Ten Golden Rules For Call Centre Operator

Many customers end up frustrated after dealing with call centres, but here are a few tips to help call centre operators keep the customers happy.   For many companies, call centres are the only way they can practically and affordably deal with the number of customers they have seeking information. By their nature, often the call centre operators cannot not know everything about a company and how it operates and sometimes they only...

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Call Center Outsourcing Trends: How Outsourcing Call Center Functions Drive Business 2.0

Call center outsourcing has ushered in a radical paradigm shift in the way businesses consider traditional customer service. With the introduction of new technologies, organizations are finding that they can better serve their customers without sacrificing the fiscal and human resources necessary to host these tasks in-house. However, as outsourcing call center activities is a concept in constant flux, the businesses that utilize best-practices...

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Customer Service Back In The Day

I was at a gas station the other day and noticed something that caused me to look twice. At first, it appeared to be a normal occurrence, a man pumping gas and then cleaning his windshield. Thinking nothing of this, I continued with my gas purchase. When I again looked at the other vehicle, I saw a man walking to the rear of the same car, yet there was someone else continuing to clean his windshield. To my surprise, the...

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How to Provide Internal Customer Service Excellence

When we talk about customer service, we usually think about how we deal with the people who walk through our doors—both physical and virtual—to purchase our products and services. What we often fail to realize, however, is that we also have customers within our organizations; those customers are our co-workers. Customer service means being responsive to a customer’s needs and being resourceful in meeting those needs....

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Are Your Customers Getting Uniform Service?

If you want to offer the best possible customer service experience, be sure to be consistent.. How consistent are you with your customers? One sure way to lose business to competing vendors is to give a customer one answer the first time he or she has a question and a different answer the next time the issue is raised. Even worse is when one customer receives concessions that others do not; such as extending return deadlines...

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Businesses outsource IT for reasons other than cost

Cost-cutting is diminishing in importance as a reason to outsource IT, according to research of 630 contracts worth £14bn carried out by KPMG. In its 2012 UK Service Provider Performance and Satisfaction study, the KPMG found 70% of businesses are influenced by cost when making their outsourcing decision. This compares with 83% in the last survey two years ago. The results, from over 200 participants from user businesses, showed 46% said the...

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Make the most of those precious opportunities when connecting with your customers..

We've all heard the saying that "You never get a second chance to make a first impression." However, in the world of customer service it's often not about the first impression... it's about the second, a.k.a. the follow-up!  The truth is that most customer service and sales professionals do not fall down on the first impression. In customer service, we answer the phone and put on our "game day" voice, politely,...

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The Customer Service Tree

Imagine your customers are the branches that support the leaves (revenue), and you company as the trunk of your money tree that supports and supplies the customer branches Think of how a tree grows; it starts with one or two little branches. Those branches shoot off and create more branches, and so the process continues until a full-grown tree emerges. A customer who has a positive experience and tells just one person has helped your tree grow. That new customer branch may lay dormant and leafless for days, weeks,...

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Customer Service Back In The Day

I was at a gas station the other day and noticed something that caused me to look twice. At first, it appeared to be a normal occurrence, a man pumping gas and then cleaning his windshield. Thinking nothing of this, I continued with my gas purchase. When I again looked at the other vehicle, I saw a man walking to the rear of the same car, yet there was someone else continuing to clean his windshield. To my surprise, the person cleaning his windshield and tending to this gas was the gas station attendant, not the...

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The Changing Face of Customer Service

It was 10 years ago that I sat in a hotel room with my laptop plugged into the phone cord, fighting with my first version of a pda (a palmpilot), trying to make sense of an assignment in an ever-evolving industry — customer service. Just as foreign as the acrid air and constant motor noise of India were the changing ideas of what it meant to be a customer service expert. While the times have changed and business has become more efficient and...

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How to Hire the Best Customer Service People

Through many years of hiring Customer Service staff, I've found that competency based assessment is by far the most effective and accurate way. That is not to say that technical abilities should not be checked, rather that this in itself is insufficient to ensure success. Indeed it's very important to study the delegates' CVs, to check their relevant experience and qualifications, to ask questions of clarification...

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Become a Customer Service Raving Fan!

It seems to me that the way to get your customers to be raving fans of your business is to become raving fans of your customers. "Get Into Their Lives" This is the mantra at Marquis Jet, a company that sells "flight time" on a private jet in the form of calling cards, starting at $110,000.00 for 25 hours. Their client list is a who's who of Hollywood, including Matt Damon, Christina Agulera and J. Lo. When...

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Customer Service Metrics to Measure Client Satisfaction

When it comes to measuring the success of your customer service operation choosing the right set of metrics is essential. By creating a Balanced Scorecard made up of your most important deliverables you will be able to track your clients' satisfaction and report stakeholders’ key success factors.  The Balanced Scorecard was created by Harvard Business School Professor Robert Kaplan and Renaissance Solutions President David Norton and includes financial and non-financial indicators. Continue Reading.....

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Most Popular Outsourced Jobs

Outsourcing occurs when a company contracts out a portion of its business to another company; these jobs would have traditionally been done by in-house employees. It's important to make a distinction between outsourcing and offshoring. Jobs can be outsourced to local companies that specialize in that particular area. Offshoring, though still a form of outsourcing, is when a company outsources portions of its work to be done overseas. This is a growing trend as companies find that outsourcing and offshoring lead to greater efficiency and cost savings...

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Customer Service Outsourcing

There has been a lot of emphasis in recent years about customer service outsourcing as a way for companies to save money and reduce the need for a full customer support staff. Unfortunately, many people aren’t exactly sure what it means when a company decides to outsource their customer care and this can lead to a number of assumptions which just are not true. Outsourcing a call center is simply a means to reduce the cost of customer support, not a sign that companies don’t care about their customers like some people would like to believe. Customer...

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How to Maintain Traditional Customer Service in the Social Media Age

You’ve been monitoring your Facebook wall and Twitter pages, responding to customer inquiries. But what are the next steps you should take to stay abreast of the latest trends in social service?  The emergence of social media communities requires you to track a new set of customer service metrics. Fortunately, you’ll have a better understanding of who your customers are and their service expectations. In some cases, it might even mean the end of traditional service level agreements (SLAs). Continue Readin...

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Don’t take your bad day out on a call centre worker

Everyone loves to hate call centres, but it’s time to give them a break because they generally provide a convenient and effective service. If you’re foaming at the mouth right now thinking that the ten minutes you’ve just spent on hold being told “your call is important” was neither convenient nor effective, consider the alternative. Continue Read...

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Top 10 Customer Service Technology Trends for 2012

Sabio, the specialist contact center and unified communications systems integrator, has highlighted what it believes will be the Top 10 key technology trends that are set to shape the customer service landscape during 2012. Sabio has identified placing contact centers at the heart of an organization's social networking strategy; optimising websites for smartphone access; and supporting multi-channel customer engagement through consistent interactions...

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Things to Consider when Outsourcing your Call Center

This week’s guest blogger is Bill Samuels, President of Telesales Services a call center referral agency. He answers some common questions that he encounters regarding outsourced call center work. Bill is a call center industry expert that is highly acclaimed as a call center outsourcing consultant. Read Mor...

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Designing your customer support escalation

Does your company have an escalation procedure in handling an advanced or high-risk customer service concern? If not, it would be advisable to spend some staff time establishing one. Every business should have a set of rules and expectations on how to handle a customer service or support issue to maintain satisfaction. From frontline customer service personnel all the way up to executive management, every member of your customer-handling/interacting team should know what they can and cannot commit to on behalf of the company and when and how...

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Give Good Voicemail - Master the Art of Leaving Messages!

What’s the difference between a great voicemail message and one that’s lacking (and therefore stands less of a chance of getting returned right away, if at all)? It comes down to whether you “gave good voicemail” … or not! Wouldn’t it be great if there were official voicemail rules people had to follow? Read Mor...

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Why you need a call centre

And why Connections Call Center is your perfect pick! It’s common knowledge in our industry that every missed call is a missed opportunity. Missed opportunities might be missed sales, missed invites to special events or even missed introductions to business relationships and networking ties. If your company phone is not answered, there’s no telling what you’re missing out on. We’re all clear on the importance of answering a company’s phone calls… so why not just get an answering machine or a voicemail system? To that question, I counter with a...

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Benefits of Providing Quality Customer Service

Customer service is a universal concept; most companies have a customer service department. Companies that keep quality at the forefront of their operations are on track to becoming a better company and provide their customers with the quality service they deserve and should expect. Some of the benefits of providing quality customer service include increased revenues, improved customer service and customer loyalty.Read Mor...

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The Business and Customer Support

In order for a house to stay strong amidst natural disasters and pest attacks, the house should have been made with a strong foundation. Also with a business, it can stay strong amidst financial crises and negative publicity as long as it has a tough foundation. Human resources and product or service quality make up the foundation of a business. However, running a business does not stop in fulfilling the given two cores. The relationship of the business with its customers is a crucial element that secures triumph. To improve the relationship...

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Customer Support Rules

The customer support team is a special extension of the sales department. The team’s mission is to make sure customers are using the availed products and services in the right manner. Personal Approach Undeniably, automation makes the tasks of the customer support team easier. However, it lessens customer satisfaction. Machines and robots were not created to substitute real people in work. Services from machines and robots should still come with human touch. Dealing personally with customers is the best way to address a concern, while utilizing...

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Redefining Mobile Service Customers

The most memorable thing to a mobile service customer is not how long he has been subscribed to a mobile service. It is how he was treated by the provider as a valued customer when he hit the mobile support hotline for assistance. From time to time, a mobile service customer transacts with the provider via the different support services made available. In every transaction, there is mutual benefit between the customer and the provider. For instance when a mobile service customer re-subscribes to a mobile service, the customer enjoys the...

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