Contact Centers

While heading up two businesses in the late 1990s, Mike Faith had difficulty finding quality telephone headsets at reasonable prices. Even more frustrating was the substandard customer service he said he found among the companies in that field. He realized he could fill a void in the industry. “My entrepreneurial opportunity radar went berserk,” he recalls. “I saw too big an opportunity and had to capitalize on it. … That’s very much my style.” Six weeks later (in 1998), with $40,000 in startup capital, Faith established San Francisco-based Headsets.com where he now serves as president. The company, which primarily sells headsets and related

Hiring and retaining qualified staff in the right numbers can be perennial problems for those who own and manage catalog contact centers. With more and more emphasis on customer service as a competitive differentiator, finding and keeping the right staffers to deal with your customers is critical to cataloging success. Unfortunately, there’s no single answer or approach that can work for everyone. But here’s a list of best practices and software solutions that may help. Best Practices for the Hiring Process • Pre-employment testing. This can predict how an individual will react in certain situations and his or her style of relating to others.

Inside you’ll find: cost-cutting strategies for your fulfillment operations; how to protect your inventory from internal theft; how to assess your catalog systems options; and how to determine your optimal IT spend. Get Lean Successful cost-cutting strategies for your catalog fulfillment operations. By William J. Spaide Lackluster operating performance in your catalog’s fulfillment operations can result from a combination of factors: poor productivity, inefficient processes, and unanticipated marketing and merchandise results. Failure to identify early warning signs of trouble and, more importantly, not addressing these problems decisively and effectively, are common characteristics of the operational “also-rans.” It all comes down to a

Most catalogers engineer their call centers to maximize both the quality of customer service and the cost-efficiency of their operations. Quite a few also have learned how to better manage the increasing volume of customer questions that arrive via e-mail. And a growing number now are making good use of their Web sites as self-service resources for their customers. Unfortunately, many still treat the phone, e-mail and the Web as three separate communications channels. Such a “stovepipe” approach to communications ultimately limits both the quality and efficiency of customer service — the very thing catalogers were trying to ensure in the first place.

Problem: MediaPower, which produces the MPDirect catalog, wanted to maximize live agent talk time and improve upselling strategies, all in a cost-efficient manner. Solution: It installed the automated call center technology Virtual Human Agent from AIS. Results: Cost per conversion rates went from $6 to $9 per call down to 60 cents. And the live agent outsold the call center agents in upselling offers. Chris Homer, president of MediaPower, had two call-center problems to resolve. First, he wanted to ensure that all customers had adequate access to call wrap-up data. Second, he wanted the call center to make upsell offers

Well-run catalog operations always have to balance service perform-ance with operating costs. That is, they must meet service objectives within a budgetary context of what is both doable and affordable. To that end, catalog operations managers often are forced to make compromises when it comes to both setting and satisfying service standards, with the better managers able to deliver acceptable service levels at a reasonable cost. Nowhere is this operating dialectic more evident than in the contact center. Although I might get an argument from a few warehouse managers, I believe the contact center is the most difficult fulfillment activity to manage in

Problem: Call volume that spikes from 60 calls per day during non-peak season to 60,000 calls per day during the holiday rush. Solution: Use metrics and flexible-scheduling techniques to help achieve agent efficiency without overstaffing. Results: 97-percent call center service levels and 90-percent agent-utilization rates maintained throughout most of the rush. As it is for many catalogers, the December holiday season is a booming time at Figi’s, the Marshfield, WI-based gift-giving speciality food mailer. Call volume builds from 60 calls per day during the non-peak season, to a whopping 60,000 calls per day during the holiday rush. To handle the volume, Catherine

At Lett Direct, we sometimes conduct studies to determine how quickly companies fulfill catalog requests (i.e., inquiries). While some catalogers do a great job turning around requests, many don’t. Unsolicited (and solicited) catalog requests can be extremely valuable, and a high percentage convert into buyers. Therefore, inquiry fulfillment needs to be monitored more closely and given a higher priority. This month, I’ll discuss the importance of inquiry fulfillment and provide results of a recent study we conducted. Unsolicited catalog requests come from many sources. We don’t always know their origins, but we do know inquiries are “diamonds in the rough.” If someone takes

No doubt your catalog’s customer contact center has changed dramatically in the past five years. Your employees probably now support e-commerce initiatives, respond to e-mailed correspondence, track outbound customer shipments, access digital product images via the Internet or terminal-based systems, and much more. Before you plot your contact center’s future strategies, answer these three basic questions: 1. How are you defining, measuring and improving customer service? Every cataloger preaches the gospel of customer service, but how does your corporate culture uniquely deliver it? 2. With your increased use of technology, have your productivity levels also risen? In many companies, productivity rates

Your merchandisers have found the most appropriate products. Your creative team designed an eye-popping book, and your warehouse is prepped for the onslaught of orders. You’ve done everything you can to ensure the success of your next catalog drop. But if your call center doesn’t pick up customers’ calls efficiently enough, all of your work may be for naught. Abandoned calls occur when customers, for whatever reason, hang up the phone before they reach a call center agent. One operations consultant who surveys roughly 30 call centers annually says abandonment rates for catalogers can range from less than 1 percent to 40 percent of