Tag Archives: agents

10 Interview Questions to Ask When Hiring All-Star Call Center Agents

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10 Interview Questions to Ask When Hiring All-Star Call Center AgentsGreat agents aren’t just important to call centers, they’re essential. Hiring committed, motivated, and qualified agents helps your contact center achieve its purpose.

On the flip side, hiring the wrong agents can be detrimental and costly. In fact, 27% of employers said that just one bad hire costs more than $50,000. Good call center managers instinctively know this, especially since 95% of a manager’s success resides in the ability to select the right people.

It’s key to ask the right questions during the interview, ones that help determine whether a candidate possess certain competencies. Here are the top 10 interviewing questions that are sure to lead your call center to the best agent for the job. Continue reading →

Killer Ways to Develop a Rock Star Customer Service Team

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Killer Ways to Develop a Rock Star Customer Service TeamIncreasingly, companies are recognizing the importance of customer service to their business. Once seen as just a “cost center“, the contact center is, in reality, the front line of customer service. Every interaction with a customer is an opportunity for your agents to exceed their expectations, turning happy customers into loyal customers, building your brand.

To do this, your customer service organization needs to be fully in tune, consistently putting on its best performance. Here are some killer ways to develop a “rock star” customer service team for your business. Continue reading →

Does Personality Matter for Call Center Agents?

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Does Personality Matter for Call Center Agents?If you’ve ever wandered up and down the aisles in a contact center, listening to the background drone of conversation, you have no doubt wondered about the people that work in this environment. What makes a good call center agent? Can you predict an individual’s potential – who will stay and thrive, and who won’t? All other things being equal, does personality matter for call center agents?

I reached out to a number of contact center managers and asked this same question. The answer, to my surprise, was “not really”. Continue reading →

Clever Ways to Motivate a Multi-Generational Workforce

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Light bulbToday, the generation gap inside the contact center is more complex than ever, putting tremendous pressure on supervisors who can’t employ a one-size-fits-all approach to managing. Even though multi-generational staff may perform the same roles, treating every agent the same way can have undesirable effects, creating difficulty in a diverse workforce. Continue reading →

Pitfalls for Using Overseas Call Centers

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Pitfalls for Using Overseas Call CentersWhen it is well thought out and executed properly, outsourcing your customer service can be a dream come true for you and your customers. On the other hand, it can also be an absolute nightmare that can wreak havoc on your reputation for years to come. If you look back to early 2001, several of the major computer manufacturing organizations shifted their customer service to call centers overseas. The idea was simple: customer support centers on foreign shores are cheaper. Within a few years, Dell, Gateway, and HP moved their operations back in house due to an overwhelming amount of customer complaints.

Let’s look at what happened and how can you avoid these mistakes with your business.

Continue reading →

Video Break: Squashing Call Volume Peaks Without Hiring More Agents

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Call-Back Solutions to Eliminate Hold-TimeI’m pleased to share with you a new Customer Success Story for today’s video break. The customer in this case is Bright Horizons (NYSE: BFAM), is a provider of child-care services, operating over 800 centers around the world.

Many call centers have peaks in their call volume as a result of holidays, bad weather, special promotions, etc. It can be a challenge to maintain a positive customer experience during these peaks, especially with a high Average Speed to Answer (ASA). Call center managers usually don’t want to staff up to cover the peak levels, because that would leave excess agent capacity during the off-peak days. One way to help smooth out these volume spikes is to give callers the option of a call-back, rather than waiting on hold. That way, they can go on about their lives and not be tied to a phone. Continue reading →

Chat-Based Customer Service at its Best and Worst

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Chat-Based Customer Service at its Best and WorstThe use of text-based chat for customer service has exploded in recent years. According to a recent report from Forrester, its use increased 43% between 2009 and 2012. Contact centers are drawn to live chat because a single agent can handle multiple simultaneous chats, as opposed to only one simultaneous voice call (which leads to lower average cost-per-call or cost-per-contact).

Another reason live chat has been so popular is that it aligns well with the new communication habits of consumers, especially younger ones. In terms of new channels for customer service, the rise of live chat can really be seen as parallel to the rising popularity of social media.  Both are text-based and asynchronous modes of interaction. Chat is private and one-to-one, while Twitter and Facebook are public and one-to-many. Continue reading →

What’s Your “Trick” for “Treating” Customers?

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What’s Your “Trick” for “Treating” Customers?As we gear up for the frighteningly fun Halloween season, the team at Fonolo got thinking, “How can we compare the world of ghosts, goblins and witches to the customer service and call center space?”

I’m sure we can all agree that the thought of calling a call center can often times be as frustrating as passing that house on the street with the porch light off. Then there’s feeling like a ghost while you’re waiting on hold, hearing the ghoulish sounds of, “your call is important to us”. Those are some of the scary options, but what about all the good comparisons between Halloween and your service organization?   Continue reading →

DANGER! The Warning Signs that Your Customer Experience is Suffering

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The Warning Signs that Your Customer Experience is Suffering

We talk a lot about the importance of “Customer Experience”, because it describes what your customers think of their interactions with your company. And nothing is more important than their opinion of you – your business depends on it.

So how will you know if the service you deliver is slipping, negatively affecting how customers perceive your brand?  Here are a few key symptoms to watch out for. Continue reading →