Contact Centers

When evaluating your contact center staff, you’ll likely want to establish a performance standard, but what standard works best? In an NCOF session last week, Tim Holody, chief operating officer with jewelry cataloger Seta Corp. (Palm Beach Jewelry), made a case for catalogers to get away from old measurements of calls per hour in the call center. Instead, he suggested that call centers adopt a sales revenue per hour metric. “We’d probably like reps to take eight calls per hour,” he said. “Multiply that by (Seta’s average order of) $150, and we’d want reps to generate $1,250 in sales per hour.” On the other hand, Holody

As the cost of acquiring customers continues to rise, holding on to the customers who already are loyal has become paramount to multichannel marketing efforts. Keep the customer happy and she’ll be more likely to stick around. Derrell Knight, president of Message Technologies, an outsourced call center and interactive voice response (IVR) developer and host, explains how IVR allows you to optimize your customer service reps’ workloads and keep your customers satisfied. Catalog Success Idea Factory: How can IVR contribute positively to customer retention? Derrell Knight: Customers often call you because there’s a problem they’re trying to resolve. And most of those requests are repetitive, meaning

Customer service disagreements and disputes can escalate into more severe confrontations that require a customer service manager’s intervention. It’s a manager’s responsibility to take care to avoid behavior that could result in negative effects such as litigation or diminished productivity. Below are four key conflict management strategies that can make a significant difference in effectively resolving disagreements and disputes with your customers. 1. Establish a connection. Customer service managers should use language that creates an atmosphere of interest and genuine concern. Avoid negative phrases such as, “What’s the problem?” or language that sends a message of disinterest or disrespect. You’ll find greater success by

The rise of the Internet has given way to a customer who is more informed about her buying options and more discerning about what constitutes good customer service. The challenge then becomes how to meet increasing customer expectations in a time of shrinking budgets and resources, according to the authors of “5 Contact Center Megatrends and How to Ride Them,” a whitepaper recently released by contact center software provider eGain. In the whitepaper, eGain offers two tips to improve customer service in the contact center. 1. Think like your customers. While simple, this first step often is overlooked by contact center managers focused on

Here’s one way to de-stress an irate customer: Use the six-second empathy tactic. Utilizing empathy entails demonstrating with words that you understand what the customer is saying and how he or she is feeling. It’s a statement that’s calming, comforting, positive and specific. A good empathetic statement said sincerely takes your contact center rep only six seconds to say. Here are some to try: ¥ “I understand how frustrating it is not to get the information when you want it.” ¥ “I understand how easy it is to get impatient with that product (or service).” ¥ “It sounds like you’re very upset. I see you need our full cooperation.” A

Whether they’re interacting with a customer on the phone or designing the layout of your next catalog, your employees are your company’s mouthpiece. And training employees company-wide to be customer focused at all times can have a big impact on how your customers perceive your brand, writes Craig Cochran, author of “Becoming a Customer-Focused Organization” (Paton Press). Cochran identifies five staff-training tactics that drive customer focus and long-term success. 1. Impart your catalog’s mission and strategy. The core reason for any organization’s existence is to serve its customers, and employees must understand this in no uncertain terms, notes Cochran. He recommends this message be

Missing Person Description: high-quality multichannel buyer Last Seen: purchasing online 18 months ago The Details: A customer placed an online order for top-quality merchandise 18 months ago. Delivery confirmation was received three days later. Your repeated attempts to contact the customer via direct mail and e-mail have been met with no response. This customer is extremely valuable, with a high lifetime value and history of repeat purchases. Please forward any information as soon as possible. Do you know which customers are missing in action? Somewhere deep in your housefile are people who no longer shop from you. For some, service and quality issues alienated

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

Readers: With this issue we welcome new columnist Jim Gilbert, a catalog and DM consultant and a professor of direct marketing. In this column, which we’ll publish 10 times this year, Mr. Gilbert will offer practical strategies that can help you boost sales and profitability. —Editors Any time a customer communicates with your company — that is, interacts with you via one of your customer touchpoints — you have an opportunity to increase sales and goodwill. Unfortunately in some cases, it’s also an opportunity to lose sales and goodwill. I can’t stress this enough: You must analyze and consistently monitor all of your customer