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Five New Year's Resolutions for Support Managers
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by Rich Gallagher, Point of Contact Group
It is a new year - and for that matter, a new decade. A time that many of us resolve to start exercising, pay off our debts, or lose 20 pounds. But what about resolutions for your support team? Here are five of my favorites.
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[Full Article]
Jan-18-2010 |
Is There a Case for Direct Connect in Today’s World?
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by John Hamilton, President, Service Strategies Corp.
Just in the past few years we have noticed a trend where companies are consciously limiting or denying customers direct phone access to technical support staff. They are in fact reverting back to a Call Back support model that was pretty standard back in the early 1980's. If you can recall how bad support was back then, customers were very unhappy with poor response times, causing them to wait hours if not days before getting a call back from a qualified support person. Proactive companies did listen and restructured their support operations to address the response issue by implementing a Direct Connect model. Customer calls were now answered in real time by qualified technical staff rather than call administrators. But is there a case for Direct Connect in today's world?
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[Full Article]
Jan-18-2010 |
Thank You for Calling!
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by Rosanne D'Ausilio, PhD., President, Human Technologies Global, Inc.
How often do you hear 'thank you for calling' when you make a call to a company? Almost all the time is my experience, you too? How often does it sound sincere? Much less time, don't you think? What should it be? It should be a very sincere 'thank you for calling,' and you should mean it. If someone has a problem or a complaint and they don't call, you have no opportunity to assist them, remedy the problem or complaint, and more importantly, create a relationship with the customer such that you are their vendor of choice.
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[Full Article]
Jan-18-2010 |
It's Time to Get Serious About FCR
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by Rosanne D’Ausilio, Ph.D., President Human Technologies Global, Inc.
FCR is still the #1 driver of customer satisfaction. Don’t be one of the 50% or 60% of organizations not measuring FCR. Remember what gets measured gets managed, and what get managed gets better. Improving FCR can
1)Reduce overall customer calls
2)Decrease rework
3)Improve service
4)Enhance customer satisfaction
5)Up-sell and cross-sell opportunities
6)High value customer interactions
7)Take customers from satisfied to loyal
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[Full Article]
Nov-11-2009 |
Is Unified Communications the Next “Disruptive” Customer Service Technology?
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| Unified Communications (UC) is a term that’s been around for more than 15 years. Now it’s being heralded as the next disruptive technology. UC is a technology framework that helps organizations provide a standardized user interface and user experience across multiple applications, devices and channels. It integrates real-time and non-real-time communications services. The primary UC deliverable is a technology called presence. Presence is a feature of session initiation protocol (SIP) that allows an organization to know the “state” of its employees, regardless of their location; the state provides information about someone’s availability and willingness to communicate. |
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[Full Article]
Nov-11-2009 |
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