Join Jona Berta of Southwest Airlines, and Connie Smith, industry consultant for Envision as they present a complimentary webinar titled, "How Southwest Airlines Achieves Peak Agent Performance - The Successful Quality Program Makeover". 

This empowering Web session is now available online.  To view this free webinar, please click here.  
 

• Social Networking for Customer Contact
• Speech Recognition Interfaces for Inbound and Outbound Customer Contact Applications
• Pro-Active Customer Contact

1. The global recession and resulting impacts that have touched us all in some way have had at least one positive affect on the contact center industry – it’s forced us all to look closely at our operations and be creative and assertive about how to do things by new or even unconventional means in order to more closely manage costs and in many cases do more with less. It’s made almost everyone leaner, which can be limiting of course, but is also historically a tremendous impetus for change, and even innovation when we’re motivated or mandated to do so.
2. As if delivering excellent customer service wasn’t important before, the economic crisis has likely even amplified the requirement for it. Because consumers (businesses and individuals) are leaner as well, they are pickier and more careful about their investments in products and services, and have less tolerance for ineptitude in their delivery by vendors, as there are typically many other hungry (leaner) competitors standing in line to service them better. So the cruel irony is the demand for better service has only intensified, while the traditional means and resources to deliver on it have likely been decimated or at least “modified.”

• Create an opportunity to fulfill a commitment, even when one doesn't naturally exist, and then fulfill it, not just once but always. 
• More often than not, the secret to customer loyalty lies in the little things that you can generate across the customers' experience of your product or service. 
• A complete picture of the experience life cycle cannot be gained by looking at just numbers.  It involves contribution from across your workforce - thus making it harder to implement and impossible to copy & replicate too - thus a sustainable competitive advantage.
• Not only did the GM consider it an honor to work for the Four Seasons, he considers it an honor to work with his employees.  Really.

Lessons learned.

Post tags: Contact Center Technologies

• What the key barriers are to mainstream contact center adoption of speech analytics solutions
• The new paradigm: “Blue Sky” speech analytics vs. “Right-Sized” speech analytics
  – breaking down the barriers
• The benefits of a right-sized speech analytics solution to the agent, the center,
  the enterprise and your customer experience

According to Keith Dawson, principal analyst with Frost & Sullivan, “Envision InteractionIQ breaks down the barriers for contact centers that have not yet been able to take advantage of speech analytics technology.  Up to now we have not seen wide spread adoption of speech analytics even though it can offer tremendously valuable insights to agent, center and organizational performance and trends. InteractionIQ drastically reduces the total cost of ownership for speech analytics while still delivering the market’s core and most practical needs for speech processing technology.”

Envision InteractionIQ integrates with Envision Performance Analytics™ to make up the Envision Analytics Suite.

Post tags: Keith Dawson, Frost & Sullivan, Speech Analytics

"A massive volume of information pours into every contact center daily. The challenge is to somehow utilize all that information for actionable purposes, whether for organizational change or simply to better train customer service representatives (CSRs) to handle a particular kind of call. With the release of Centricity 9.7, the latest version of its workforce optimization (WFO) platform, Seattle-based Envision Telephony has chosen to highlight information-tagging as a main feature."  ... to read the entire article, visit DestinationCRM.com

Post tags: Christopher Musico, call center, callcenter best practices, contact center, destinationCRM

Clearly communicate sales targets:

• Set expectations: Communicate sales objectives on a daily basis so your Agents know exactly what is expected of them.
• Provide feedback: Post daily sales results at each Agent’s desk or on-line so they know how they are performing versus expectations.
• Spot trends: Analyze results per Agent and, per product, to determine trends. Use these trends to coach your team to higher performance.

Train your call center Agents on how to sell:

• Hold sales skills workshops: Having good customer service skills isn’t enough. They need to attend a call center sales workshop so they can learn how to upsell and right size client accounts.
• Conduct product knowledge training: During team meetings, have each call center Agent take turns doing a five minute presentation on the key selling benefits of a product.
• Distribute current competitive information: Train your Agents on how your products and services compare to your competitors. Provide them with solid answers they can use when a client says, “But your competitor offers…”

Provide a “big picture perspective for your Agents:

• Key Business Indicators: Ensure your Agents understand how their performance impacts your department, your company and its customers.

Motivate your call center Agents:

• Rewards and recognition: Give out out prizes for “Most Improved Performer” or “Top Ten Salespeople.” The rewards can be food, movie passes or company branded items like mugs or caps.
• Motivational ideas: Use one idea per week from an employee motivation book like “1,001 Ways to Reward Employees” by Bob Nelson and Ken Blanchard to encourage your team.
• Post a “Wall of Fame”: Show photos of the top sales Agent for each product. Beneath each photo, have that Agent share their best sales tips on how to sell that particular product.

Constantly reinforce your team’s sales performance:

• Share best practices: Discuss sales tips at every team meeting, shift huddle and one-on-one coaching session.
• Send out a “Sales Tip of the Day” to your Agents: Ask your top-selling Agents to write the tips so they get public recognition.

Use these 12 tips to improve your call center’s up-selling and rightsizing performance. Ensure your Agents understand how their performance impacts your department, your company and its customers.

The Executive Direct program offers every customer contact a phone, Web or email option for submitting their inquiry. When received, an appropriate member of Envision’s executive team, based on the nature of the inquiry, will respond directly to the request within 48 business hours, guaranteed.

The program has been touted by industry analysts as a competitive differentiator that further validates Envision’s mission to provide an unparalleled level of customer intimacy and centricity in the WFO marketplace.

Paul Stockford, president of Saddletree Research, noted “Envision’s Executive Direct program is a unique and innovative add-on to its overall approach to customer service. Their willingness to grant such unadulterated access to the very top level of the organization’s management underscores Envision’s commitment to ensuring a positive experience for every customer.”

 

For more information on the program, visit the program overview.

Post tags: Paul Stockford, call center, callcenter best practices, contact center, Saddletree Research

• How to identify and eliminate barriers of performance
• Why perfectionism is not a preferred method of execution
• How to leverage people, process and technology to get things done
• What tips are needed to tackle procrastination
• How to avoid “Karoshi”, a term the Japanese have coined which means “Death from overwork”