The Changing Landscape of Healthcare: The Contact Center as a Strategic Asset

Kathleen Peterson Articles

Healthcare is changing dramatically and quickly. The result is that Call Centers have emerged haphazardly and face varied challenges. Today’s Call Center must be scalable to support growth and savvy enough to deliver on efficiency. Learn how to overcome key challenges and position the Call Center as a positive, valued asset within the organization.

Food for Thought … Promote Your Contact Center’s Visibility

Kathleen Peterson Articles

Your Call Center’s enterprise identity is linked to how others see you – or DON’T see you. You must be able to articulate your performance, contribution, and business needs in ways that resonate with corporate drivers. Learn how to take charge of positioning your Contact Center as a visible strategic asset rather than a factory-like, backroom operation.

Optimizing the Customer Experience

Kathleen Peterson Articles

Today’s Contact Center clients recognize an excellent Customer Experience as a key market differentiator. The desired outcome is that all customer touch points are aligned and in tune to the same objective – meeting customer needs, wants, and preferences in a professional and consistent manner while simultaneously gaining efficiencies and simplifying processes. This positions the Call Center as a strategic …

Face the Music….Call Yourself!

Kathleen Peterson Articles

The union of strategy and tactics in the Contact Center requires looking at all points of contact. The greetings, the music, and the messaging on hold are at the entrance to your organization and shape your customer’s first impressions. Poor choices in this arena are damaging to the Customer Experience and the brand. Is your hold music a match to …

The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions

Kathleen Peterson Articles

The Contact Center is among the most information-rich environments in any business. This is only true when information is gathered properly and utilized for Call Center process improvements and overall performance.  Business analytics may suffer in environments driven by good intentions. Read on to learn how good intentions make poor defenses when resolving Customer Service complaints.

Advocatus Diaboli and the Metric Mirage

Kathleen Peterson Articles

Call Center leaders must challenge themselves continually to validate that the direction they are taking aligns with the strategic objectives, vision, and values of their organization and brand. They must remain fluent in describing Contact Center performance in such a way as to make sure that they never fall victim to the “metrics mirage.” Do your metrics misrepresent the reality …

Moment of Truth

Kathleen Peterson Articles

According to Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence, the array of skills and characteristics that drive leadership performance is the core competency required to be successful in Call Center Customer Service delivery. Customer Experience has become a strategic initiative and the focus of many boardrooms and executive suites. Is your Contact Center prepared to handle “experience opportunities?”

Dawn of a New Day

Kathleen Peterson Articles

The Dawn of a New Day is a term that means “a new or fresh beginning or a turning point that achieves as much.” This is an opportune time to strategize and plan for what could be a new beginning in the Call Center. Contact Center leaders need not do all the work; they only need to allow the work …

Don’t Push My Buttons

Kathleen Peterson Articles

De-escalation is a strategic communication skill that Contact Center professionals must possess. It is the art of maintaining a focus on the outcome and not on the person. Frontline agents often face difficult Customer Service  situations that are not always of their own making…changes in policy that disappoint customers, warranty issues, and general complaints from customers to name a few. …

The Hurrier I Go, the Behinder I get

Kathleen Peterson Articles

Decision making is put at serious risk when the Contact Center workforce has been operating at maximum capacity. The “maxed out” workforce has to hurry to meet deadlines and demands of the enterprise. When we must hurry to get things done, how good can we expect the outcome to be? Here’s how to work smarter in your Call Center, not …