Contact Center Geek
Whether you believe in The Great Resignation or The Great Reshuffle, recruiting and hiring has become as important as ever. With an unmatched enthusiasm for the contact center business and over two decades of experience, Matt Beckwith shares insights on how to improve the recruiting and hiring process.
Read MoreI had an absolute blast being a guest on Rick Denton’s terrific podcast, “CX Passport”. We had a wonderful time discussing changes in customer service and customer experience through the years and what that looks like in the pest control and home services industry.
Read MoreThis latest book from Brad Cleveland, a legend in the customer service and customer experience space, is a terrific jump into how to build, and execute on, a solid customer experience vision. Not just a high-level overview, Leading the Customer Experience lays out a comprehensive view of how to go from just caring about your customers to building a super focused customer experience strategy.
Read MoreStop me if you’ve heard this one before. A new team member joins your contact center. She is put through training and taught how to use her phone and your company CRM, how to de-escalate upset customers, and how to go through the necessary talking points on common calls... And just as common is the scenario where that top-performer-turned-Supervisor is asked to do her new job with little or no training.
Read MoreLessons on Customer Experience are all around us, if we just look for them. All of us, after all, are customers first. Metallica, the metal band that has been around since the 80s could teach us all something about Customer Experience.
Read MoreThis year’s Customer Contact West conference was held at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix. I really enjoy this event every year. It’s a smaller conference, I believe around 350 attendees, but the events and content are huge! The format of the sessions are great. The Frost & Sullivan team does a great job mixing up keynotes, general sessions, interactive sessions, panels and roundtables so there are so many opportunities to learn and connect with other customer contact and customer experience leaders.
Read MoreGuest post from Andrew Gilliam - About six months ago, the survey that I've been working on for almost two years went live. It's the first step toward revitalizing our Voice of the Customer program. In the beginning, I recognized that capturing actionable data will be very challenging and essential to gain traction.
Read MoreOn episode 329 from July 17, 2018, “Be a Customer Experience Change Agent”, Jeannie spoke about how you can be a customer experience change agent in your company: Go big, find quick CX wins, and gather your champions.
The episode got me thinking about the early days of my career. How I longed to get promoted to a position where I could actually make a difference. And how I learned, thankfully early on, that I could make a difference no matter the position I held.
Read MoreBefore I begin, I want to tell you a love story. A story about how a man from Northern California fell in love with a chicken sandwich and those funny cows. Or at least, provide a little proof that it is not my intent to publicly shame the home of the best chicken sandwich in the nation.
Read MoreThroughout my contact center career, I have seen trends come and go. Some trends seem to last forever while some seem to stick around far longer than they should. These are the things left over from call center days gone by that just need to go, the relics of those that came before us. Yes, I know, that sounds dramatic, but I think it's time to make dramatic changes.
Read MoreThe wonderful thing about Contact Centers is that we get to measure everything that is important to our customers and team members. Such metrics as calls received, cost per inbound contact, and customer survey feedback are critical to analyzing and maintaining a well-functioning Contact Center.
Read MoreAs contact center leaders, we are always in search of the best way to effectively manage our operations, which can simply translate to how well are we managing costs. But our job is far more than just "managing costs". It is also our job to communicate how our teams impact the rest of the business and the bottom line. It is our job to fight for what is right for our team members, and to manage costs appropriately.
Read MoreIn Episode #42 we welcome Matt Beckwith, Contact Center Director. We met Matt on the weekly #ICMIChat on Twitter and have loved his perspective on customer service, customer experience, and contact centers.
Read MoreHappy New Year! The new year often brings new candidates to the job market, so if you're taking advantage of that like I am, here are three tips to improve your contact center’s recruiting and hiring efforts. If you’re not doing them now, feel free to consider them New Year’s Resolutions.
This post originally appeared on ICMI.com.
Read MoreThe real punishment I put myself through however, is taking surveys. Although I’m not able to take one every day, I actively seek out opportunities to take them and have completed hundreds over the past several years. I have also worked for some companies where I have learned a great deal about customer feedback programs.
Read MoreContact center managers, you are still wrong about AHT (Average Handle Time, also known as Agents Hate This). Maybe not all of you are, but for sure, many of you are.
I know what you’re likely asking, how would you know if you’re wrong about AHT?
Read MoreHere's a bit of call center humor, in the spirit of Throwback Thursday. And buried in that humor is a lesson that continues to stay with me.
Let me answer your first obvious question. Yes, it is acceptable to do a "Throwback Thursday" post on LinkedIn.
Read MoreA fellow NorCal Contact Center Association steering committee member recently recommended the book "The Effortless Experience" by Matthew Dixon, Nick Toman and Rick DeLisi. I loved it. If you work in a call center, or provide service to customers, this is a must read.
The book comes from the Harvard Business Review article, "Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers".
Read MoreEarly in my career I learned the art of saying "no". I have even had great success remembering to rephrase "no, I can't do that" to "what I can do is...". That's fine in many situations. It reminds me to focus on solving problems rather than simply answering questions.
Read MoreWhen I hear the term “management” used to describe a group of unnamed people, I think of toilet seat covers. Specifically, I think of toilet seat covers in public restrooms. Sometimes the packaging reads: “Provided by the Management For Your Protection”.
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