourself to be both visionary and radical!
Change Management – Adding Sales to a Service Environment
Wikipedia defines change management (as it relates to people) as “a structured approach to change in individuals, teams, organizations, and societies.” What the definition does not state is how significant change management can be in achieving successful outcomes. Maybe this is why so many initiatives fall flat, are wholly unsuccessful, take longer, and cost more than planned … the “planning” …
Lost In The Labyrinth: C-Level To Cube-Level … Making The Link
Breaking down the walls of the service labyrinth can only happen at the senior executive level. Too often at the company’s core, we find executive leaders in denial. They just don’t want to know that their enterprise can’t get the customer experience right. How to successfully navigate from C-Level to Cube-Level.
Lost In The Labyrinth: If Information Is Currency, Contact Centers Are Revenue Engines
Contact Centers remain the enterprise’s ideal source for information and branding. If information is present, but difficult to get at, the customer relationship, the experience, and the company brand will not be advanced. How to establish a clear path ahead for information currency to flow freely.
Here’s What I Can Do Now … A CSR’s Most Valuable Phrases and Other Communication Strategies
Let’s get right to it … Vocabulary is a key player when it comes to Customer Care. Choosing the best rapport-building words and phrases contributes to the efficiency of the contact, the CSR’s confidence, and the customer’s experience. Regardless of the channel of contact, the words CSRs use when interacting with customers are a critical success factor to a great …
What Do We Want Them to Feel?
How many songs have we all heard with the word “feel” in the title and at the heart of the lyrics? Think about it for a minute … How Does It Feel? – Feel the Love – Feel the Beat – I Don’t Feel Like Dancing to name just a few. Well, I would like to explore whether or not …
Lost In The Labyrinth … Customers Want Out
The Contact Center industry faces serious challenges when it comes to the Customer Experience. Obstacles we face may be due to management practices and NOT to frontline performance issues. Isn’t making customers weave through the maze of service options just another way of giving them bad service? The importance of creating ease of access for a true Customer Experience.
Offense or Defense … Where Do Your Skills Take You?
Although football season is over, the game’s basic functions provide a reasonable context for evaluating the inner workings of your Customer Care communication approach. To effectively apply these functions, we must understand what they are. The team charged with carrying the ball down the field to score plays offense. Defense attempts to prevent offense from accomplishing that task. I would …
Healthcare Contact Centers’ No. 1 Success Factor … Proper Governance
Healthcare Contact Centers are relatively new to the contemporary Contact Center business, with a history of emerging by “default” rather than by “design.” Strategic Governance becomes significant across the Healthcare system as business leaders see that ‘no one is in charge’ of Call Center growth and innovation. Governance creates the bridge that operationalizes strategy in a planned and scalable way.
Call Avoidance – The Contact Center Secret Weapon
“Improve Service” + “Reduce Costs” = “Do More with Less.” The fact is that Customer Experience continues to be the organizational battle cry and Contact Centers are caught in the crossfire. The charge has been to pay very close attention to individual customer needs while searching for efficiency gains that will lead to cost reductions while not compromising quality. Call …