By Randy Saunders

In the latest Customer Creation podcast, Blake Landau interviews Maura Sullivan and Rob Siefker from the Zappos call center management team.

Maura and Rob have both worked for Zappos since the ... Read More

Which of these statements is true?

Statement 1

Contact center employees are a vital link to the customer.  Through the way they exercise their talents, knowledge, and resources, they are uniquely positioned to influence customer perceptions of the enterprise and build or diminish the brand promise.

Statement 2

Contact center employees are among the most poorly paid and under- appreciated employees in the enterprise.  They have limited career growth opportunities, are measured and evaluated more frequently than any other group of employees, and incur the highest turnover rates.

Of ... Read More

We all have been witnessing the steady growth of contact center agents who work outside the main call center (remote agents). The main driver of this business trend is the need to reduce costs and to improve contact center efficiency. Secondarily, enabling remote agents supports recruitment of an increasingly diverse and distributed workforce.

But Aberdeen Group has discovered a new benefit for using remote agents. Best-in-class companies have seen a +10% improvement in customer satisfaction.

This might run counter to logic. The assumption is that on-premise agents can be more closely monitored for consistent customer care. The best-in-class companies overcome this by paying more attention to training and learning how to manage a ... Read More

CFI Group, Ann Arbor MI, recently conducted a survey of 900 consumers about their experience when calling a vendor’s contact center. The news is not good. It is our industry’s version of Les Misérables.

Nearly 30% of customers were not satisfied with the call. Sheri Teodoru, partner and program director, CFI Group, noted that call centers need staffers who are not only knowledgeable about the products or services, but who are also able to solve problems. They need to be able to direct consumers to a place where their issues can be resolved, such as the company’s website or a retail location.

Ms. Teodoru said that ... Read More