Expert Opinions
Employee engagement is about creating value and meaning for staff. Companies are beginning to see that the real benefits of creating a climate of engagement with employees can ensure delivery of an excellent service. But how do you engage with employees?
Much of what I've learned over the years about Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service has to do with the critical importance of customer data. It's how companies generate the right customer data, manage and share data the right way, and use it at the right time, and to best effect to optimize loyalty and profitability, that makes them successful, or not, on an individual customer basis. It's impossible to be successful without having as much relevant insight about customers as possible.
Very often vendors describe their social CRM offerings as extensions to an older paradigm of CRM, one that I think is vanishing and becoming hard to reconcile with the reality of today’s marketplace. Denis Pombriant, Founder and managing principal, Beagle Research Group, LLC talks about how social media can be leveraged for sales and customer service analytics.
Financial services organizations understand the importance of building and maintaining customer relationships. I spent the first 14 years of my career in banking, where we were forever striving (and spending millions of dollars) to create and maintain databases that would provide a complete view of the customer. This was a corporate goal long before the era of CRM and customer experience management (CEM).
In 2010, finding the right technology partner to move contact centers into the cloud, and the right commercial model to buy those services, will be vital. This year, in particular, purchasing decisions will be under scrutiny by finance departments, regulators and investors.
Outsourcing has its benefits for large companies looking to access non-core business functionalities at a marginal price. But IT professionals are also seeing the benefits of working for an outsourcing provider, which could take a cut above the industry pie.
2009 was a rough year for those in sales – and 2010 may not be much better, according to CSO Insights Inc.’s annual sales performance survey. But focusing on CRM technology could be a key cost-cutting strategy, a CSO survey found.
Mahendra Durai, the IT CTO of BMC Software, explains the technology behind predictive intelligence and what it can do to help businesses get rapid returns on their technology investments and slash their capital and operating expenses.
According to customer experience expert Lior Arussy, many businesses today fail to provide their employees with the ability to achieve customer service success. In this chapter, Arussy discusses the downside of an overly controlling management style and gives tips for organizations looking to empower employees.
The SaaS market in Japan has surpassed US$1 billion revenues in 2009, overtaking all of Asia combined, and is poised to still grow at a CAGR of 24% from 2009 to 2013 as adoption across all industries increases, the latest report from Springboard Research suggested.
Knowledge Central Multiple
Knowledge Central
Customer serving organisations have always faced a demand dilemma. This paper lays out the reasons why contact centre strategy is changing, outlining the benefits of the different solutions out there, and provide practical guidance to how to move to a hosted or virtual model.
Shrinkage can be one of the more elusive metrics in the contact center, but don’t underestimate its power. If properly measured and managed, the use of shrinkage can enable contact center leaders to achieve the ideal balance of productive and unproductive time. Unchecked shrinkage will negatively affect service levels and the overall contact center budget.
Operational risk is an ever-present challenge of the banking industry, inhibiting performance and reducing profits as banks need to keep adequate reserves of capital to cover potential losses. But in recent years, corporate wrongdoing, high-profile fraud and major process failures have put the dangers of operational risk – and the consequences of poorly managing it – in the spotlight. This case study looks at how Woori Bank in Korea went with analytics to reduce its operational risks.
This case study is about how Hindustan Unilever uses change management solution from SAP to synchronise software development across all its offices in India.
Cell phone activities are a great way to encourage team building in call centers. This chapter outlines a few cell phone activities call center managers can use to introduce new employees to the call center team and break the ice in the office.
In order to develop a strategic Internet marketing plan marketers need to understand where their customers and potential customers are going for information. Companies have the potential to succeed if they effectively target these customers with innovative and strategic Internet marketing techniques through the use of social networking sites and Web 2.0 technology.
What specific techniques could you suggest to lower average talk time for inbound order entry/ customer service calls on an agent level? (i.e.: call phrases, call control techniques etc.) For example, many of the extended calls seem to be when a supervisor is requested ... Is there a way to educate the agents in techniques to avoid supervisor escalations? Or is there a way to de-escalate a caller immediately requesting a supervisor?
Handling customer interactions isn't always easy, since every interaction is unique and different customers present different challenges. We've put together this list of the things call center agents and customer service reps should and shouldn't do during a call center interaction.
