Good contact center managers possess a certain skill set to do well in their jobs. With many Americans reporting that they are generally unhappy with the customer service they receive from companies, it's important that the person you hire for the role is qualified and understands how to effectively manage a small contact center so that customers are served well and business objectives are being met. When interviewing candidates for the position, look for the following skills:
Strong Communication Skills
Managers of small contact centers need to be able to juggle many tasks at once including interacting with customers and staff through many and various communication platforms. The manager will be responsible for overseeing the quality of the customer service, so he or she should be able to maintain a helpful, friendly demeanor not only with customers, but also with agents. As a leader within the organization, the contact center manager's positive attitude in getting results for customers will impact how agents will handle customers. The manager must also be able to see issues from the customer's perspective and view himself as an advocate for the customer to achieve positive outcomes.
Solid IT Skills
Long gone are the days when contact centers only used telephones to handle customer service. In today's digital world, call center agents are not only on the phone, but they are online, they work through social media platforms, instant chats, and a number of other communication channels. Therefore, contact center managers have to have solid IT skills. Workforce optimization solutions, call analytics, quality assurance and may other software applications and databases dominate contact centers. Managers need to be knowledgeable enough to provide technical assistance to their agents.
Customer Service Background
Strong knowledge of the industry and significant experience and training in customer service is also key to the success of a contact center manager. Managers who have spent time in customer care positions will have a keen understanding of best practices to put in place to consistently make customers happy. He or she should be adept at gathering information quickly, evaluating it and using it to assist customers. They should also be flexible and agile and not easily rattled by irate customers or chaotic moments that are sure to arise.
Effective Leadership Skills
Lastly, because managers of small contact centers likely have to train and coach contact center agents, they must be good communicators. They should be able to share company policies effectively and address agent concerns as well as support them in their work. He or she must be able to evaluate an agent's work and then be able to communicate helpful feedback that will help them to improve their work. The call center manager should be a good listener to agent's concerns and suggestions in order to devise ways to make work easier or more efficient. This type of management style helps to retain good workers and promotes a positive atmosphere of team work and increased productivity.
The next time an agent in your Public Safety Answering Point hears a robotic voice when he or she answers the phone, they shouldn’t hang up, thinking it’s a robocall – it could actually be a matter of life and death.
According to a recent news release from the National Emergency Number Association, certain vehicles in the latest line of cars from Chrysler Group LLC will now come equipped with a built-in-data connection, as well as a 911 button on the rear-view mirror. The cars with this new technology are as follows:
NENA explains, “This service does not rely on a paired Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone. Rather, Chrysler Group vehicles which have this feature utilize an embedded wireless connection which does not require the use of a third party call center. This service makes a 9-1-1 call through the cellular network and E9-1-1 to the appropriate PSAP on 9-1-1 trunks. It is not a 10 digit emergency call.”
Of course, this system, called Uconnect, can’t function unless the car’s electrical system is still working. If it is still functional, here is what happens when the driver pushes the 911 button:
1. The vehicle is connected to the appropriate PSAP through the local 911 system.
2. The PSAP operator answering the call from that driver will hear an incoming Text to Speech message that says, “This is an emergency call from a (Ram/SRT/Jeep/Dodge) vehicle.”
3. Then the voice will prompt the operator to push either 0, to talk with vehicle occupants, or 1, to secure the location coordinates (latitude and longitude) of the vehicle.
4. The PSAP operator will also receive the vehicle’s phone number, in case a call-back is needed.
5. If, however, the PSAP does not push 0 or 1, or can’t use the keypad, then the robotic announcement will be repeated once. Then, the system will automatically connect for voice with the driver.
If the 911 button is pushed accidentally, the driver does have a ten-second window in which to cancel the call by touching a Cancel button on the car’s touchscreen.
It is extremely important for PSAPs to be aware of this new technology, and how it works. The Uconnect system was recently taken live, and several PSAPs have already reported receiving these calls and thinking they were robocalls. Be sure to inform and train your PSAP agents about what to expect from this new system.
And while we’re on the subject of improving your PSAP’s performance, you may want to take a look at KOVA’s offerings in that area, as well. Our Verint Media Recorder Public Safety Software includes multichannel recording, performance management, quality assurance, speech analytics, incident investigation and analytics, workload forecasting and staff scheduling, staff coaching and training, and citizen surveys. For more information about how we can improve the performance of your emergency communications center, please don’t hesitate to give us a call today. We look forward to customizing a plan to serve your unique needs.
Everybody knows that it costs much less to keep a customer than to attract a new one. And every interaction your contact center has with a customer is an opportunity to build on that person’s sense of loyalty to your company. By implementing the following ten tips, you can help your contact center excel at satisfying those valuable existing customers.
1. See things from your customer’s point of view. Act like a mystery shopper – approach your contact center like a customer does. Call your call center, send an email inquiry, try the live chat. Go through each social media option your organization uses. Make sure you’re fully aware of what your customers are experiencing at each touch point you offer.
2. Eat, breathe, and sleep customer service. Every single contact center agent is a representative of your business. Whatever they say - or type – is what the customer will see as your company’s official statement on the matter. You need to ensure that, in every communication, customers are impressed by the level of customer service they receive.
3. Really help customers. A contact center’s job is to help customers. Each agent needs to be willing to own the customer problems they are dealing with, not just pass calls off and forget about them. Train them to stay involved until the issue is resolved, and even to follow up with the customer afterwards to make sure everything worked out to his or her satisfaction. This will do wonders for customer loyalty.
4. Look at complaints as opportunities, not interruptions. While listening to complaints is never fun, it is a great way to gather feedback and problem solve your policies and procedures. If agents approach complaints with this mindset, they’ll be less inclined to think of them as nuisances – they’ll be fact-finding missions, instead! And that attitude will come through in the way they handle the call.
5. Acknowledge your staff. The more your employees feel like valued members of a team, the more engaged they’ll be in their jobs. They need to understand how what they do contributes to the company’s bottom line – so they can see just how important they are. Increased engagement leads to increased performance.
6. Act quickly when there is a problem. Customers hate nothing more than being transferred multiple times in order to get a problem taken care of. Empower your agents to handle calls themselves, if possible, and if a transfer is absolutely necessary, keep it to one.
7. Sometimes it is the technology’s fault, not the customer’s. If you receive complaints about the difficulty of using your company’s website, don’t blame the customer. Technology should be there to guide consumers, not to frustrate them more. Acknowledge to the customer that it can be tricky to work with, instead of acting as if they’re ignorant.
8. Provide ongoing employee training. Teaching employees to be customer-focused is not a one-and-done deal. It needs to be constantly reinforced. Customer service is a lot more complicated than just “being nice.” Proper training requires in-depth work.
9. Be enthusiastic! You set the tone for your contact center. If you are positive and inspiring, your employees will follow right along with you. And happy, enthusiastic agents make for more satisfied customers.
10. Have fun! Though it may seem counter-intuitive, have fun with your customers! It builds a relationship, which in turn builds customer loyalty.
The SANS Institute recently conducted a study of contact centers’ level of preparedness to handle social engineering-based attacks, in which a criminal posing as a customer tricks a CSR into revealing private account information. While progress has been made in the areas of employee awareness and even training, most contact centers still do not feel that they are adequately equipped to handle such attacks.
Many companies are not factoring security into their overall contact center budget. Security technologies are not being widely used, and in fact, almost 40% of companies surveyed said that they have weak security policies – or none at all - in place around their help desks. On top of that, only 10% of them feel that they have robust plans for risk management and security awareness training of their staff.
The first step in solving this issue is, of course, heightened awareness. If employees know to expect calls of this type, their suspicions will be aroused when a caller starts fishing for private information, or even wants to reset a password over the phone. But because the main purpose of a contact center is to help people, it can be difficult, if not impossible, to determine which callers are legitimate, and which are not.
The following 8 tips can help contact centers do a better job of protecting their customers’ private data:
1. Log and document every single call. Doing so can provide you with valuable information later, if it becomes apparent that a breach has occurred.
2. Automate password resets. While automation comes with its own set of risks, at least social engineering attacks will not be among them. Asking for a manual password reset over the phone is one of the most common social engineering tricks out there.
3. Verify every single caller’s identity and location. Even - or maybe even especially - if the call is being made from mobile phone, this is an important step that should not be skipped over.
4. Have security policies in place. But simply having them is not enough. Employees need to be aware of them, and they need to be enforced.
5. Use workforce training to reduce the impact of attacks. Every minute of training will help combat social engineering, whether an employee notices something strange during a call and immediately puts her guard up, or realizes soon after the fact that she shouldn’t have given out certain information, and then notifies supervisors to alert that customer.
6. Reduce - or completely eliminate - the capture and retention of personally identifiable information by the contact center itself. It’s simple – if you don’t have the information, you can’t give it to the wrong person.
7. For internal support: Ensure that your system is updated with the latest information on new hires and terminations. Otherwise, in the confusion, information can inadvertently get into the wrong hands.
8. For external support: Require a customer ID. There should be some means of establishing customer identity that will add an extra layer of security.
Following these tips can help your contact center to breathe a little easier, knowing you are doing what you can to protect sensitive data.
Regardless of the type of contact center you run, it’s always a good business practice to train your employees to work to establish rapport with customers during every contact, whether over the phone or online. If customers feel that they have a friendly relationship with an individual contact center agent, those positive feelings will carry over to the company itself.
But how can agents convey that warm, helpful attitude to customers? Which steps can they take, not only to provide great customer service, but to actually begin forming a positive relationship with each customer?
We’ve assembled a list of 4 tips for building rapport with contact center customers.
Researchers tell us that in order to appear empathetic, people often mirror each other’s body language – if a friend is sitting with her elbows on the table, yours might just end up there, too. It’s no different in a phone or online interaction. The more similar and familiar an agent sounds to a customer, the more their sense of rapport will grow. Train your contact center workforce to listen carefully to the tone, rate, and style of speech during a call, or to analyze the language used by a customer online, and then respond in kind. If a customer doesn’t use technical jargon to describe their problem, then the agent shouldn’t either. If the customer speaks very slowly, have agents slow their rate of speech down, as well. Showing this consideration for the customer can go a long way towards building that rapport.
But in cases where the customer is irritated or upset, it's best to also clarify to your agents that while mirroring speaking characteristics is okay, it is not okay to mirror negative emotions. Instead, teach your agents that it's best to remain calm, understanding, and helpful in all situations.
Customers want to feel like their concerns have been heard. Train your contact center agents to give verbal nods – brief comments like “mm-hmm” or “I see” - throughout the conversation, so that the customer knows they’re listening. And once they’ve finished explaining their situation, have your employees restate their question or concern – while showing empathy. Rather than simply repeating the issue back unemotionally, agents should demonstrate that they care, saying something like, “Your order never arrived? That’s terrible, Mrs. Smith…” That small gesture of understanding will be a foundation for great rapport.
Using the customer's name has more impact on a customer's experience instead of using proper titles such as sir and ma'am. By using the customer's name, the agent will be able to create a more personal feeling, and connect better with the customer.
If a customer feels that this empathetic agent is empowered to take real action on their behalf, they will be much more reassured than if they feel no one person cares enough about them to follow through. Even if the caller does need to be transferred, if the initial agent lets the customer know that they have taken ownership of the issue through a positive, emphatic style of speech, the customer will feel less like they are lost in the system, and more like they have been put on the right path by a friendly advocate.
In every reply your contact center workforce makes to a customer, be sure that they convey either a sense that the issue will be taken care of right now, or, if it will take a bit longer, a sense of reassurance that it will be dealt with as soon as it’s possible. Providing that extra comfort of knowing when something will occur will cement that rapport your agent has worked to build with each customer.
When practices such as these are put in place, customer service levels will soar, and your contact center performance will increase as well. Check back on Kova Corp's blog for more blog posts on call center agent tips, helping to take your customer service to the next level.
“Do more with less.” How often have you had to put that line into practice in your contact center? From operating costs to workforce scheduling, every dimension of your business has to be scrutinized and made as lean and economical as possible, without affecting performance.
When it comes to the physical assets of your company, like furniture and cubicles, it can be tempting just to buy the cheapest options available, to keep costs low. But putting a little thought into what you’re buying, how it will be used, and how it can actually contribute to (or detract from) employee performance, can turn your purchase into a long-term investment that will save you money in the long run.
Here is your guide to getting the most value out of your contact center cubicles:
1. Choose back-to-back agent stations, rather than a single-sided run of stations. The back-to-back variety share panels, such as the electric and spine panels, so they will end up costing you less.
2. Go with melamine for panels below the work surface. Fabric-covered panels are more expensive, and harder to clean. And melamine will hold up better over time, as well.
3. Seek out furniture systems without loose parts. Kick plates and frame caps can fall off easily. When you choose furniture without those loose parts, you won’t have to deal with the related maintenance costs – and your stations will look better for longer.
4. Buy furniture that comes with a lifetime warranty. It may be a little more expensive, but a lifetime warranty gives you the assurance that what you’re getting is built to last. You won’t have to have it repaired or replaced nearly as often as a cheaper piece of furniture, which will save you money for years to come.
5. Be sure that all furniture you buy meets LEED indoor air quality standards. This is an employee performance issue: when unpleasant chemical odors waft through the building every day, or when allergy sufferers can’t stop coughing and sneezing, performance – and morale – can’t help but be low. Only low VOC and formaldehyde emitting furniture should be used.
6. Pick furniture that can be reconfigured if necessary. If change is needed, or a relocation is imminent, reconfiguring existing furniture is much cheaper than buying all new work stations. Verify that your supplier keeps the engineering paperwork so that it will be easy to reference the parts of the stations when needed.
7. Think through your choice of wire and cable management systems. It should be easily accessible, but still hide the cords. Systems with an access location under the furniture behind sliding doors allow for easy set-up and changes for IT.
8. For acoustic panels, only the spine panel is really necessary. In order to cut costs, you can have the side panels made of a hardboard panel covered with fabric.
9. Ergonomic accessories are not a waste of money. On the contrary – ergonomic chairs, keywords, and monitor arms help reduce repetitive motion injuries, which in turn reduces time missed from work, workers’ compensation costs, and time used to train replacement employees. Taking these tips into consideration when furnishing a contact center will help to achieve an attractive and functional space that aids you in your never-ending quest to “do more with less.”
In an emergency situation, it’s important for people to be able to contact an emergency communications center as quickly as possible. Remember the days when the fastest way to get help on the road was to find a pay phone? Or the scary movies where cutting a landline was all it took to make calling for help impossible? These days, of course, everyone just whips out their cell phone for instant access to 911 services. But lately, there’s been a growing demand for emergency texting services, as well. Is this a trend the emergency communications industry should embrace?
The Pros
The most obvious benefit of being able to text to 911 rather than call is the fact that it makes the entire process silent. If someone is hiding under a bed or in a closet, even having to whisper to explain the situation to a 911 operator can put them at risk of being found. Having the ability to text their local emergency communications center in that situation would be priceless, and could actually be life-saving.
Texting is also the preferred communication method for most young people today. That familiarity and ease of use make it a good choice for an emergency situation, when stress levels are high, and ease of access to 911 services is paramount.
The Cons
However, being able to text in a stressful situation can have its drawbacks, as well. In order for current 911 texting technology to work, people would need to dial not just 911, but a county or city prefix as well. This would be easy to forget or enter incorrectly in an emergency.
Another consideration is the fact that emergency operators can obtain so much information from the noise in the background of a phone call to aid in their understanding of the situation. Even the caller’s tone of voice adds to the vital store of details that could help emergency responders be prepared for whatever they’re about to encounter. In a text, they are relying solely on the words typed – nothing additional can be gleaned from them.
Finally, imagine the mistakes and misunderstandings that would plague the system while the technology was being implemented. Unless it was rolled out nationwide, all at once, some people in some areas would have access to the service, while others wouldn’t. People might waste precious seconds trying to text first, rather than call, and then find out it doesn’t work where they are. Or, even worse, they might send a text in an area without the service, and then do nothing else, assuming help is on the way!
Conclusion?
While 911 texting technology could be life-saving in some situations, at this point, it should probably only be considered as a fallback tool, when an actual call to an emergency communications center would be impossible. Traditional voice calls provide operators with so much more important information, all of which can be used to help a victim in the moment, and then later, could even be used to help convict the criminal. With such important outcomes riding on the use of voice calls, texts should be used only as an absolute last resort.
Great customer service is something every contact center strives for. But did you know that investments in improving customer service actually provide a higher ROI than advertising and marketing do? It’s true, according to a new study conducted by the W.P. Carey School of Business, in collaboration with Customer Care Management and Consulting (CCMC).
That same study also polled customers to see what they most wanted out of any contact center interaction – what was necessary to make the experience positive rather than negative. The answer might surprise you: It’s the simple things that matter to most customers.
Based on their responses, here are four strategies your contact center can put into practice today to improve customer service:
1. Treat customers with respect and courtesy. 90% of customers surveyed said they weren’t looking for anything more than “to be treated with dignity.” One easy way to treat someone courteously is to remember to say thank you. 70% said they wanted to hear “a thank you for my business.” Turns out Mom was right – those two little words can make a world of difference. Reminding contact center employees to say please and thank you regularly can instantly boost your level of customer service.
2. Provide explanations for problems. Often, giving customers the reasons that something happened is enough to satisfy them. 73% of those polled just wanted “an explanation of why the problem occurred.” This is hugely significant – they want an explanation, not necessarily a solution. As long as they understand why something happened, they are content. Train employees to educate customers about the reasons behind any problems, making sure to explain them in layman’s terms that anyone can understand.
3. Don’t hesitate to apologize. The study also revealed that customers truly value sincere apologies when mistakes occur. An apology isn’t an admission of guilt – it’s simply an expression of regret that someone was inconvenienced or otherwise adversely affected by something. And an apology lets customers know you value their business. Teach your contact center employees to offer apologies to any customer who has been inconvenienced in any way, shape, or form. Customer satisfaction levels will rise as a result.
4. Satisfy customers as quickly as possible. Handling customer complaints in one contact is the ideal to strive for. 50% of customers whose issues were resolved in only one contact were satisfied with the level of customer service they received. For those requiring more than one contact, however, the satisfaction rate dropped sharply. Streamline your processes to allow customer complaints to be taken care of in as few contacts as possible.
Emphasize the importance of these four strategies to your contact center workforce, and watch customer service improve by leaps and bounds. And don’t forget – when customer service improves, customer satisfaction gives you a sky-high ROI.
To help with your contact center workforce management needs, check out KOVA’s Impact360 Workforce Optimization Suite. With training and quality control streamlined in one easy-to-use system, you’ll be able to fine-tune your customer service to provide maximum customer satisfaction. Contact KOVA for your customized discovery session today.
When holidays approach, or an uptick in call volume is expected, contact centers often take advantage of the flexibility that temporary workers can provide. But just how beneficial are temporary workers, really, to a contact center’s performance level? How productive are they, compared with permanent employees? And does it matter, if they’re only being used for a short period of time?
The answers to these questions are complex. If flexibility during times of high call volume is your main goal, then yes, hiring temporary workers is worth it, whether they themselves are more or less productive than your permanent workforce. But if other factors affect your decision-making process, it’s a good idea to take a look at some of the pros and cons of hiring temporary contact center agents vs. sticking with permanent ones.
Pros of Permanent Contact Center Employees
Permanent employees are much more likely to feel a sense of ownership in their company. Because of this tendency for them to internalize the goals and values of their contact center, they are much more likely to strive to meet them than a temporary worker who will soon be gone.
They are also more likely to be committed to their job because of relationships they have built with coworkers and supervisors, as well as a desire to advance their career within this company. And even the simple fact that they have a steady job may provide enough motivation to do their best, in this shaky economy.
Finally, permanent contact center employees develop a level of expertise that simply cannot be matched by a temporary agent. They will know much more about your company’s products or services, and be able to handle many different types of calls easily, while a temporary worker will have a learning curve to contend with.
Pros of Temporary Contact Center Employees
While there are many positives to using only permanent employees in a contact center, temporary workers come with several benefits, as well. For one thing, because they are new to the company, temporary workers are starting fresh, without any negative attitudes towards management, or involvement in office politics, that longer-term employees might experience.
Another plus is the fact that these temps can be especially motivated to do their very best in order to please their temp agency, or maybe even to get a longer-term contract with your contact center. The necessity to prove themselves can drive temporary agents to outperform even very good permanent employees.
Finally, the boost of energy that temps can bring from the outside can actually motivate permanent employees to do even better than usual, whether in a spirit of competition or one of shared enthusiasm.
Regardless of whether you choose to staff your contact center with permanent employees, temporary employees, or a combination of both, let KOVA help you manage your workforce with our suite of Workforce Optimization solutions. Whether you need a simplified solution for scheduling employees at peak times, or you are looking for the ideal way to train new and old employees alike, KOVA has the perfect software to make your life easier. Contact us today to find out more!
We here at KOVA are excited to announce that we have just been awarded a General Services Administration (GSA) Schedule Contract with the federal government! In case you were wondering, the GSA is the centralized authority for the acquisition and management of federal government resources. GSA Schedule Contracts assist federal employees in purchasing products and services.
So why is this such a big deal?
Just take a look at the incredible process KOVA went through in order to be able to make our public safety and enterprise workforce optimization offerings available to agencies connected with the federal government:
In order to be approved for a GSA contract, companies must go through a long process of review that can take months, if not years. The very first requirement is that a company meet some basic standards of strength and reliability. It must have been in business for at least two years, must be able to demonstrate financial stability, must have successful past performance under its belt, and must be compliant with the Trade Agreements Act. Check, check, check, and check for KOVA!
The next step in the process is to have a Dun & Bradstreet Open Ratings Past Performance Evaluation report done. This report is an in-depth review of a company’s past performance, which uses Dun & Bradstreet’s own data and analytic resources together with direct customer survey responses to compile a full picture. As for KOVA’s past performance? Passed with flying colors!
Now comes the most time-consuming part – creating the proposal. There is no standardized application, so each company must put together a detailed proposal including information such as corporate and financial information, past performance, commercial practices, and a proposed price list. Once this proposal is submitted, it undergoes an intense and thorough review by a Contracting Officer, who requests further information and clarification as needed.
KOVA is proud to say that our proposal was approved, which means our company passed the strict review and can now make our public safety and enterprise workforce management solutions available to the federal government’s various agencies and employees.
If that’s not something to crow about, then we don’t know what is!
Now our offerings will be available on the GSAAdvantage! federal online catalog, making them accessible to hundreds of federal customers, including federal and executive agencies, the Department of Defense, the government of the District of Columbia, government contractors authorized to spend federal dollars, and certain other institutions and even international organizations like the American Red Cross, the Marine Mammal Commission, or the European Space Research Organization.
Like we said, we’re excited.
So if you want to take advantage of the same offerings that government agencies will soon have available to them, give us here at KOVA a call today, and see for yourself what all the fuss is about. Our public safety solutions, along with our enterprise workforce optimization offerings, are sure to impress you, and we would be just as excited to work with you as we are to work with them.
