Thursday - May 1, 2008
Pharmaceutical companies manage large quantities of content about their product lines. However, unlike other industries, the challenge of managing this information is exacerbated by regulatory and compliance demands and the need to manage information from multiple "touch points" across a diverse customer base including patients, healthcare providers and others. While pharmaceutical companies invest millions every year in enterprise content management systems to ensure information meets their demands, the systems don't always serve their most useful purpose.
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Saturday - April 19, 2008
I recently got a chance to speak with Jim Smith, vice president and general manager of Avaya's customer service applications division, about Avaya's launch of the Communication Manager 5.0 solution, which the company has positioned as a more cost-efficient and reliable way to implement end-to-end SIP in the contact center.
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Sunday - April 13, 2008
Here's a great anecdote: At one international call center, an agent was (after a time) discovered to be ending each customer call with the words "I love you." When his supervisor finally intervened and asked him for an explanation, he stated that he had wanted to show customers that he cared.
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Saturday - April 12, 2008
We often talk about the importance of recording calls in the call center to ensure that agents are properly following scripts, to measure customer satisfaction and to assist in proper coaching and training of call center agents. Additionally, most call centers use call recording solutions to determine agents' and groups' performance for the purpose of merit raises or promotions.
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Saturday - March 29, 2008
Good customer service skills are always important, but never maybe more than when you're talking with someone who just suffered a loss. In many cases, that is when customer service reps at insurance agencies interact with customers, says Kathleen Lawler, education director at Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of New York, a statewide insurance professional trade group with 1,900 members.
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Friday - March 14, 2008
Convergys Chief Executive David F. Dougherty received compensation valued at $6 million in 2007, a year in which the call-center and billing services company saw profit rise 2 percent. Dougherty, who was appointed CEO in April 2007, drew a base salary of $710,000 and a performance-related bonus of $591,521 according to a regulatory filing Wednesday.
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Saturday - March 8, 2008
Call centers for years have been using some sort of monitoring in order to measure performance and customer satisfaction. While there are as many methods of call monitoring as there are call centers, not all are effective for every organization. As customer satisfaction has become more important in the eyes of the organization, call center monitoring has taken priority.
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Friday - March 7, 2008
Are you ready for another piece of traditional call center conventional wisdom to be debunked? Some marketing professors at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School have found that the all-too-common CRM practice of firing low-value customers "may actually decrease firm profits," and that even "trying to increase the value of these customers may be counterproductive."
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Friday - March 7, 2008
If you had to pick between one of these two options, which would you choose? a) Jab yourself in the eye with a sharp stick. b) Call a customer service number to ask a question, lodge a complaint or request a service. If you considered a) for even a fleeting second, you probably flashed back to the joy of navigating an automated voice system.
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Thursday - February 28, 2008
Whenever a United States-based company sends jobs overseas or to Mexico, consumers can retaliate by boycotting that company's products or services. You can try hurting them in the wallet, though it rarely succeeds. Hershey CEO Rick Lenny gutted that company, closing the Oakdale, Calif., plant, among others, while sending jobs south of the border, where labor is cheaper.
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Sunday - February 17, 2008
Scammers from countries such as Nigeria and the United Kingdom have been using a taxpayer-funded telephone relay service for the deaf to target victims in the United States, current and former employees said. About 700 people are employed at a call center in Riverbank, Calif., that provides phone translations, called "relay services," for the deaf, hard of hearing and speech-impaired.
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