It’s time for those on the frontlines of contact center management to start reporting on themselves — good or bad. Unlike the classic annual review where the “boss” reviews the performance of the employee, contact center management should consider reviewing themselves and produce an annual report. Publicly traded corporations produce a mandatory annual report. Why shouldn’t contact centers do the same thing? It’s well known that contact centers often have a tough time gaining the attention and, unfortunately in some cases, the respect of corporate management. This brilliant idea of producing a contact center annual report should become a “must-do” for all contact center management. After all, what better way to be heard? The key is to do this in the absolutely most professional manner; otherwise it will be dismissed or, worse, have the opposite impact of its intention and backfire. This issue provides a comprehensive compass to doing this correctly.
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One of the nation’s largest wireless carriers sent a letter to approximately 1,000 of its customers, effectively absolving them of their contract agreements and final bill payments because they would no longer be providing them service due to the fact that they relied too much on customer service. I believe if you’re reading this, you don’t agree with companies that adopt that model of addressing “difficult” customers. I don’t agree with it either and that’s why this issue is chock-full of articles with great insight into how you can successfully address issues and challenges with customers. It all starts with your corporate internal infrastructure and policy decisions.
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This issue offers a strong focus on personnel. In Bottom Line we cover hiring processes. Profile provides advice for advancing in contact center management. Expert Advice offers guidance on the issues of how to address customers and employees who fall into different generational categories. In Human Capital we present a fresh approach to tackling turnover. If your “employees” are outsourced, Sites & Facilities addresses this issue. We then explore the impact the back office has on your frontline in Trend Watch. Feature Focus, Special Report, Technology and Vendor Showcase steer you toward technology and budget solutions you really need to know about.
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How many times have you encountered a situation, whether personal or professional, where you’ve said to yourself, “If only I knew the answer … I would…” or, I could…” or, I might…”?
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Every business that directly serves end-customers knows the mantras that prevail regarding the perils to the business and its bottom line if they provide lousy customer service. Those mantras include: You will lose customers; It costs “x” amount more to gain a new customer than it costs to retain a customer (the amount varies depending upon the source); It costs the business dearly in agent morale and telecom charges if customers are bounced around from agent to agent --- and the list goes on. The problem with these mantras is they are all business-centric --- how lousy customer service affects the business. As a result, assessments of the risks of providing lousy customer service are conducted. For some businesses, the thought-process is: “What is the worst-case scenario? What will be the effect of our lousy customer service on our customers anyway? Come on, really, it can’t be that bad. Customers will probably just do one of three things: defect and go to a competitor (how many of them can there be, after all, we’re the best/only choice); they’ll tell a hand-full or less of potential customers that we’re not the best business to deal with, or, if we’re lucky, they’ll simply chalk it up to ‘that’s just the way it is’ and continue to do business with us.”
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In this welcome to the new year of 2007 issue, we explore many important topics especially in two very in-depth Special Report articles. You will be treated to a first-hand account of the Global State of the Contact Center Industry. The article delves into many, many areas that are pertinent to what is being done in contact centers and addresses the big question of, Are we doing the right things? There is also a very interesting section that looks at the issue of the gap between what companies think o
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