One of the most important concepts to communicate to frontline agents is the Power of One.  There are two important messages to convey related to the Power of One. First, each agent needs to recognize the impact a single conversation can have on customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention. Second, agents should be aware of the [...]

With the recent economic downturn, most call centers have been enjoying a lower turnover rate than usual as most staff are staying in one place longer.  While you can be happy with this increased retention rate, it doesn’t mean you can forget about turnover altogether. It’s important to know what your turnover rate is and [...]

If you are a call center trainer or quality specialist, all the faculty here at The Call Center School would highly recommend the QATC (Quality Assurance and Training Connection) Annual Conference being held September 15-17 in Nashville, TN.
Other conferences might have a topic or two devoted to training and quality monitoring issues. This conference has [...]

According to customer surveying expert, Fred Van Bennekom, in his book Customer Surveying, the best place to start designing a survey instrument is at the end! Not at the end of the survey questionnaire, but at the end of the survey project — the final survey report. While you certainly can’t write the results until [...]

Keep in mind that the biggest reason to implement quality monitoring is to provide coaching scenarios for your frontline agents and supervisors.  If you think more about looking at recorded calls as a place to find “coachable moments” rather than a numerical scoring process, you’ll have much more success and agent buy-in to the whole [...]

The next time you perform a customer satisfaction survey, think about doing a “survey before the survey” as part of your questionnaire design process. This process, generally referred to as a “critical incident study” will help you define the most salient customer issues and will guide the question design on your survey instrument.
There is a [...]

When you think about what to measure and report in call centers, develop your KPIs around your three primary stakeholder groups.  Consider the three groups of people you need to keep happy each day — the customer, the frontline staff, and senior management — and then identify what each of those groups cares about most. [...]

A key element for the success of promising new call center employees is to pair them with a mentor — someone that can serve as a role model and trusted advisor. As a supervisor or team manager, you may have senior members of your team serve in a mentor role, or you as the direct manager [...]

Could you be creating an unprofessional image of your company by sending out emails that contain common grammar, punctuation, or word usage problems?  Many of your staff may be sending out messages with mistakes that go undetected by standard SpellCheck tools.
To test the writing and editing skills of your email staff, see if they can [...]

When a call center agent is not performing up to par, it’s often assumed that the person may need more training.  However, putting the agent back through another training class may not address the problem at all.  The need for training is a common performance mis-diagnosis and can waste time and resources while the real [...]