Contact Centers

Providing the best possible customer service means hiring the right customer service reps (CSRs). Continued from last week’s issue of Idea Factory, here are four more tips on developing a better hiring process for CSRs, offered by The Ascent Group, a Kite, Ga.-based management consulting firm specializing in customer service operations and improvement, in its white paper “Improving Front-line Recruitment .” 5. Recruit for the position and the schedule. If your contact center uses a combination of part-time, temporary and full-time employees, recruit for each type of labor separately, as a different pool of candidates may be interested in each schedule, write the white

Recruiting, interviewing, training and hiring the right customer service reps (CSRs) is a crucial component of your catalog’s success. The Ascent Group, a Kite, Ga.-based management consulting firm specializing in customer service operations and improvement, offers in its white paper”Improving Front-line Recruitment& Hiring” the following tips you may find useful. 1. Hire for attitude; train for technical skills. “Consider potential, not necessarily experience,” note the white paper’s authors. During the interview ask questions that would demonstrate if the candidate is motivated and enthusiastic, and loves to serve others. 2. Match candidate expectations with work reality. “The more a candidate understands the job, the work

Readers: With this issue we welcome new columnist Jim Gilbert, a catalog and DM consultant and a professor of direct marketing. In this column, which we’ll publish 10 times this year, Mr. Gilbert will offer practical strategies that can help you boost sales and profitability. —Editors Any time a customer communicates with your company — that is, interacts with you via one of your customer touchpoints — you have an opportunity to increase sales and goodwill. Unfortunately in some cases, it’s also an opportunity to lose sales and goodwill. I can’t stress this enough: You must analyze and consistently monitor all of your customer

While it’s common for contact center managers to track and monitor each agent’s calls to discern performance levels, tracking and monitoring individual customer calls often gives a merchant insights that can help it improve sales and goodwill. Customer Experience Management (CEM) is a strategy that seeks to answer the question: “Why are our customers acting and reacting in the ways that they are?” “CEM looks at the transactional process from the customers’ point of view from the second they start interacting with the merchant,” either in the contact center or via the Web, says Kristyn Emenecker, product manager of contact center solutions for Mercom Systems,

From setting schedules for supervisory duties, to mystery-shopping overflow call centers, to setting bonus structures for seasonal workers — four catalog and contact center managers reveal how they tackle daily challenges. Debbye Schneider, contact center manager, Fire Mountain Gems, Grants Pass, Ore. Merchandise: jewelry-making supplies to consumers and businesses Contact center employees: 85 to 104 Overflow/after-hours contact center: Donnelly Communications Catalog Success: What are your top challenges, and how do you overcome them? Schneider: We’ve been steadily ramping up for the past five years. My staff of customer service reps has tripled since then. Because of the growth, I have

Are your contact center reps treating your customers in a way that best represents your brand? Are they staying within the confines of applicable laws when making upsell and cross-sell offers, especially those for third parties? Are you sure? Here’s why I ask: I ordered a home product from a catalog in July. I had previously ordered from this company with no problems. After taking my order, the contact center rep launched into a rambling, barely decipherable cross-sell offer of joining some third-party shopping club in which I could get discounts on other products not related to the catalog. I

The catalog and e-commerce companies that serve customers well will be rewarded with growth and profitability this holiday selling season. It’s time to review every aspect of your business to insure that customers are served quickly and efficiently. Following are some tips to get you started: 1. Be sure your Web site can be navigated easily by all visitors regardless of their access. Some sites are accessible only with high speed Internet service. This severely limits your sales opportunities. Customers will leave a slow-loading site in favor of one that takes less time to reach and navigate. 2. Provide a customer service phone number

Following are two tactics to employ if you want to improve your catalog’s contact center operations: 1. Before the revamping process begins, start by outlining your mission, goals, road maps and metrics, noted the authors of “7 Habits of Highly Effective Contact Centers,” a white paper recently released by eGain, a provider of customer service and contact center software and services. Determine your organizational mission and business goals for the next 12 to 24 months. “Next, build a road map. Create a long-term plan before investing in any new tool or initiative,” note the authors. “Make every dollar count. A road map ensures that

On the following pages you’ll meet the winners of the fourth annual Catalogers of the Year awards. We’re honored to recognize the contributions these three professionals have made to the catalog and e-commerce industries. This year’s winners exemplify the astounding level of quality in branding, customer service and merchandising this industry enjoys. The winners include: 1. a former museum director who now sells museum shop-quality educational toys to a national audience via her catalog; 2. a transplanted Briton who has built a thriving company selling telephony equipment; and 3. an industry veteran whose reputation as a maverick in branding, direct marketing and channel-integration

What key performance indicators (KPIs) are critical to a catalog business? What can you learn from tracking them? And how can you make changes and implement improvements based on your results? In this article you’ll learn about 10 KPIs that are critical to any catalog business. KPIs vary by catalog, as each has specific objectives and needs. You may have a KPI of, for example, the gross margin ratio, contribution ratio or net income — whichever best reflect your company’s goals. When selecting KPIs, choose ones that are quantifiable and therefore can be tracked. For example, a KPI to improve customer service can’t be