Edited by Donna Loyle Two industry veterans share their insights on how to best leverage operational benchmarks and best practices. A catalog executive suffers from no shortage of metrics to watch for: from average order value to e-mail inquiry turnaround times to indirect labor costs to number of calls answered in 20 seconds or less. The real questions, though, are how to use the numbers, and if the metrics even are appropriate to track for your operations. Comparing operations solely on numbers can be misleading. Is it better to establish a set of best practices and then hold your staff accountable to them?
Rockville Centre
Edited by Donna Loyle Two industry veterans share their insights on how to best leverage operational benchmarks and best practices. A catalog executive suffers from no shortage of metrics to watch for: from average order value to e-mail inquiry turnaround times to indirect labor costs to number of calls answered in 20 seconds or less. The real questions, though, are how to use the numbers, and if the metrics even are appropriate to track for your operations. Comparing operations solely on numbers can be misleading. Is it better to establish a set of best practices and then hold your staff accountable to them?
If your customer service reps (CSRs) must respond to customers' e-mails, screen them not just for their phone manners, but also for their writing ability, notes Liz Kislik, president of Liz Kislik Associates, a Rockville Centre, N.Y.-based management consultancy. During the interview process, give CSR candidates an actual customer e-mail (deleting the customer's name and contact information, of course), and ask candidates to respond to it as best they can. Look for candidates who can write grammatically correct and professional-sounding sentences, says Kislik. "Bear in mind, you may actually have to hire e-mail-only CSRs, especially if your current phone CSRs can't write well,"
Devise a compensation program that galvanizes your contact center reps By Donna Loyle As the economy improves, labor markets no doubt will begin to open up in some regions, and turnover may become an issue in some catalogers' contact centers. "Many customer service reps feel they're undercompensated for the value of the job they do, that is, in relation to the energy they exert on the job and the stress they encounter in dealing with customers all day," recounts Liz Kislik, president of Liz Kislik Associates, a management consultancy based in Rockville Centre, N.Y. "If they think they can get slightly higher
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