Posts under ‘call center operations’

Getting common – implementing and enforcing consistent processes across all your call center sites – is essential if you want your business to thrive. As I explained in my last post, getting common allows you to optimize the overall performance of your company so you’re in position to increase revenues and continue growing.
But you [...]

When you’re managing a call center workforce, you’re up against several big challenges:
• Large distributed workforce. This may include multiple call centers run by multiple vendors, operating across the country or around the world.
• High percentage of entry-level positions. Inexperienced workers require lots of training, supervision, and feedback.
• Higher employee turnover than many industries. This [...]

When you have multiple call center vendors, here’s the basic dilemma: You want to distribute calls across all your call centers in the way that’s most beneficial to your business. At the same time, each vendor is worried about losing calls to the other suppliers.
To get your vendors to think differently and focus on [...]

When your business relies on multiple call center vendors, your goal is to maximize call center performance across the board in order to support your long-term goals. This can be at odds with the self-protective, short-sighted mindset of many call center suppliers.
For instance, one of CXO’s clients has three call center vendors. Each of those [...]

When you’re launching a call center operation, some procedural needs will be obvious, and you can start documenting procedures and updating and improving procedures from day one.
However, the need for many procedures will emerge over time. That’s why you should also develop a system for logging daily events. You want to know what you [...]

In my last post, I looked at why start-up call center operations need to make documentation a high priority. Proper documentation allows you to standardize and streamline all your business processes – even those that seem obvious.
Once you have procedures in place, then you need to regularly review and update your processes. Good documentation [...]

If you’re running a call center operation, documenting procedures is just common sense. The problem is, too many people just don’t do it.
This is a real Achilles Heel for many start-ups. When everyone is running as fast as they can to keep up with all the aspects of starting a business, nobody takes [...]

Call routing is one of the biggest challenges faced by companies that have multiple call center vendors handling multiple products or services.
Routing is further complicated by multiple promotions running in multiple markets – and therefore multiple toll-free numbers connected to each product or service.
With all these factors in play, call routing quickly becomes [...]

If you want to grow a successful customer management operation, you need to have a strong hub-and-spoke model, where a centralized hub ties together your customer management functions and all of your call centers – the “spokes” – to provide consistent, comprehensive oversight for all your suppliers.
A strong hub will benefit your business in [...]

If your business is working with call center vendors, you have to provide constant oversight to ensure that those vendors are managing their business to your expectations. Keeping a close eye on metrics allows you to accurately monitor performance and then set clear expectations based on what you learn from the data.
Imagine a sales [...]