Ascent Group

In a forthcoming research report from The Ascent Group, the management consulting firm delivers results from a survey taken on management training and customer interaction. The company released findings from three key questions. 1. How do companies gauge customer satisfaction? * 59 percent conduct external customer surveys * 17 percent conduct call monitoring * 7 percent conduct complaint analysis * 7 percent track first-call resolution, and * 10 percent don’t measure customer satisfaction. 2. Which channels are most successful for recruiting? * 25 percent company Web sites/Intranets * 24 percent print ads * 14 percent employee referrals * 13 percent Internet

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

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

Calibrating the practices of your contact-center monitors is crucial to ensuring consistency and building confidence in their results. Design a review criteria for your catalog's contact-center monitors and then test it over and over, advise officials of The Ascent Group, which recently released the white paper "Getting the Most Out of Your Call Quality Program." Contact-center managers who participated in a study sponsored by The Ascent Group conduct calibration through group sessions that score and discuss evaluation criteria. "Comparing and discussing results help to focus and clarify the not-so-easy task of judging performance," noted officials from The Ascent Group. "It also builds confidence and

If you employ monitors in your catalog contact center, one sure way to improve their skills and bolster confidence is to monitor their performance -- that is, to monitor your monitors. Listen to the calls they evaluate, compare your evaluation to theirs and coach when necessary, according to officials of The Ascent Group, which recently released the white paper "Getting the Most Out of Your Call Quality Program." Monitoring your monitors instills accountability and offers them the opportunity for continual improvement. For more, visit: www.ascentgroup.com, or call (478) 469-3950