Although contact centers began as a means of addressing customer comments and complaints, innovations in enterprise software have made contact center marketing a reality in today’s business world. Because contact centers focus on direct communication with consumers, they are able to supply CMOs with vital information that can improve marketing efforts.
A Vital Point of Consumer Contact
Contact centers provide critical support to any brand ethos. In addition to helping customers get the most from products and services, contact center personnel are strategically placed to gather information about consumers’ purchasing habits and background information. No longer just a way to mollify unhappy consumers, contact centers are a means of keeping and expanding business opportunities. Both B2B and B2C marketing can benefit from contact center campaigns.
Getting Started: Reacting to Reactions
The facts speak for themselves: Every Fortune 500 company makes use of at least one contact center – whether in-house or outsourced to an agency.
Using customer relationship management tools, businesses can capture information that can be used in a broad swath of planning, from creating customized prompts for a website to planning a major marketing campaign.
Contact Center Marketing Muscle
But perhaps the most important benefit accruing from contact center management software is the opportunity to generate and periodically update call lists for cold-calling and general sales drives.
Marketing campaigns that are conducted by telephone are more likely to get a response. A 2012 survey issued by the Direct Marketing Association found that marketers on average experienced a 12.95% response rate for telephone campaigns – compared to direct mail (3.4%), email (.12%), post card (2.47%), and catalog (4.26%).
A Direct Response Marking Plan
Marketing departments need to plan carefully to ensure they realize maximum advantage from contact center initiatives.
The first step is anticipating customer response to a campaign. Providing contact center associates with a detailed response that aligns with brand ethos and hits the marketing notes you’re aiming at, is an important component.
Hand in hand with this is the need to provide a strategy for how contact center associates will respond to customers who fail to respond to the campaign. Should they contact them by phone? Chat? How much time should pass before contacting? (Note: it is imperative that marketing departments regularly review and update call lists to ensure acceptable response levels.)
The concrete result of this planning is the creation of scripts for contact center associates to use. Questions that are specific to demographic groups in your customer base can be entered into contact center management software to ensure maximum engagement with callers.
Realizing Maximum Potential: Contact Center Management Software
Because critical marketing information is supplied by contact centers, it is important that your conact center has the best management software to track and capture this data. Enterprise Feedback Management software (EFM) provides the tools needed to get a complete picture of how customers view your business, products, and services.
EFM can provide actionable data quickly to support sales and marketing campaigns. Benefits of EFM include:
Using customizable, interactive dashboards, branded reports, and embeddable widgets, you can share information and highlight actionable results.
Disparate systems and processes can be unified, enhancing and smoothing the decision making process.
Survey responses can be centralized and the data combined with information from other systems to create better reports and better customize surveys to align with demographics.
EFM possesses both the metrics needed to formulate KPIs and the support to benchmark progress toward them.
Create training opportunities for associates that is based upon individual performance as well as meeting sales goals.
KOVA: Innovation To Power Your Enterprise Goals
Our comprehensive array of solutions fits every contact center’s needs. From workforce management to customer satisfaction, KOVA has the tools you need to make your business leaner, more agile, and profitable. Our software solutions are scalable and can be tailored to your company’s unique business challenges.
Contact us today and learn how KOVA can improve your contact center’s performance.
Every day, contact center managers work to ensure high call quality. So what the associates say on the other end of the line can be a real source of stress. Will they maintain a high level of professionalism and customer satisfaction?
The most important part of supporting a contact center staff is the daily update. Those morning huddles, printed FAQs, or email reminders are integral to maintaining continuity within the calls.
Associates also benefit from a clear strategy for trouble calls. Rehearsing what to do when trigger words are spoken or calls escalate increases the likelihood of those important calls being passed up to a supervisor appropriately.
There are still more ways a manager can take action to ensure his representatives are doing well.
It isn’t fun to work the night shift, holidays, or weekends. But good contact center managers know the importance of being on the floor during high volume times. When representatives are waving for information or standing to pass up a troubled call, they need to see management coming to take control.
This increases employee morale, as representatives know they can count on support when they need it. And the more management is on the floor hearing the questions and offering help, the more in-tune they will be to the needs of the contact center as a whole.
Beginning in training and continuing through each daily huddle, representatives should be presented with the ideal call strategy and how to accomplish those goals. They need a play book with updated plays for each new scenario as it comes up.
But representatives also need – and need to be reminded of – the consequences of not following proper procedure. By staying consistent in administrating the disciplinary protocol, management gives security to the staff. They know what to expect and what is expected of them.
That means that management cannot leave call monitoring to Quality Assurance, either. To remain familiar with the level of care each call is receiving, it is imperative that managers listen in regularly, at a minimum of one or two calls per week for each representative. Managers can even set up a spreadsheet to track the week’s monitoring and results.
Representatives should welcome this regular monitoring. High performing reps will be happy to have management hear them doing good work; this is a great defense against complaints against them, as they will have a track record of proper adherence to point to. And of course, managers can catch misinformation or improper procedures before they become a greater problem.
These examples from monitoring make great ideas for daily huddles. Managers can recognize individuals for exceptional service during the past day’s work and bring any known issues to the team’s attention.
Managers will always experience stress around call quality. But with proper monitoring, personal availability, provided information, and procedural discipline, they can rest assured the representatives have what it takes to be successful.
KOVA offers superior solutions that make call monitoring easy and effective. Contact us today for information on how our Audiolog software can help your contact center.
It keeps you awake at night and nags you every day – what are your representatives really saying on the other end of the line? Could they be giving misinformation? Might they anger customers? Will they fail to pass a problem call up to a leader, instead lying to a customer that “I am the supervisor” to avoid coaching?
It takes a lot of faith in one’s staff to manage a busy contact center. But there are concrete steps a manager can – and should – take to ensure the quality of each and every call. If managers and supervisors are conscientious about these areas, call quality and customer satisfaction will steadily increase.
Representatives struggle to maintain a high level of care when they are left in the dark. The most important support each manager can make is the daily update. Each day’s huddle must include new information on the company products and services or answers to upcoming questions so employees are ready for the day’s queue.
A good manager will also hand the representatives the daily update in a written form. This will help jog the representative’s memory over the course of a long day and cut down on questions requiring unnecessary wait times.
Whether the daily update is given orally, passed out on paper, or emailed to associates, the manager should require each associate reply that the changes are understood. This is integral to maintaining accountability for the information.
Set a clear expectation for trouble calls. Define clearly during training what constitutes a trouble call – red flag words the caller may use, issues that arise with the account, a level of service dissatisfaction, and abusive language are all areas that should be covered. Make it clear at what point the representative should pass the call up to a supervisor or manager and what the procedure for doing so should be.
Some contact centers have body language for levels of call trouble. For instance, if a call brings up a question or concern the representative feels unequipped to handle, the representative may raise a hand or wave a paper in the air to attract attention. If a call escalates to a trouble call, especially with abusive language or alert terminology, the representative stands and looks directly at the manager or supervisor for help quickly.
Using physical cues for trouble calls is beneficial for both representatives and for managers. Obviously, the alert manager can see at a glance who needs assistance and which questions are most urgent. But for the representative, the movement can be helpful in and of itself. By moving the body – changing position, waving arms, or walking in place – the representative engages more areas of the brain, increasing problem-solving benefits when most needed.
The contact center manager may never know exactly what is happening on each and every call. But by properly equipping the representatives daily and by giving clear expectations for trouble calls, management can be assured the reps are set up for success.
KOVA can also help to set your reps and your contact center up for success with our Impact360 Workforce Optimization Solutions. Contact us today for more information!
It’s a fact of life for every contact center – difficult calls will come. As a manager, you are the employee’s first line of defense, offering the information and support the employee needs to handle each stressful situation.
Since you know that into every call cue some difficult calls must fall, be prepared with a plan of defense to ready your team. With some foresight and preparation, you can minimize the harmful effects of these difficult interactions, both to the company and to the call center team.
Anticipate customer difficulties.
When your brand changes message, upgrades a product, or enacts a recall, you know customer service calls will go up. Keep your team informed of major changes coming soon and provide the information they need to meet customer needs in a timely manner. Provide anticipated questions they may receive and sample answer they can use. And as the calls begin coming in, stay in close communication with your team to find if any unanticipated concerns are arising so you can give the entire team support.
Continue role playing.
You likely practiced quite a bit of role playing when you brought new team members on the floor. Don’t stop once they become more experienced. Continue practicing routine and unusual questions, both on the computer and in team huddles. This keeps your team sharp and helps them continue to grow in their customer service skills.
Habitually shadow and support.
Your team members need to see you on the floor every day, listening, patting on the back, and giving help or encouragement. While you walk the floor, you will hear mistakes that may be made or even witness an escalating call and be able to step in with information or even take over a stressful situation. There is no substitute for being there.
Create emergency signals.
During stressful calls, sometimes putting a customer on hold only makes things worse. Give your team an easy way to get your attention. For instance, you could ask them to wave a hand in the air if they need information or have a non-threatening issue. Have your associates take a more obvious move like standing up in their station if they have a critical call or irate customer that needs immediate support.
Developing physical signals for help accomplishes two things. Most obvious, it draws attention across a busy contact center to an issue that needs leadership attention immediately. But it also helps the customer service professional mentally; taking a physical change of position and using body movements helps trigger new areas of the brain to work, which helps the associate think more creatively and quickly to come to a faster solution for the customer.
Be aware of the contact center mood.
Most of all, the contact center leaders need to be constantly aware of what is going on around their floor. By staying active by walking around the floor and staying vigilant to look across the associates, managers and supervisors will become sensitive and supportive of the needs of associates almost before they can ask for them. That quick response makes all the difference for a satisfied customer and loyal employee.
We at KOVA want to support YOU in your contact center goals. Contact us today.
Every busy contact center relies on careful scheduling. As a manager, you make sure you have adequate staffing for peak times, and you’re working hard to minimize attendance issues with a strong work environment, good employee/manager relationships, recognition and motivation, and adherence to disciplinary procedures.
But right in the middle of each day, when your call volume is likely at its peak, you have a problem: lunch breaks. How can you give your employees the break time they need without hurting your call time and the floor morale?
It is easy to allow break time abuse to get out of hand. Busy, distracted managers are attending to personnel and call issues while employees are frustrated by hunger and fatigue. As a floor leader, you set the tone and hold the key to getting the issue back in hand. Here are three suggestions to help you stop break time abuse and get your mid-day breaks running smoothly.
Good contact center management is about a relationship, and every relationship is built on strong communication. Take time to communicate to your associates what your expectations are – exactly how long is each break, where it should be taken, and how breaks are scheduled.
Don’t forget to explain the ramifications of break time abuse; your employees have likely never considered the effects on not only fellow teammates but also on the company production. Without blaming or making an example of any one individual, share some examples of how break abuse trickles down to hurt subsequent employees, robbing them of the break time they need. Share data on the call cue effects, how much longer wait time grows when staffing is inadequate due to break time abuse.
Finally, tell your team what the individual consequences of break time abuse will be – loss of later break time, warning, write up, or other disciplinary procedure. Be clear yet professional so there are no misunderstandings.
The majority of break time abuse is simple lack of work habits. New employees may never have developed the discipline of conscientious time management at the work place. For these employees, additional coaching, reminders, and mentoring can go a long way toward developing a stronger work ethic and professionalism that will benefit the company as a whole.
As a rule of thumb, one of the best ways to gauge how your employees are spending their time is to keep an eye on their performance. This doesn't have to be limited to designated performance reviews, either. If you suspect someone of slacking off, don't hesitate to check up on the quantity and quality of their work if you feel it necessary.
Keep looking at your contact center as a team with shared goals and vision. Emphasize that shared team vision not only by frequent coaching sessions but also by contributing to the teamwork yourself. Let the employees see you, as the leader, being the first one at the shift and the last to leave. Make the hard choices, take the tough calls, and give the team the recognition it deserves for its achievements.
Because when it comes down to it, strong contact centers are the result of that strong team relationship, each member doing his best to achieve results. Through great communication with your team, guidance for employees who are struggling with time management, and sharing your vision with your team, you can eliminate break time abuse in your contact center.
We here at KOVA can help you achieve your contact center time management goals as well. Our Verint Media Recorder Workforce Management software can help you get a strong handle on scheduling and employee training. Contact us today for more information about how KOVA can make your contact center even better.
Your employee morale, like everything else in your business, is either growing or dying. Make sure the line is going “up and to the right” with careful attention to team building.
Building your contact center team spirit isn’t easy, and it isn’t a one-time event. It takes dedication to each member of the team, meeting their needs and genuinely caring for their success. Your team can sense your sincerity and will respond to honest care and concern.
Are you ready to take your contact center to the next level? Start by implementing these six strategies.
Make sure each day starts off right for your entire team. Gather together before the phones open for twenty minutes. This is when you will share vital new information, help on recent customer concerns, and even a quick role playing exercise. Be upbeat and positive, sharing goals you recently met and where you would like to see continued improvement. This is your most important time of the day, when you give your team what it takes to be successful.
Stimulate their competitive spirit with some team competition. Divide your associates into two teams and let them compete on the metrics you most want to see improved that day, like wait time, sales, or customer satisfaction. Give the winning team a desirable reward like pizza for lunch the next day, first break times, or a traveling “trophy” of sorts. Make it fun and rewarding to be a winner with your team.
Don’t let your associates think you only care about the work they do for you nine to five. Have drinks on Thursday nights or dinner on Tuesdays together to relax and get to know one another. Celebrate a major achievement or goal you reached with a nicer dinner party.
Or coffee. But just bring it. A spontaneous display of gratitude for their hard work with lunch “on the boss” or breakfast pastries will put a smile on their face and demonstrate your loyalty to them.
Always be recognizing. Recognize great calls in your daily huddle. Recognize the team member of the week. Draw attention to great call handling and above-and-beyond service. Use team members as positive examples of the kind of service and support your company stands for. Post photos of recognized team members prominently and give tangible rewards for achievement. Make sure your team knows you notice their efforts.
Make sure you are the first one there at the team huddle, and that you’ve already greeted every team member before it begins. Be the last one to leave because you are busy thanking each associate for their hard work. Be the example of loyal dedication you want them to aspire to, and be the leader they can count on when they need it.
Show up in their lives, too. If you are invited to a wedding, baby shower, or baptism, attend. It is an honor to be invited into your associates’ lives, and take that privilege seriously by showing up. If a team member is sick or injured, be sure to not just send flowers, but visit to say you care.
KOVA cares about you and helping your business succeed. Call us today to find out how we can support you now.
“Because I said so” or “Because I’m the boss” just doesn’t cut it with your contact center employees.
Especially since they're likely to handle stressful customer service or public safety situations on behalf of your company.
So while your knowledge of the product, hard work, and creativity prepared you well for leadership of the team, it's your relationship with your employees that determines your team’s success – and thus, yours.
How good are you at building strong workplace relationships? Answer these six questions to find out.
Most contact center team members sincerely want to excel at their job and meet or exceed expectations – they just need to know what those expectations are. Be sure to clearly explain procedures and policies verbally and post written reminders as well. Use daily huddle time and weekly meeting time to bring team members up to speed on recent changes and to provide coaching on common mistakes.
A simple “Hi, how are you?” one-on-one each morning does so much to build relationships. Take time at the beginning of each day to speak with every associate and let them know you are genuinely happy to see them. People function infinitely better in an environment where they know and feel that they're wanted and appreciated. Show them that you really care!
At the end of each shift, do you dash for the parking lot, or do you wait to express appreciation to your team members? Let each one know individually you are proud of their hard work that day and grateful for their effort. It’s a simple step, but it means so much to the employees who put themselves on the phone line every day for you. No one wants to feel like they have been forgotten, especially at the end of a long and particularly frustrating day.
Shadowing and coaching is not just for risk management – it’s for team building, too. Work hard to catch your associates doing great work, then recognize them publicly for it. Make each one a hero by bringing their effort to attention. This increases their motivation to continue going the extra mile, relieves any fears of workplace inadequacy, and ultimately boosts their confidence in their progress and in their abilities.
Strong relationships are built on trust, and you want your associates to know they can trust you to be there for them. That means taking the irate customers or stressful public safety calls, or at least standing beside them in encouragement when you notice they're on a difficult conversation. If they know you are there quickly with an answer to their question, a solution to the customer’s needs, or a calming help to perplexing situations, your team members will look forward to working with you long-term.
It's easy, when engulfed with the cares of management, to forget what life on the end of the phone line is like. Make a concerted effort to listen to the suggestions of your team members and to look for creative solutions to their needs. Not only will alleviating unnecessary stress from your teammates' shoulders boost morale and reduce their stress, but it will also enable them to work more efficiently, handle customers with greater ease, and potentially even inspire them to stay with you long-term.
We at KOVA want to provide some of those creative and innovative solutions your team needs to be successful. Talk with us today.[/fusion_text]
One of the most crucial variables to your customer service team’s success is employee attendance. Your queue rate, customer satisfaction, and sales metrics all depend on your team’s availability and responsiveness. Quite simply, you can’t adequately meet your goals and the needs of your customers without your team.
So how can a contact center manager or supervisor increase his or her team’s responsibility and availability? A top priority for leadership on the contact center floor must be this issue – motivating employees to ensure they will be on time each day. But that’s easier said than done. Here are some tips for increasing your team’s attendance record.
Keep in mind, these changes take time. Contact center managers and supervisors must consistently pay attention to these issues, building strong relationships over weeks and months, to see measurable improvement. Conversely, haphazard attention to these areas is likely to result in greater attrition and attendance issues. Guard against problems and build a strong, reliable team with these four steps.
The contact center management must take the lead in creating a positive work environment every day of the week. This goes beyond personalizing desk areas and ergonomic work spaces to the mental and emotional atmosphere of the work place.
Leadership helps build up the floor by maintaining positive communication and body language throughout the day. Employees work under the stress of knowing any incoming call could potentially contain a difficult situation. Counteract that with a warm, welcoming environment to work in. Employees should feel secure knowing that leadership “has their back” and is always ready to help.
Part of this help is wise scheduling. By ensuring proper coverage for peak times, the manager is protecting each employee against undue pressure. This also helps the manager meet those all-important que metrics of call answer time.
At the end of the day, the employee must feel motivated to come back to work on time the next morning and to make sure he is back from break in a timely manner. And no, the paycheck isn’t enough. A successful contact center manager will use multiple streams of motivation to keep employees enthusiastic and sensitive to customer needs.
Recognition is one of the most powerful motivations a manager has in his toolbox. Be liberal with small and large recognition opportunities with daily and weekly mention. Create a special place for pictures and notation of customer service professionals who hit milestones of achievement for your company.
Employees respond well to managers they know and respect. Be empathetic and approachable, demonstrating in the little things each day that you are in their corner. Respond quickly and tangibly when asked for help with difficult calls or for more information. This growing relationship will induce your contact center employees to give their all on your behalf.
Make sure that your contact center’s standards for punctuality, break times, and lunches are clearly stated. Remind the staff periodically of the standards and how adherence to those standards impacts the team, the customers, and the bottom line. Then consistently apply warning and write-up procedures so employees see you are fair and unbiased in your approach.
With time, application of these principles should dramatically improve contact center attendance and thus your valuable analytics. Let KOVA help you meet your customer needs with our services and software - contact us today!
Every contact center manager worth his salt knows that you’ve got to have eyes in the back of your head. Marching hand-in-hand with supervising daily operations is the need to see where change is taking place. By keeping an eye peeled for the next wave in customer satisfaction you can meet events strategically.
As the number of customers using mobile devices to interact with companies grows, keeping ahead in customer service can be difficult. The current state of the industry still shows a sluggish move to integrated multichannel operations. The sheer inertia of the current infrastructure means that the adoption of customer service applications that are mobile based is unlikely in the near future.
It is worth watching closely, however. Smartphones offer customers a variety of ways to communicate with business. Those segments of the call center industry that remain tied to traditional desktop telephony risk frustrating customers. In the interest of maximizing customer satisfaction, the move to integrated mobile applications and a quality mobile customer support experience is inevitable.
The rise of advanced mobile devices has an impact on more than just customer service. The workforce itself is responding to the flexibility digital communication has brought about. Companies of all sizes are allowing employees to work part- or fulltime from home. The advantages offered include not only improved morale among agents and a concomitant increase in customer satisfaction – companies can experience savings by reducing their real estate footprint.
A study carried out by the National Association of Call Centers revealed that more than 70% of companies presently providing work-from-home opportunities plan on expanding them. Another study by Customer Contact Strategies reported that over 80% of contact centers have some form of telecommuting workforce.
The logistics of managing distributed work teams will make workforce management more important than ever before. Key will be the heightened emphasis on ‘first contact resolution’ – making sure a customer’s problem is resolved in the initial communication.
Collaboration across distributed teams will become more important than ever before. Agent will need more training to allow them to work across channels, and managers will need to provide adaptive oversight to ensure agents are in those channels when they are needed.
John Cray in Business2Community, notes “Historically, in a traditional contact center, agents and managers could “walk across the aisle” to determine who to escalate an unresolved call to. In today’s “hybrid contact center environment,” the best person to leverage may be hundreds or thousands of miles away. This means that contact centers will become more heavily reliant upon best skills routing, combined with collaboration tools that join agents with experts in real-time. Breaking down traditional contact center boundaries enables better customer service and a better customer experience, a primary goal through 2015 and beyond.”
KOVA’s Impact360 WorkForce Optimization solutions can help your contact center address these challenges. They provide the needed information in an easy to view and actionable format, and make improving customer service easy. Contact KOVA today to find out more!
Throughout the last year, there has been more and more talk of the where SMS might fit into the current contact center climate. Not only are there now quite a few cloud services that offer easy platforms on which to cultivate SMS-driven interactions, but also, these carriers are permitting inbound SMS to any toll-free number. Now that it is possible to utilize SMS more seamlessly, it may be worthwhile to consider its benefits.
• The addition of SMS can function as a way to companion the phone channel and help support its weaknesses. First of all, it can be a step towards a better queuing system. The current procedure queues calls by putting the caller on hold, and as anyone whose neck has ached from trying to hold the phone between the ear and the shoulder while multitasking knows, this is less than ideal. When contact centers were first innovated, this was the only option, but now, it is just a habit.
• What if these long unproductive waits on the phone could be replaced with short messages between the two parties, negotiating wait time, need, and readiness? Note that many restaurants have implemented a similar system so that guests don’t have to linger by the hostess stand while they wait for a table. Rather, they are free to grab a drink or take a walk and are texted when their table is ready.
• Another advantage of integrating SMS is improved navigation and data entry. Phone menus with their pre-recorded messages, such as “Press 1 for hours, press 2 for…” can be a little aggravating if one is in a rush. An SMS messaging system could provide for a more efficient alternative, as it is easier to read six different options than to listen to them. It could also be used to gather information such as ID numbers, name, address, or a brief description of the issue at hand.
• As there are a variety of text-based chat options, what is it that makes SMS the favorite? The answer is it is pervasively used and highly accessible (a consequence of the mass shift towards smart phones), simple, and very reliable. It is also conveniently already connected to the voice channel through the phone number so no extra step is needed to link the two.
• Often, in this conversation, people want to know about where WebRTC fits into all this. Won’t WebRTC definitively free creative development from the restraints kept in place by the telecom industry? Won’t the best resolutions come from the rapid market feedback that follows? As good as this may sound for the worlds of web technology, mobile apps, and many others, we’re not there yet. There are still proprietary claims and coding issues to be worked out. And until it becomes universal, it can’t really be harnessed for the industry of contact centers.
The world may not be ready yet for WebRTC, but it is ready for a further integration of SMS into contact center communication. It will yield greater ease and functionality to both contact center agents and the customers and citizens on the other line. It is a natural extension of how most of us already use our phones. “Talk now?” is one of the most common messages exchanged, and its prudence can be leveraged to adapt contact center interactions for greater levels of success, especially if combined with enterprise workforce optimization solutions.
