Contact Centers

As direct marketers, we spend a great deal of time and money developing programs to make the phone ring. But it’s the call center agents that truly make the cash register sing.
Thus, I like to spend a great deal of time training customer service reps (CSRs) to be powerful brand advocates with the ability to make a difference with all customers. Personally I hate calling a company and hearing some disinterested rep deal with my order in a lackluster way. It tells me that the company I’m dealing with doesn’t get that the people manning the phones are the voice of the

One of the benefits of VoIP is scalability, that is, the ability to add CSRs without having to install extra phone lines. Multichannel merchants 1-800-FlOWERS.COM and Vermont Teddy Bear have dealt with issues of seasonal scalability by working with Golden, Colo.-based Alpine Access, a provider of home-based CSRs. Vermont Teddy Bear, for instance, finds that its sales spikes come around Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day, with each holiday rush lasting only about two weeks. While Chris Powell, contact center manager at the Shelburne, Vt.-based gift merchant, triples his in-house staff during this time, he still needs more reps to answer phones, especially as radio ads

As the holiday season orders pour in, catalogers at this time of year find themselves seeking ways to maximize the use of their contact centers. One potential solution for peak ordering periods worth considering is voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), which enables catalogers to increase the size of the contact center at will, or even hire additional reps to work from their homes, when physical space in their existing contact center runs tight. VoIP allows contact center managers to deliver both phone service and broadband Internet connectivity to customer service reps (CSRs) along the same connection. Voice and data both are converted to packets of

Beyond death, taxes and postal rate hikes, most catalogers’ primary worry in life is retaining customers. Aside from continuously offering appealing products and services, there are a number of effective approaches you need to take to keep your customers happy and doing repeat business with you. Naturally, the question is, “What methods can I try that I haven’t already tried 10 times?” For a few possible answers and techniques for you to test in different departments, consider the strategies offered by several catalog experts. Customer Service Good customer service starts with the first interaction you have with customers. And if your call center

At press time, I had nearly completed this column when a rather unforgettable customer experience caused me to drop what I was doing. I wound up ripping up the old column and wrote this. Hopefully, there will be a lesson to be learned by all — at least by computer giant Dell on how not to handle a valued customer. My wife, Donna, bought a Dell Inspiron 6000 notebook computer in July 2005. Naturally, it worked fine for her; that is, up until the day after press time when the battery apparently died. She and I figured we’d call Dell and have what was

Although more sales continue to migrate online, the contact center remains an important touchpoint between catalogers and customers. To ensure that your customer service reps (CSRs) provide the best possible experience to your customers while driving sales, Best Practices, a benchmarking strategies provider, offers the following a couple of key pointers in its recent whitepaper, “Transforming Contact Centers into High-Performing Sales Channels.” * Use on-screen prompts to provide real-time coaching and expertise to CSRs. While product information aids and popups aren’t new, the whitepaper’s authors note that the various uses for prompts these days is quite diverse. Their research reveals prompts that do the

Tune up your contact center. A contact center without calibration is like a car without a tune-up: The car still runs, but not at peak performance. Calibrations are an opportunity to gather your team, tune in to your customers’ experience, and make sure everyone shares the same expectations of your representatives. Calibrations are a contact center’s tune-up. Calibration sessions ensure your team connects the vision with the reality. While quality assurance should lead the discussions, all frontline supervisors, floor leads and representatives should be included. Input from reps is critical, since they can help contact center managers understand why boardroom strategies fall short when implemented.

Theoretically, keeping your customer service reps (CSRs) happy has much to do with keeping your customers happy. Happy and motivated employees will do a better job selling -- both cross-selling and upselling offers over the phone. Plus, tightening labor markets mean you have to provide a competitive advantage over other area employers that prospective employees will be drawn to, according to “Rewards & Recognition Best Practices,” a recently released whitepaper from customer service consultancy The Ascent Group. Following are tips and strategies offered in the whitepaper: * Look for appropriate behavior. “Management must have a process in place so managers and supervisors are actively looking

More than 25 percent of companies using interactive voice response (IVR) in their call centers said increasing customer acceptance and usage of the system is the biggest challenge to using IVR, according to a recent benchmarking study by The Ascent Group, a customer service operations consultancy. In the same study, The Ascent Group established a set of strategies used by companies that are achieving a high customer satisfaction rate and high IVR use. Some of these best practices are: 1. Conduct extensive consumer research before making changes to your call center. Companies that use IVR successfully employ customer focus groups, usability labs or customer

Problem: The order entry system for My Grandma’s of New England routinely transposed data from one order to another, causing shipping errors and other assorted problems. Solution: The company implemented a new order entry system. Results: Shipping errors were virtually eliminated. My Grandma’s of New England had an order entry system (OES) that was wildly unstable, often causing data errors that resulted in shipping methods from one order being applied to another order, disappearing entirely or customer greetings placed on an order to end up on the wrong order. So last November, the company implemented Morse Data’s InOrder OES to reduce shipping errors caused by its legacy