Transform the contact centre: Forrester's playbook for customer service excellence. App dev & programme management Forrester Analysts Subscribe to this blog About Author Forrester Research is a technology and market research company that provides pragmatic advice to global leaders in business and technology.
Love 'Em or Hate 'Em, Call Centers Are Here to Stay. No one relishes the thought of having to phone up a support agent to have their issue resolved.
The long hold times, the endless maze of menu options, and the dread of getting transferred to a dizzying stream of agents and having to retell your story every single time. Ugh. But guess what? Companies don’t relish the thought of phone support either. As the infographic below shows, the cost of phone support and building out traditional call centers is expensive.
Make Agent Satisfaction a Common Call Center Metric. By Layne Holley | Published: May 26, 2011 | Comments (1) In a recent ICMI article on key metrics for the call center, we got a comment that agent satisfaction needed to be right up at the top.
We can’t disagree with that. Welcome to Call Center Times. Imagine that you’re a travel insurance provider.
A would-be traveler is on your mobile website trying to purchase a policy for her upcoming vacation. She enters the site through a link from one of your airline partners and completes your online quote form. Upon evaluating her policy options, she calls your contact center with questions about the fine print. Consumers' Love/Hate Relationship with Contact Centers. ForeSee released its February Contact Center Benchmark, which allows companies to determine how the contact center experience they provide compares to industry averages and customer expectations.
Nearly 11,000 customers expressed their opinions about contact centers to ForeSee in the month of February. ForeSee’s satisfaction benchmark for contact centers is at 70 on the company’s 100-point scale. This is an average score that contact centers can use as a yardstick against which to measure their own performance. Companies scoring significantly higher than 70 are outperforming the industry average. Companies scoring significantly below 70 have a lot of work to do, because their customers’ satisfaction has a direct impact on future actions, such as the likelihood to purchase from the company in the future. -- 174% more likely than less satisfied customers to make contact again, which means higher frequency of interaction, improved engagement, and increased share of mind and wallet.
Free Excel Erlang Calculator. We have developed a free Erlang C calculator to help with your call centre planning.
This is a simple Excel spreadsheet tool that allows you to work out how many agents you will need. You just need to enter your call volume and the service level that you would like to achieve. The calculator then looks at the agent capacity you would need to achieve the service level. And because it is all done in an Excel spreadsheet it makes it pretty easy for you to model different call volumes across the course of the day. The calculator is based on Microsoft Excel with a bit of nifty software programming from Joanne Sparkes at Expedio Spreadsheets using a mathematical technique called Erlang Theory*. Click here to download the Erlang calculator. To get the calculator to work you will need to have macros enabled on your computer. In excel select Tools > Options > Security > Macro Security and then select medium. You can then “Enable macro” when you open the spreadsheet. SWPP - Society of Workforce Planning Professionals.
Contact centre survey highlights opportunities for savings.
DMG Consulting LLC. Call Center Metrics. Contact Center Pipeline journal for contact center managers. ContactCenterWorld.com : The Global Association for Contact Center Best Practices and Networking - CRM, Contact Center, Call Center. Article : New Approaches To Customer Management. By Rob McDougall, President and co-founder of Upstream Works Speak to any Customer Relationship Management (CRM) pundit and you will quickly find that CRM is not a technology.
CRM is an approach to managing relationships with customers that must be determined through alignment of your various business stakeholders and your business goals. Once this strategy has been determined, then a supporting technology can be introduced. Managing your customer’s interactions is a new approach to CRM that must have the same strategy and alignment across the business. Executives are realizing that the interactions they are having with their customers are driving their business and that understanding how the customers affect the business and how the business affects the customers is vital in this new century.
Traditionally, interactions have not been the prime focus of a CRM implementation. Call Center Industry Reports - 12 KPI. Call Center Software - Five9. Outbound Call Center Community eNewsletter. The latest news from the Outbound Call Center Online Community.
Sponsored by Five9. Powered by TMCnet. RS Components, a premier high service distributor of electronics and maintenance products, has been recognized for its service in the contact center industry by receiving the China Best Customer Contact Centre Industry Promising Star of the Year award at the “2011 China Best Customer Contact Centre and CRM Awards.” Social media networks are continuing to visibly alter the ways in which we communicate, listen and promote. TargetX, a student recruiting firm, is making use of this popularity and is integrating Facebook and Twitter into its customer relationship management system. SQM Group Inc. Compare Inbound Call Center Services & Outsourced Call Center Services - A Resource for Pricing, Resarch, Advice & M. We are the leading resource for information on Inbound Call Center and Outbound Telemarketing Services.
Learn about various service options and special considerations for your specific business’ needs. Get free competitive price quotes from premier service providers via our secure request for quotes service. Note, the call center services we connect you with deal exclusively with inbound calling. For outbound telemarketing services, click the “Telemarketing” tab above, or click here to read our content on Telemarketing Services. You can choose to speak with one of our Purchasing Advisors who can walk you through the process and handle any issues or questions that arise. Verify your information and give an overview of the purchasing process Provide purchasing tips and send buyer's guides Provide supplier profiles and ratings Mediate issues with suppliers Should I Outsource/Offshore?
While outsourcing can help lower costs, it can also potentially hurt your business. Contact Center Papers - Free Knowledge Network. A Call Center is operated by a company to administer incoming product support or information inquiries from customers. Outgoing calls for telemarketing, clientele, product services, and debt collection are also made. In addition to a call center, collective handling of letters, faxes, live chat, and e-mails at one location may be referred to as a Contact Center.This page will be dedicated to papers focused on these centers and how they can be grown or improved. New resource links will appear regularly. Call Center Training, Events, Certification, Resources, and Consulting.