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Call Center: Myths Vs Reality

There are a lot of misconceptions when it comes to call centers and how people perceive them. They don’t often realize how drastically call centers have changed over the years. Thanks to constant advancements in technology, call centers are transforming the way they do business and deal with customers. Here are three common myths associated with call centers. Contact centers are “cost centers” not revenue generators One common misconception is that contact centers are simply cost centers as opposed to revenue generators. The customer service experience is a top priority. A satisfied and happy customer is far more likely to recommend a company than someone who is dissatisfied. This makes creating a positive experience for the customers absolutely crucial. There is tremendous emphasis on providing quality service which translates into positive promotion and a higher potential for more leads, more customers, and ultimately more revenue. Customers don’t use the phone for support anymore This is one of the biggest myths out there. Customers mostly prefer to speak to agents over the phone, according to research, to resolve complicated issues. The telephone is a great way to connect and get questions or problems solved in a timely manner. Often times customers have to switch from web to phones to get their questions answered. It is much easier to clarify a point when you are able to articulate it. Call center managers are only concerned with cost-per-call and chat-bots are replacing humans Although cost-per-call remains extremely important, customer satisfaction and the quality of service are now the priorities. It is how companies are differentiating themselves from the competition, and new development metrics have been put in place to measure those areas. It is also often believed that chat-bots will completely replace humans in the contact center. This is definitely a myth as that personalized interaction is the foundation of good service. Humans will continue to answer questions and support customers and will always remain critical components of call centers because the value of human interactions is priceless. Don’t get me wrong, bots can be beneficial because they can eliminate the need for agents to have to answer the same questions time and time again, but the critical and complex situations require that agents are always readily available. A lot misconceptions will continue to arise as our technology continues to evolve. Human interaction, however, will always be an integral part of the contact center industry. As bots become more apparent their use will continue to serve as a way to answer quick, easy and frequently asked questions. This will allow the agents to do more to positively influence the customer experience… A personalized, human, experience.

How to Avoid Frustration and Still Lead with Patience

Leaders are often tasked with dealing with several different personality types, some of whom are difficult to cope with. However, even in the most trying situations when working with difficult people in the office, it is important to maintain a sense of decorum. Part of that decorum is knowing how to avoid frustration and still lead with patience. A working knowledge of the different personality types can help effective leaders with employee grievance handling and enable them to avoid conflict and improve overall workplace productivity. Though there are many types of difficult people in workplace, the five most common types that leaders will have to handle typically fall into these categories: the bully, the gossip, the narcissist, the naysayer and the passive aggressive type. While each of these personalities have their shortcomings, each of the negative traits they display can be turned into positives with patience and perseverance. From a leader’s perspective, a way to turn negative behavior into a positive experience is to remember to stay focused on the specific goal that is trying to be obtained. One key to neutralizing the negative behavior in the workplace is to actually include the person in the conversation. Even the most hostile negative behaviors can be neutralized when attention to the task at hand is prevalence. Regardless of the type of worker encountered at work, a true leader knows how to handle confrontations in the workplace, and in many cases, is able to diffuse the negative traits of many personality types. Another key to neutralizing negative behavior is following Franklin Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. One of these habits involves an internal shifting of attitudes toward people with problem behavior. Called a paradigm shift, this approach often allows leaders to gain a better understanding of an employee’s reason for the negative behavior. Many will think acknowledging negative behavior is counterproductive. However, leaders who keep the goal of a meeting in mind know that negative behavior is often a manifestation of frustration on the part of the employee who feels unheard or undervalued. The simple act of listening to an employee and encouraging participation can not only alter the course of a company, but also the negative behaviors. The leader who know how to avoid frustration and still lead with patience can gain not only the confidence of those he or she leads, but can also bring out the best qualities in employees who sometimes exhibit the worst traits.

How to Boost Call Center Quality

Your call center is the first point of contact customers have with your company, and your customers will form an opinion of you based on the quality of your call center team. Therefore, the importance of maintaining the highest standards of call center quality assurance cannot be overemphasized. The goal of every call center should be constant improvement. A contact center quality monitoring system can help you achieve this goal, but is most effective when combined with these additional strategies for boosting call center quality assurance. Have a Quality Goal in Mind If you aren’t working towards a concrete goal, you might as well be grasping at straws. The key to growth and constant improvement is to have a clear goal of the quality standards you want every agent to adhere to. This goal should be a minimum requirement and should be achievable without being too easy to obtain. When setting your quality goals, keep every aspect of the customer interaction process in mind. For example, you should aim to have separate, distinct goals for each of the following areas: Sales Customer support Problem resolution Follow-up Feedback If your team does not know what is expected from them during each stage of the customer interaction process, it will be difficult for them to maintain a sharp, goal-driven focus. It is important to understand that no call center team can achieve perfection, but perfection is the very goal they should be striving for individually and collectively. Reaching for the stars ensures that they still come out on top even if they fall slightly short of their goal. Utilize Technology If you don’t provide your call center managers with sufficient technology to monitor their progress and shortcomings, you are setting them up for failure. The best call center quality assurance programs are typically those that include call tracking, accounting and recording technology. Rely on your managers to decide what type of technological systems will best help them accomplish their goals and identify weaknesses and strengths with ease. Keep Track of KPIs and Metrics Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and metrics are invaluable tools that should be tracked and analyzed religiously. These tools can reveal invaluable information including average call handling time, call resolution rates and more. If you are not currently keeping track of your KPIs and Metrics, you have no way to measure your weaknesses or the improvements that your team makes. Rather than using the information gleaned from your metrics to punish your team or impose additional rules on them, use them as an opportunity to show your team what areas have room for improvement. Showing the data to your team and helping them come up with call quality procedures and goals will help them take pride and ownership in their roles. Improving call center quality assurance is one of the most important things you can do for the benefit of your company and the improvement of your employee morale. When your employees know they are giving their best, they are more likely to take pride in their work and treat customers the way they should be treated. This blog was first published on LinkedIn.

Four Vendor Management Tips to Make Outsourcing a Win-Win Venture

Outsourcing has been responsible for the success of many companies, but how do you make it work for you? If you want outsourcing to be a win-win venture, there has to be an effort from both parties. The exceptional success that you’re capable of seeing has everything to do with the way that you manage a vendor. Here are four tips on how to see real success. Share Ideas With Vendors If you want to strengthen the relationship that you have with an outsourcing provider, make sure that you share information that would help with service. For example, if you have an offshore marketing representative, then telling them about new product designs might be beneficial. Trust is a staple of any business relationship. If you are open and honest about your ideas, it will give them the opportunity to offer better service and to reach your goals. Collaborate With Vendors When you choose a vendor to perform a major business function for your company, you clearly trust in their expertise. With that type of trust, there’s no reason not to let them in on strategy meetings. In fact, their team might be able to come up with fresh strategies. There’s a competitive edge that allowing your vendors to strategize with you brings to the table. Commitment With Vendors One of the top tips that you can be given is to make sure that there is mutual commitment. Both parties want to succeed, so it makes sense to work together to reach the goal. With your outsourced vendor, you should expect the commitment to delivering the best service possible. Likewise, they are expecting a level of commitment out of you. In order to make sure that you get the best service possible, make sure that you’re paying your fees and providing the correct information and materials necessary to see the goal come into fruition. Mutual Benefits With Vendors Call center vendor management requires that you have a contract that is mutually beneficial for you and the vendor in question. It’s important to look at the points that will affect both parties and help them to achieve their goals. It’s important that no matter what negotiations you’re in that you make sure that everyone is benefited. Don’t let anyone tell you that outsourcing can’t be successful. You can see incredible results that will benefit you and your vendors. In order to make the most out of your business relationship, follow these tips. It can be a win for both parties.

8 Objectives of Quality Monitoring

Your quality program for customer service is the main way your company directly interacts with customers, and that makes it a key component in your strategies to retain customers and to convert first time purchasers into repeat business. This puts a lot of stress on the program, especially if your organization has any questions about the role of quality monitoring. Ensuring that your employees understand your quality monitoring objectives and the overall impact that they have on the company means getting better responses to feedback and better returns on your quality improvement gestures. Individualizing Forms and Procedures The first quality objective should be to move the customer service personnel away from a “one size fits all” method of responding to customer concerns. That means understanding the variety of concerns customers have, as well as using quality monitoring to address any issues with understanding different customer needs and concerns. Keeping Forms Up to Date Your forms and procedures also stop working at the point where they no longer reflect either your customers’ experience or your offerings. Unfortunately, it can take some time for outdated forms and procedures to work themselves out naturally. This is where quality monitoring has an opportunity to take responsibility for not only the revisions, but the proliferation of those documents after each change is made. Avoid Technology as a Cure-All It is tempting to think of technology as the eventual answer to any business challenge, but the fact is that more often than not, the real change needs to be made at the level of human implementation. That means your quality objectives should weigh both what technology is used and how it is used if you are to make the most of the role of quality monitoring in your organization. Track and Share Your Results One of the major goals of your quality team should be to get the entire department excited about quality improvement. That means sharing the results of your monitoring and making sure that everyone understands the ways that these results are used to make the entire organization better. Avoid Being Seen as the ‘Call Police’ There’s no doubt that your quality monitoring objectives include some direct and quantitative goals for your company, and that is great. Being a supportive resource for growth provides an alternative that makes it easier to build rapport and gain cooperation from all the employees in a department. Hold Periodic Calibration Sessions Just as your forms and procedures need to be updated to ensure that they are changed and detailed enough to support your customer support needs, your overall approach needs to be re-calibrated from time to time across the whole department. Use Representative Sampling Many call centers rely on small samples of their overall call volume to make decisions. One of your most important customer experience to move toward representative sampling. That way, you have the confidence of knowing that your results fit the big picture. Use What Works In the end, quality monitoring objectives are about understanding what your company needs to be successful. As you calibrate yours, keep in mind that some objectives might be lower priority for your business model than others. Throw out any that don’t work, and keep on running updates and re-calibrating your procedures until the right balance emerges. This blog was first published on LinkedIn.

Three Critical Things to Know While Leading a New Team

Good leaders are never completely satisfied. They are always reaching for higher levels of excellence, and this requires a combination of self-awareness and personal growth. Leadership can be particularly challenging when you’re transitioning to a leadership position with a new team. What are some critical things you need to know if you’re going to be successful? Always Aim for Transparency One expert on leadership takes clients and leaders through a process called Leadership Point of View, which is essentially a look back at one’s own leadership journey. Think about how you got to where you are as a leader. Where did you start? What challenges did you overcome? When you share the details of your path with your new team, it helps them to better know you as a leader and a person. If you don’t share your story up front, it could take months or even years for you and your team to reach the level of understanding that could have been achieved through a simple introductory session. On occasion, take time to ask yourself, “How well does my team know me? Is there anything I can do to become more transparent as a leader?” This may mean that you have to implement a new information sharing protocol or take a more active role in team building activities. Look for Feedback The members of your new team may hesitate to give you feedback because they fear a negative response. Take the time to ask for feedback, and do so regularly. Ask for patience from your team members, and make sure they understand that you want to work with them, not lord over them. This is particularly challenging if you’re transitioning to an environment with a different cultural understanding from your own, such as if you are leading an overseas team. Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable, and be humble enough to make adjustments. Be Committed to Growth Be willing to step outside of your comfort zone for the sake of growth. Identify what isn’t working, try out new behaviors, commit to change, and rally the support you need to accomplish your goals. You may even find it beneficial to find a coach who can help you progress in your career and personally. Don’t be discouraged if at first you don’t mesh with your new team as well as you would like to. It can take time before you adapt to them and they adapt to you. However, if you remain open to growth and change, you’ll be on the pathway to success.

How to Integrate Quality Assurance and Coaching for Success

We all know the importance of offering exceptional customer service and the countless benefits that result from doing that. Quality assurance is at the core of ensuring that your customers receive quality services. In order to fully equip customer-facing employees, coaching programs must be comprehensive. How you train your staff determines the effectiveness of the quality assurance program. The seamless integration of quality assurance and coaching processes is critical to producing sustainable success. Define the Coaching Process You need to define the exact coaching process that everyone can follow so that this process can be integrated uniformly. Depending on the particular quality assurance goal, determine how much time, on average, the coaching session should require, what points will be covered in each session, how you will monitor the progress of the agent after the coaching session, and what elements should be documented in the resulting action plan following the session. Typically, front-line managers will initiate the coaching sessions, so consult with them on the best practices and methods in addition to your other subject matter experts. It is essential to have a mutual understanding of the process for consistency of the messages passed to the representatives. As you seek their input, you will also gain buy-in to the process, particularly if it is new or requires change. Document the process, you agree to follow for future referencing purposes. Train Your Coaches In addition to involving them in the process definition, you must train the coaches in order to drive lasting performance improvement. A well-trained coach knows that the employee should be able to both identify their errors and offer possible solutions. The coaches’ role is to guide them to accurately assess the situation and articulate how they will address the area of opportunity. The invaluable skills the coaches learn during their training will go a long way in ensuring that all employees receive consistent coaching. They will understand better how powerful teamwork is and instill the same spirit into the agents, without any bias during the evaluation and coaching stages. When the leaders are well-trained they will be positioned to develop consistent behaviors that promote quality interactions with the end customer. Build Partnerships with Agents The partnership means both parties own their roles and duties towards achieving the agreed goal. When the agents understand how they contribute to the success of the QA program they will be at the center of developing an improvement strategy. Leaders need to encourage agent participation in the evaluation process for an active partnership. For instance, seek their input as you draft the evaluation forms and involve them in calibration sessions. A great leader inspires others to be the best they can. You will motivate your agents to deliver quality services by demonstrating the behaviors you wish for them to emulate so that they learn from you even when you are not actively coaching. Choose and use words that will impact their attitude. Listen carefully to them and they will listen to your advice and guidance. Create an environment conducive for effective coaching to occur. Prepare in Advance Once you have looped in the managers and customer representatives, you need to prepare them mentally regarding the upcoming coaching sessions. Failure to do so will lead to one-way communication and mediocre results. A coaching session will be most effective when the agent is free to provide input on delivering quality services, identify where they believe they went right or wrong, and possible solutions to remedy the prevailing issues. An Acknowledgment under your guidance will equip the agent to take responsibility for his or her actions and encourage effective two-way communication. Leverage Technology Technology is always your ally when it comes to integration. There are countless technology options that will make your work effortless and seamless. For example, you can develop scorecards and dashboards to reduce the time you would otherwise use for data analysis and free up time for coaching. Information can be aggregated to make it easy to understand and provide targeted direction for program remediation efforts. Following these tips will enable you to integrate quality assurance with coaching: define the process, train the coaches, build partnerships with agents, prepare in advance and leverage technology. Your business will grow and thrive when every person actively participates in the Quality Assurance program.

Are Perceptions of Power Important to Understand?

In any leadership dynamic, there is a dominant impression that is made between the leader and those who report to that leader, either directly or indirectly. A leader can sometimes be a force that appears to be larger than life and frankly, intimidating. The question every leader should be asking is, “Are perceptions of power important to understand?” The answer to this question is a resounding yes, and should be heavily considered in a leader’s vision for a company. At any given moment, a workplace has five different power dynamics in the workplace: Reward power, which can be either impersonal or personal. Reward power offers a boon for employee performance that is beneficial to the company. The impersonal reward implies a fiduciary compensation for an employee, while the personal implies favor. Coercive power, which is highly personal because it can equate to using bullying or scare tactics as motivation. This is almost always negative and should be avoided in most cases. Referent power, which is power that comes through admiration. The danger of reverent power is that it can cause a sycophantic environment where the leader may only hear pleasing news. Legitimate power, which relies on the rank or title of the position as the driving influence of power. Leaders should be cautious of merely relying only on their position as their source of power. Expert power, which is the use of power that relies on the knowledge and expertise of the leader. The danger with expert power occurs when the expertise is withheld from an employee or team. Although each of these dynamics may be present in the workplace and be employed from time to time, either individually or in tandem with one another, each also has a prescribed pratfall if not used properly or in moderation. Using any one of these dynamics improperly can lead to a lag in motivation and can decrease productivity in the workplace. Regardless of the leadership’s thoughts on how a business should be run, leaders should also understand that perception is just as important, if not more so than delivery. If an employee has expectations that do not align with either the leader’s vision or that of the team, it can have a domino effect on the productivity. Are perceptions of power important to understand? Yes, and so are the dynamics of power and becoming an effective leader. Regardless of the leadership style used, these perceptions shape the way in which a company runs.

The Importance of HR in a Contact Center

HR should play a huge role in your contact center in order for employees to achieve the best possible results. If you’re currently experiencing a high turnover of call center employees, it’s time to rethink your HR practices in order to enhance employee happiness, and in turn, increase the overall success of your call center. Employees Need HR Working in a call center is one of the most stressful jobs imaginable due to the unpredictable nature of the work. Cold calling is often difficult to contend with, as the employee is likely to be met with an annoyed or even irate person on the other end of the line. When nerves are running high, it’s likely that your business will be met with a huge turnover rate. In order to keep employees happy and relaxed, you should think carefully about the role of call center HR. A team of HR professionals should be in place to work with your employees on relaxation techniques and ways to cope with angry customers. Keep Up With The Latest Technology Your HR team should do their best to research the ever-changing technology in the BPO industry and hold regular meetings to update the employees. If there are new ways to reduce the workload of call center employees, the HR team should be able to make the entire team aware. Simple changes in technology to make the lives of employees a bit less stressful is always an excellent way to ensure a higher level of employee satisfaction and success. Properly Train Employees The role of call center HR has a much broader scope than many call center business owners and managers often realize. In addition to working with employees on a regular basis to improve coping skills in this often stressful industry, the HR team should take time to properly screen and train each employee. Since many call center employees enter this field for an immediate source of money after graduating from college, it’s wise that the HR team take time to be open and honest with each potential candidate about the nature of the job. Being honest with potential employees about what’s expected of them can help prevent high turnover and loss of revenue for the company. An experienced HR professional should be able to accurately choose candidates with the right personality and experience for the job, and their training program should give employees the skills they need to be successful in their new position.

5 Effective Ways to Measure the Quality of Your Customer Service

As every modern business knows, there is a strong correlation between success and customer service quality. If you fail to make an authentic connection with your customers, they will simply take their business elsewhere. There are numerous, simple ways to evaluate the effectiveness of your customer service approach. If you are a business owner who is interested in customer service quality monitoring, the five following quality assurance techniques below may be able to provide you with guidance. Look for Flaws or Shortcomings in Your Operation : At times, the quality of your customer service can be linked to an unnoticed flaw or shortcoming in your daily business operations. For example, if you own a restaurant, and your patrons frequently complain about not receiving their dishes on time, the issue could be traced to an incompetent server or cook. In general, remaining aware of your own weaknesses can help you constantly improve your level of customer service. Evaluate the Supply and Demand of Your Products : Supply and demand are a major component of economics and business, but did you know that this concept can also be used to evaluate the quality of your customer service. Satisfied consumers tend to purchase more products from the same company. Simply put, if you are noticing a considerable number of repeat customers or clients on a regular basis, your customer service approach is probably working. Of course, outside economic factors can be major contributors to your data, so you may want to combine this method with others in order to get the most comprehensive snapshot of customer satisfaction. Research the Competition : Many business owners neglect to research their competitors’ approach to customer service. If your competitors have an immensely higher rate of customer satisfaction, you may be able to learn from their techniques. Simply visit or call your competitors’ establishment yourself, or send an employee to see how their approach to customer service differs from yours. If you want the most reliable data, ask your competitors’ customers what they like about the company. Examine the Number of Complaints You Receive : It is impossible to satisfy every single customer, but you can use the number of complaints you receive as a measuring tool. Some people assume that if the number of irate customers decreases it means that the quality of your customer service has increased. This is a common fallacy that causes many unknowing business owners to send their disgruntled customers to a competitor. For the most accurate data, combine this method with others. Ask Customers Directly : Have you ever considered asking your customers for their opinion directly? If not, you may be missing out an opportunity to compile a massive amount of reliable data. Some business owners prefer to ask customers directly, while others encourage them to fill out surveys. If neither of these tactics sounds appealing to you, follow-up phone calls can also help you better understand customer opinions. A Step in the Right Direction If you are truly interested in improving the quality of your customer service, the five tips listed above can point you in the right direction. If you follow them, you will expand your customer base, increase revenue and develop deeper connections with existing customers. This blog was first published on LinkedIn

Five Steps That Can Help Leaders to Build Trust

Developing leadership qualities is essential for anyone running an organization, regardless of the business or activity. If the people with whom you work don’t trust you, it’s going to be nearly impossible to motivate them to achieve goals and accomplish the objectives you’ve set. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for employees to distrust their managers and supervisors. On the good side, if you’re one who leads others, there are some steps you can follow to gain the trust of those individuals and teams you direct. Do What You Say You’ll Do : Building employee trust starts with you keeping your promises and not committing to things you know you have no intention of doing of those things you know you don’t have the ability to do in the first place. Sometimes you might be tempted to accommodate an employee’s request or say yes to an idea, knowing full well the answer should have been no. Don’t be afraid to turn down an employee. The person will appreciate this more than if you say yes and then later break the promise. Tell the Truth : Related to the point above is the need to be completely honest. There’s no reason to mislead your employees or to beat around the bush. Sure, the truth can be hard to take sometimes, but at least your team members will know where they stand and what you expect of them. Similarly, when you’re honest, your employees will be truthful and upfront as well. This will help create an atmosphere where all parties can communicate openly without the worry that someone is holding something back. Treat Others Fairly : When it comes to leadership thoughts and awareness, it’s important for people in position of authority to realize there’s nothing wrong with being direct and blunt, as long as you’re fair in your remarks. Don’t point out other people’s flaws openly, and don’t do so unless the criticism is warranted and designed to help the person improve. Your employees need to know what you expect of them, but you don’t want them to resent you. Keep Your Door Open : Doing this figuratively and literally will build employee trust. Make sure your employees know they can approach you anytime with any concerns or problems. Listen to what they have to say and be sensitive to their needs. Be Mindful of Your Own Actions : From time to time, take inventory of yourself. Evaluate how you’re treating others and what your attitudes are. Building trust is vital, but it’s not as challenging as you might think. Put these steps into practice, and you’ll notice a difference in your workplace.

Four Key Interaction Tips to Welcome Your Customers

If you run a business— no matter what the industry or service may be— you understand the importance of building strong relationships with customers. Giving customers a good experience will keep them coming back to you again and again. In turn, this means growth and stability for your business. However, creating this trust with customers isn’t always as easy as it sounds. It all starts at the beginning from the moment you meet a customer or potential customer. Customer greetings and initial interactions will go a long way in determining their level of satisfaction and whether you’ll see them again. Give Them a Warm Greeting and Welcome If you want to provide excellent customer service, start doing it from the minute your customer walks through your doors or calls you on the phone. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes. How would you feel about the business if you weren’t greeted right away or if you didn’t almost immediately see someone smiling at you and asking what they can do for you? The greeting doesn’t have to be anything out-of-this world. Keep it simple but make it friendly. Find Out What They’re Looking For Depending on what your services are, the customer’s needs might not be obvious. Sometimes the customer will make this known, but often, you need to find out for yourself through thoughtful questions or observations. Simply ask how you can be of assistance or if they have any particular preferences that you can accommodate. Ask what you can do to help. Respond Appropriately This requires listening. Customer experience will not be positive if you can’t address needs and desires. When you ask what the person is looking for, be prepared to address those needs accordingly. If you are confused by anything they say or ask, get clarification. Also, where applicable and possible, give the customer a timeline of how long it will take for you to meet their requests. Check in and Follow Up When you go to a restaurant, you appreciate it when a server or manager comes to your table a few times during the meal to make sure everything is all right. The visit can and should be brief, but the follow-up is essential for good customer service. Once the customer has made his or her purchase and is leaving your establishment, ask if their needs were met and then invite them back. Customer experience will go a long way to determining the success of your business. Welcoming clients appropriately will lead to long-term, devoted customers.

4 Easy Steps to Check Your Call Center QA System Reliability

There’s a huge difference between having a quality assurance system and getting the most out of it. For Call center quality assurance to be effective, it has to be reliable, and center managers need to know how to check their quality processes to ensure that reliability is ongoing. Luckily, there are a few easy and sustainable call center QA program processes to help with this reliability. That way, your call center delivers more to its customers because your QA team is delivering more to the call center overall. Step One: Gap Assessment Knowing where you are and where you want to be allows you to break down the gap between those performance levels into steps that your employees can easily take. To get a baseline, start by comparing where your operations are at against what is generally accepted as standard operating procedure. Once there’s a solid measurement there, it is easier to set goals and to devise processes to bring those goals to fruition. To do that: Determine where your gaps occur and which processes create them. Devise a plan of action that avoids creating circumstances that lead to gaps. Put the plan into place to control for that situation. Measure any changes that occur to your overall call center performance. There might be numerous rounds of adjustment to make for each area where gaps are identified, both because incremental goals are easier to achieve and also because correctly identifying the best control for a process often takes a couple of pilot attempts before you lock in the best solution for your call center QA program. Step Two: Avoid Silo Processes Generally, businesses are more successful when their various departments and divisions pull together, because all of the various efforts throughout the company coordinate and synergize as the organization moves toward its goal. Practically, this can be more difficult to achieve, because larger companies often have departments or divisions that are spread widely enough to make close communication more difficult. The best way to combat this is by bringing together the various measurements and goals of call center management in different departments through the QA program, so that everyone is using everyone else’s data to ensure their quality controls are effective, without causing unintended consequences. This move also has the effect of streamlining the flow of information for call center quality assurance personnel, so they have access to the tools they need to be successful. Step Three: Measuring and Tracking Improvement Incremental improvement on a day to day basis is both more sustainable and more practical, in terms of meeting performance forecasts, than expecting a total overhaul. To promote this kind of growth, though, measuring and tracking performance is essential. That way, not only are you sure your new procedures are effective, you also gain the ability to address plateaus and surges, so your training and quality assurance continue to be effective. Step Four: Training for Every Day Improvement The last step in ensuring QA reliability is turning its processes and controls into actions that employees are able to monitor and use effectively. Disseminating information throughout the company, so that employees understand both the goals and processes of your QA program, is key to this. Employees who understand quality assurance goals are better able to report relevant developments to QA personnel, improving the flow of information and the reliability of the program overall. This blog was first published on LinkedIN

Quality Monitoring System: Think Beyond Dispute Resolution

Using new quality monitoring technologies in combination with quality analytics software is the key to empowering your customer service call center to move to the front of the industry. Where monitoring technology was once used for mainly training purposes and dispute resolution, new technologies that help with analyzing and understanding that data are providing solutions that allow companies to institute quality assurance programs in their customer service departments that match anything found in their manufacturing or service divisions. Analytics Software The key to the entire revolution in call center quality has been the growth of sophistication in analytics software. Modern quality analytics software is capable of guiding your business toward the best practices that lead to increased agent success, improving both individual performances and the department as a whole. This works because these programs are able to coordinate information coming from your quality monitoring technology in ways that allow the accurate measurement of: IVR use and abandonment Agent success rates Call lengths Queue waiting time lengths Customer satisfaction ratings By bringing all of these points of information together, your company can move beyond industry recommendations by monitoring the different elements that correlate to higher success for your agents, in your industry. That way, you know that your procedures are reflected by rising success rates and, when customer attitudes or needs shift, these data points also provide insight that helps you change with them. Monitoring and Metadata Part of the way that these new software packages work is by monitoring what is called metadata—the data that describes the call, rather than a recording of the actual call. This data is much more efficiently gathered by the system, allowing it to be easily sorted and analyzed. When combined with traditional monitoring that is used for training and dispute resolution, this provides multiple ways of interpreting information and gauging results and helps to map individual sites of evaluation onto the company’s larger outlook. Training and Support To get the most out of your quality monitoring technology and quality analytics software, the department also needs to commit to using the information. That means moving beyond reports and supporting employees with tools that help them hold to standards and deliver consistent performances while also understanding better ways to do things as they are learned. This usually means: Evaluation criteria with detailed feedback Calibration meetings to keep everyone on the same page Support and training resources that can be accessed alone or in formal settings Managerial support for employee questions When you bring the supports together, you get an infrastructure for disseminating the information learned from the data analytics, so that way you are able to continue improving your call enter even as it reaches your original objectives. This kind of responsive combination of management and technology also keeps your department versatile and ensures that you know enough to move with your customers. Conclusion Quality monitoring technology is nothing new, but its usefulness has traditionally been limited by the fact that it singles out individual instances. With new quality analytics software and updated technology, though, your company can put together a comprehensive heuristic program that will steer your customer service toward the top of the industry.

6 Secrets to Live Chat Efficiency

Once you’ve added live chat to your websites, don’t stop looking for ways to improve the customer experience. While there is no magic formula you can use to make everything about your business’ online presence perfect, here are some ways you can improve the efficiency of your company’s live web chat services. Establish Chat Priority : Establish a system that allows chats to be answered right away. That system should also have some kind of survey or a brief set of questions for customers to answer to ensure their chats are routed to the right agents. Chat agents that handle multiple chats should be able to establish priority to ensure that each one is handled efficiently and properly. Minimize Chat Times : Your agents may occasionally get a customer who has concerns that require them to engage longer than usual, but that doesn’t mean that all chats should take a long time to resolve. Implement measures to help your agents to minimize the amount of time it takes for them to address and resolve customers issues. Minimizing chat times can decrease response times and prevent long wait times. Live Web Chat Training is Important : The best chat agents are those who undergo regular training and are always looking for ways to improve. In your quest to achieve the perfect balance between live chat agent productivity and efficiency, you need to invest in your agents’ skills by providing training and support. Don’t expect them to automatically know what to do and how to respond to different types of customer scenarios. Doing so can be counterproductive to them and your organization. Train your agents to enhance their soft skills and you’ll see an improvement in their responses to customers and reduce the amount of time it takes them to resolve customer concerns. Integrate Web Chat into Your CRM : Your online chat team can become more efficient if you train them to capture customer information and update it as needed in your CRM. This makes it much easier for them to cater to the needs of your customers when they return at a later date for service or assistance. Canned Responses : Even if your agents are required to be able to type 100 wpm, canned responses can greatly reduce their response times. One of your goals may be to provide customers with a more personable experience, but it certainly doesn’t hurt for your agents to use canned responses. In fact, these responses can provide your agents with additional time to provide customers with the resolutions they seek. Workstation Setup : All of the shortcuts and canned responses in the world cannot reduce response time and increase agent productivity like having a dual monitor setup for each workstation. It’s easier on your agents’ eyes, their hands and facilitates a more immediate acknowledgment of customers to improve the overall efficiency of your organization’s live chat services. While the key to improving chat efficiency isn’t rocket science, it does require you to have a good chat solution. Etech Global Services recommends for you to periodically evaluate the tools, processes and agents you have in place so you can better determine their effectiveness and make improvements as needed. This blog was first published on LinkedIN

5 Mistakes Effective Leaders Always Avoid

No one likes to see conflict on a team, but no matter how well your team members get along or how long you have worked together, conflict is inevitable. A good manager is prepared for these situations and has a toolbox of techniques at the ready to use when necessary. Here are five mistakes to avoid if you are in a team leadership position. Poor Emotional Intelligence Part of your image as a leader is your ability to stay calm under stress and to be approachable by all employees on your team when they need to address problems. It’s impossible not to be frustrated, annoyed and irritated during the course of a busy work day, but don’t let it interfere with your face-to-face interactions. If you sense that you are having a negative emotional response to someone, step away and come back to the issue later when the feeling has passed. You will find that you will have greater clarity on the issue at hand, as well. Inconsistency and Lack of Authenticity Effective team management requires a good leader who has an unwavering message, day in and day out; although you will likely favor some people over others because of personality or like-mindedness, you have to be sure no one is getting favored treatment or more information than others. This doesn’t mean that you create a fake mask to present to the world; workers can always tell when you behave in a robotic fashion instead of establishing and upholding your own value system. What is does mean is that you need to be constantly evaluating yourself to be sure that what you say and do is uniform and consistent towards everyone in all situations. Try not to have one-on-one conversations regarding the everyday workflow, but rather use group meetings, bulletin boards, and conference calls so everyone is included and getting the same message. Failure to Ask for Feedback Your workers should always feel comfortable approaching you and speaking to you frankly about what concerns them. You should likewise always be asking them for an appraisal of your performance as a leader. Other people will have many insights that you could never discover on your own, and you may be surprised at how you are viewed by others. As you become more aware of your strengths and weaknesses, you will become a more effective at team leadership. Thinking You Know Everything Already You don’t want to get caught in an echo chamber. Even with a properly diverse team that has an open line of communication with you, you will only grow in your abilities if you commit yourself to learning more and pursuing training opportunities. You should keep going to those seminars and read articles and books on professional topics. Failure to Set Goals and Measure Progress Self-improvement also requires practice. Set goals for yourself and develop a way to measure your progress towards them. Have a list of goals for every day that you go to the office, but keep it realistic. As you document your actions, you will have a clearer picture of what you are accomplishing and what you should change.

Top 7 Business Benefits of SaaS Versus Traditional Licensed Software

Software as a service is an alternative to traditional licensed software installation in the business environment where the end users create the server, install the applications, and configure all the platforms. SaaS clients do not buy software. Instead, similar to a rental, they are authorized to utilize it for a defined period and pay just for the software they use. Favorable adoption rates: SaaS applications have higher approval rates and lower learning curves because the software is available through standard web browsers. This is significant given the high cost of on-premises software development and implementation versus the low entry cost for SaaS. Businesses don’t want to invest capital in custom developed or off-the-shelf software that users won’t adopt. Pay for usage: IT organizations often overestimate end-user software utilization, such as forecasting an active end-user community growth to 10,000 employees for a particular application when it only grows to 500 employees one year later. Software as a Services enables corporate buyers to pay for active users instead of the forecasted user community. Simpler upgrade process: SaaS vendors manage updates, feature enhancements, and new releases by deploying them to the hosted applications centrally. This process eliminates the need for clients to upgrade applications on end-user desktops. SaaS vendors typically deliver several minor automatic upgrades alongside two to four major updates annually. In this way, SaaS-based applications users can be confident that the software provided by the vendor is always the latest version. Scalability and integration: Some SaaS applications support end-user customization. APIs allow connections to internal applications such as CRMs or ERPs as well as to other SaaS vendors. A notable aspect of integration is automatically sending field written orders to the ERP. It enables salespeople in the field to check inventory, write the order, obtain customer approval, submit it and get confirmation, all in front of the client within minutes. As customers scale with a SaaS vendor, the need for software licenses or investing in server capacity is eliminated. Just modify the subscription. Time-to-market: The Software as a Service vendor provisions the network infrastructure, software, and hardware at the data center narrows customization of the SaaS applications user interface and features. This restriction eliminates delays for internal IT organizations to deploy, enhance, or develop the application. Work anywhere: Users can access software via mobile devices wherever they are connected because it is accessible over the internet and hosted in the cloud. The ability to access the data and software when salespeople in the field need it can mean the difference of a sale. Lower total cost of ownership: The unknown cost to deploy and operate licensed software is a common criticism of licensed software. However, the total cost to run a SaaS application is predetermined. Software as a Service vendors bundle software, hardware, and support services such as business continuity, implementation, help desk, training, upgrades, troubleshooting, and security into a single fee. The result is knowing the overall total cost of ownership in advance. The SaaS software industry is advancing rapidly. In fact, point solutions will continue to fill gaps in the marketing and sales continuum. This blog post was first published on LinkedIN

Six Pitfalls to Avoid with Quality Monitoring Systems

As you evaluate your quality assurance systems you are probably asking yourself, whether they are delivering the results that you and your stakeholders anticipated. If this is not true for your current situation, investigate the root cause and implement any change required to avoid negative impact to your operations and to your brand.A sound quality monitoring system is a foundation for driving agent performance, managing operational costs, revealing training needs and increasing customer satisfaction among many other benefits. Unfortunately, there are certain things which may hinder successful implementation of a quality monitoring system. Here are six pitfalls to look for and tips on how to overcome them. Documentation of Deliverables Lack of fully defined and documented deliverables presents a huge risk of failure, because if you have incorrect or insufficient information regarding your deliverables, you will create risk of failure in your implementation. Quality monitoring goes beyond technology; you need to understand what you it is that you want to achieve and create the necessary plans to achieve each objective. Your input into the software and program details determines your results. Tip: Develop and document a strategic quality framework that will guide all your efforts, and make it public for everyone on the project team to read and understand it. Allocation of Time for Evaluation At the core of any quality monitoring system is evaluation of the customer interaction through the contact medium whether it is a call or chat or other contact means. Allocating sufficient time for contact evaluation and assessing the correct sample size per agent is critical to effective implementation of the quality monitoring system. When you allocate too little time or a small sample size, you affect the accuracy and validity of the results. It is practically impossible to review all contacts, so evaluators need to determine the number of calls to review during what period of time. Tip: Consider using tools that can help you with planning, scheduling and replay/review function. Insufficient Coaching It is one thing to evaluate agents, and it is another to use that information for proper coaching. Inadequate coaching is a huge pitfall because the agents will not understand fully their areas of opportunity, and how to improve them. Coaching is the most effective way to continually improve employee performance by giving them an opportunity to point out their own mistakes and develop their own solutions. He or she will quickly implement the quality program through ownership of the process. Tip: Effective and efficient coaching starts with individualized feedback; empower and encourage agents to self-evaluate. Perceived Favoritism When agents receive evaluation feedback, some may feel that it was unfair especially if it was negative and others got positive feedback. This may lead to resentment and hurt feelings, which eventually affects service delivery. Lack of transparency in the scoring and grading procedures increases this perception. Tip: Use advanced solutions that allow you to incorporate an agent learning center. Reviewed contacts are tagged and notated to facilitate agent self-evaluation and coaching. Evaluators should be trained and calibrated to be fair and partial during scoring for uniform scoring results. Failure to Target Thousands of interactions between customer representatives and customers take place each day. It can be a challenge to determine which ones to evaluate for valuable insight into agent performance and areas that need development and improvement. Evaluating the right calls will ensure that you tackle the right problems, save time and improve agent performance. Tip: Install and utilize software that will allow you to target contacts for monitoring. Depending on which problem areas you want to monitor, you can set parameters to receive notifications regarding targeted behaviors. Ignoring External Factors External factors can paralyze your implementation efforts as much as internal ones. Ignoring the factors that are not within the evaluators and agents control can be a big issue. These factors not only produce difficulties for the agents during their customer interactions, they also generate unreliable quality monitoring results. For example, a product malfunction is a typical external factor which can generate a poor customer experience survey but be entirely outside the control of the customer service representative. Tip: Upgrade your software to include screen recording, because it will give you a 360 view of the process. In summary, lack of defined deliverables, insufficient time for contact evaluation, ineffective coaching, perceived feelings of favoritism, failure to target contacts for evaluation and ignoring external factors are pitfalls that will derail your quality implementation process. Follow these tips and reap the benefits of a sound quality monitoring system. This blog post was first published on LinkedIN

5 Essential Elements of Software as a Service (SaaS)

Every business has its challenges and including in-depth research, business plan development, and meticulous execution. Working towards your vision every day leads to success. Software as a Service (SaaS) business is no exception, with its own particular rules, regulations, and best practices. Because there are so many elements to implement, you can manage these tasks most effectively by tackling one at a time. Cost Per Acquisition What does it cost to acquire one customer? When you take into account all of the related marketing expenditures, it quickly becomes clear that marketing can be an expensive affair, especially when done through the wrong channels. Begin by writing down and accounting for every expense in your marketing campaigns, no matter how small or insignificant they look. To calculate your cost per acquisition, divide the total marketing investment by the total number of customers you acquired in that month. If you are a start up the figure might be higher than what you are receiving at the end of the month, however, it should begin decreasing with more subscriptions, but f you continue to spend more money per customer than your revenues, you will ultimately be unsuccessful. Tip: Use customer analytics to determinine which segment results in the highest returns. Churn Rate How many customers do you lose per month? The customers that keep coming back determine your company’s growth rate. Churn gives you the average number of people that leave your site. A high churn rate could mean your product is not meeting the customers’ needs as they expected or as you anticipated. There may be a possibility that marketing is the issue, but you must determine the problem and fix it as soon as possible for business to remain healthy. Tip: Gather feedback from customers before they unsubscribe for you understand the root cause of the churn problem and address it. Monthly Recurring Revenue Closely related to the churn rate, you also need to calculate your monthly recurring revenue. The higher the churn rate is, the less consistent the recurring revenue will be. By the time you place your product online, you have spent a significant amount of money in developing and marketing it. When sales revenues start coming in, you need to understand not just the total but also what portion of it is recurrent. The recurring cash flow you receive each month shows you the sustainability of the business. If the amount is sufficient to run and grow the business, then you are heading in the right direction. However, if the amount keeps fluctuating, you need to re-strategize. Tip: Invest more time in the recurrent customers, and give them great customer service to retain them. Revenue Per customer Once you know your monthly recurring revenue, you know your key customers. Crunch the numbers to understand how much each customer is worth and explore how to grow their portfolio. It is easier and more cost effective to market to an existing client than to acquire a new one, so focus on leveraging those existing relationships. You can up-sell an upgrade of the product or cross-sell a sub-product that will improve the customer experience. Robust leveraging can bring amazing results to your revenues and margins. Tip: Develop systems that increase the revenue you receive from a customer. The systems should add value for the customer so they want to continue using them. Lifetime value And for long term forecasting, understand the lifetime value of each customer. This is a prediction of how much you will be making in the future and the above metrics will inform these predictions. For example, if your current churn rate is low, your average revenue per customer is increasing, then the lifetime value will be high. The lifetime value indicates the most profitable customers to invest in for the best returns in the future. Tip: Let your finance team help you with these detailed calculations. SaaS business is a matter of numbers. If the numbers do not make, then figure out why and make improvements or move on to a more profitable segment. The above metrics are all closely related and they represent how well your product is doing in the market, and what you need to change. If these metrics are aligned with your vision, dedicate your time and expertise to make your SaaS business profitable.

Get Insights to Customer Service Through Quality Assurance

Offering exceptional and seamless customer service guarantees steady business growth, because customers will be satisfied with the services you offer and will become loyal. Loyalty translates into consistent revenues and quality assurance is at its core. Quality assurance is the systematic process of monitoring how well products or services meet specific quality requirements. Most companies have a well- defined quality assurance program, because they know that to meet and exceed customers’ expectations, they need to continuously inspect the quality of services delivered. Poor customer service impacts your bottom line. You start by losing customers, who in turn tell their friends about your service, and then they also leave and the pattern continues. This downward spiral can be disrupted by an accurate focus on the correct customer service metrics. First Contact Resolution Rate : FCR is one of the most important metrics in the contact center. It measures how many customers’ issues are resolved on the first contact. When customers are satisfied with your services in the initial contact, they will trust you and come back again.A high first contact resolution rate indicates a high customer satisfaction rate. Measuring FCR leads to improved customer experiences, because your team will understand which behaviors are correct and which need to be improved. If you start with a low rate and with time it increases, you agents will be motivated, leading to job satisfaction and happy customers. Response Time : How long does it take your agents to respond to customer queries? Response time is the period between when a customer makes a request and the time that they get a response. Slow service indicates incompetence or lack of urgency. If you want to retain your clients, then respond to them in a timely manner. Not every issue can be resolved immediately, however, that does not mean that the customer has to wait very long to get a response.Response time gives you insights into the quality of services you are offering. When your average response time keeps reducing, it means your services are improving and customers are satisfied. Total Volume by Channel : This metric is the baseline of other metrics. It indicates the total volume of inquiries you receive per channel. If you are running a contact center, you attend to customers via different platforms. Measuring which medium customers prefer to use will help you meet them where they are and how they want to be met.It is also important for the company to focus on the channels with the highest return on investments. For example, if your clients like contacting you through live chat, then to offer exceptional experiences, upgrade your tools and ensure that staffing levels are appropriate to the volume. Quality assurance provides these insights into the customer experiences delivered. Abandonment Rates : Your contact center exists to meet customers needs, if they keep abandoning conversations, then there is a serious quality issue that needs immediate attention. Remember customers have many options and with an instant gratification need, you have to give them reasons not to look elsewhere. Statistics show that 71% of customers on live chat expect help in less than 5 minutes. If the handle time is more than that, they abandon the conversation. These rates provide insight into agent speed and staffing gaps. Adjustments you make from the insights gathered, affect the customers directly. Developing and implementing a quality assurance program is the only way to guarantee that your customer service meets the expectations of your customers. Begin by focusing on these metrics, first call resolution rate, response time, total volume by channel and abandonment rates, to transform your insights into the quality of services your customers deserve.

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