Call Center Software | CCNG Regional Meeting | Envision
Mar 28, 2008

CCNG Regional Meeting
Posted by: Connie Smith

Yesterday I spoke at a CCNG Regional Meeting in Lisle, Illinois a suburb just outside of Chicago.  My topic was about the past, present and future of quality monitoring programs.  We all agreed that there has been a lot of change in this area and that there is more to come.  Here is what we discussed in regards to evaluation forms:
 
Quality programs of the past tended to use evaluation forms as a way to audit agents.  When filling out the forms, evaluators had a “check the box” mentality and their main goal was to complete their evaluations so they could provide their agents with their scores.  Average number of skills evaluated ranged from 25 – 40 and the form was long, cumbersome and nit-picky. Most forms were 100% yes/no in scoring, which left no room for development.  This made for a negative, big brother program.
 
Quality programs of the present are usedasacoaching and development tool where the score is de-emphasized and is used only as an indicator of an agent’s skill.  The forms are much more streamlined with the average number of skills sitting at 15 or less.  New subjective skills such as tone and empathy have been added into the mix as the industry now understands this is key if you are attempting to evaluate the customer experience.  100% yes/no grading has gone by the wayside with the introduction of tiered scoring for the skills that are not objective. Completion of the evaluation forms is followed up by coaching which turned a once audit program into a coaching and development program.       
 
Quality programs of the future will look a whole lot different as the voice of the customer is expanded into the enterprise through analytics.  The natural evolution of quality will be expanded from the contact center to the enterprise and recordings that used to be listened to for agent evaluation purposes will be expanded to other enterprise departments to learn valuable things such as why customers buy from you, what processes are broken and need to be fixed and why are customers leaving you to go to competitors.
 
What do you think the future of quality monitoring will look like?  

 
CCNG Regional Meeting - 12:00 AM | Call Center Best Practices | Add Comment (0) |
Mar 24, 2008

America's Most Admired Companies
Posted by: Connie Smith

Fortune Magazine just recently issued an article detailing America's Most Admired Companies. They surveyed more than 3,700 people from various verticals and the results show that 20% of the most admired companies are Envision customers!
 
Current Envision customer’s included in the ranking were Southwest Airlines, Costco, Microsoft and Nordstroms. This is a testament to how Envision solutions assist with delivering world class customer service and allow organizations to truly tune into the voice of their customers. To view all of America's Most Admired Companies, click here.  
 
What do you think differentiates the listed companies from the rest? Let me know your thoughts!

 
America's Most Admired Companies - 12:00 AM | General | Add Comment (0) |
Mar 21, 2008

Call Center Quick Tip -- Celebrate Success!
Posted by: Connie Smith

Today's Call Center Quick Tip comes from Brian Freer, manager of provider services at Capital District Physicians' Health Plan:
 
Celebrate success
Many times your phone staff will “step up” to help meet a service goal. How are you rewarding this? Sometimes a simple heartfelt “thank you!” goes a long way. I can remember being new to CDPHP and getting buried with calls. I was pleasantly surprised when management came around to each representative at the end of the day just to say “thank you!” What a great feeling! Celebrations can be creative and fun, without impacting your budget. Recently, we handed out Nestle® Crunch® bars to representatives that volunteered for overtime and “helped out in a crunch.”


 
Call Center Quick Tip -- Celebrate Success! - 12:00 AM | Call Center Best Practices | Add Comment (0) |
Mar 14, 2008

Call Center Quick Tip -- eLearning Fun
Posted by: Connie Smith

Today's Call Center Quick Tip comes from Kim Goff, quality manager for Consumer Services at Nike:flickr photo courtesy of morecoffeeplease


eLearning Fun
Mock calls are a great way to help an agent learn how to master a certain type of call. We’ve had fun letting agents record a mock call using eLearning and sending out the example to their teammates. It keeps them involved and makes it fun to practice skills as well as sharing their ideas with the rest of the team.






flickr photo courtesy of morecoffeeplease.
 
Call Center Quick Tip -- eLearning Fun - 8:13 AM | Coaching & Agent Effectiveness | Add Comment (0) |
Mar 12, 2008

eLearning Clips: What Are You Waiting For?
Posted by: Connie Smith

If you are an Envision eLearning™ customer but you haven’t managed to get eLearning clips off the shelf and into your reps' hands my message to you is: "What are you waiting for?" This has got to be the greatest contact center tool around and it’s time to start taking advantage of it. Here’s what you need to get started:
  1. Appoint someone in charge of Envision eLearning
  2. Set aside a couple hours a week to getting this program up and going
  3. Take an Envision training refresher course on how to build and publish clips
  4. Create a welcome clip to send to your agents. This should be a clip to explain what Envision eLearning is and the types of clips they can expect to receive
  5. Start out by creating 1 clip for each skill on your evaluation form
Well, what are you waiting for… start creating Envision eLearning clips today!



 
eLearning Clips: What Are You Waiting For? - 9:13 AM | Call Center Best Practices | Add Comment (0) |
Mar 10, 2008

The Voice of the Customer
Posted by: Connie Smith

CustomerOps.com recently posted an article about Twitter and points out that monitoring what your customers are saying through social media can be a lucrative practice. You can easily gather useful intelligence through aggregators like Twitter and Google.

If you're recording your calls in the contact center or throughout the enterprise, you also have a gold mine of customer information at your fingertips. What are your customers saying about your products and services? How can you improve processes to better serve your customers? Are you providing the call recordings to other departments so that they can hear, firsthand, the feedback directly from your customers?

Are you listening to the voice of your customer? How are you utilizing resources like your call recordings and social media to gather customer feedback and insure positive customer experiences?

 

Post tags: CustomerOps, Twitter, , , , ,

 
The Voice of the Customer - 8:41 AM | Call Center Best Practices | Add Comment (0) |
Mar 07, 2008

Envision Exchange: Calibration
Posted by: Connie Smith

Yesterday, I facilitated an Envision Exchange™ call with over 100 contact center professionals present.  We all came together to discuss the complicated and important topic of Contact Center Calibration.  I provided a definition of calibration which is: The process by which you remove variation in the way that criteria are interpreted from person to person. Quite simply, people just naturally see things differently. If more than one person is evaluating customer interactions, it is critical that we calibrate to ensure consistency and fairness.
 
We talked about many essential areas such as variance calculations and percentages, facilitation and process and how to calibrate across multiple sites. You can access the full recording of the Envision Exchange call.
 
You can also view detailed notes highlighting the challenges and solutions discussed by the group.
Thanks for such a great session on calibration! Still have unanswered questions about calibration?  Why don’t you post a question to our blog community?
 
 
 
Envision Exchange: Calibration - 12:00 AM | General | Add Comment (2) |