Author: Franz Malten Buemann

  • Call Center Management: The Best Questions to Ask During a Performance Review

    Ah, performance reviews. They’re a staple of almost every workplace, and call centers are no exception. In fact, these engagements are an essential part of running a successful customer service operation.
    Why? Agent performance directly impacts the caller’s experience. If your agents aren’t satisfied in their daily work, or they’re not doing their job properly, it can spell disaster down the road. Performance reviews are an opportunity for management to evaluate, assess, and lead their team members cohesively in the right direction.
    The Executive Guide to Improving 6 Contact Center Metrics
    Of course, there are right and wrong ways to conduct a performance review. And agents have a hand in how the interaction goes as well. If one or both sides come to the meeting unprepared, little good will come from the interaction. It’s important for each party to understand the purpose of performance evaluations and how to get the most out of them.
    A performance review is the ideal time to:

    Evaluate previously set goals.
    Acknowledge individual successes.
    Identify challenges; create solutions moving forward.
    Update team members on new practices and policies.

    Ultimately, well-conducted performance reviews will improve your overall employee engagement, retention, and your team’s overall quality of service. In short, well-supported agents will lead to happier, more satisfied callers.

    DID YOU KNOW?
    Ideally, performance evaluations should be conducted on a monthly or quarterly basis. The more touchpoints management and agents have with one another, the more opportunities you’ll have to evaluate and achieve your shared goals.

    Call Center Managers: How to Conduct a Performance Review
    When it comes to performance reviews, preparation is key. The first step is to evaluate the agent’s performance based on observations and activity data in your call center platform. Stats like first call resolution (FCR), average handle time (AHT) and occupancy rate can give you an idea of where your team is excelling and where they’re falling short.
    Based on this information, you can plan your areas of focus for each performance review. It may help to split the conversation into categories to ensure all topics are covered in the time you have together. Managers should also have an outline of questions handy to steer the conversation towards important topics. Below, we’ll outline some examples.
    Identifying Strengths
    Every agent on your team will have strengths and weaknesses pertaining to their job. It’s important that they’re aware of what they excel in, and that management acknowledges their contributions. A performance review is the perfect setting for this.
    When asking questions, make them as specific as possible — broad questions invite vague answers; by asking specific questions, you invite the agent to respond with more detail.
    Example questions:

    Which of your skills help you excel in your daily work?
    What parts of your job do you find the most fulfilling?
    What is a recent success in your work that you are most proud of?

    Areas for Improvement
    Of course, performance reviews aren’t just for praising strengths. They’re also opportunities to zero in on challenging areas of the job. Remember that these reviews aren’t for disciplining agents for their shortcomings; rather, it’s all about providing the support they need so they can improve.
    Example questions:

    What areas of your work do you feel can be improved?
    What can management do to support you better in your daily work?
    How do you plan to correct these issues in future?

    Goals and Outlook
    Once you’ve discussed strengths and weaknesses, it’s time to set goals. This helps ensure that there is progress made from review to review and gives both the manager and the agent a sense of progress and hopefully accomplishment.
    Example questions:

    What are your priority goals, and how do you plan on achieving them?
    How do you plan to measure your success when working towards your goals?
    How can management support you in achieving your goals?

    TIP:
    Encourage your agents to use the SMART approach when setting goals. That means their goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time bound.

    Career Development
    Staying in tune with your agents’ goals and aspirations is worth the effort. Did you know that hiring and training is one of the biggest expenses for any call center. In fact, the average turnover rate for call centers hovers between 30% and 45% — that’s a high figure! Supporting an agent’s career goals will improve employee engagement, minimize turnover, and improve long-term agent retention.
    Example questions:

    What types of call center roles do you see yourself progressing towards over the next year?
    Are there any training or professional development opportunities you’d be interested in?
    What aspects of your current role do you hope to carry forward in future positions?

    Relationship with Management
    You’ve heard the saying: people don’t leave bad jobs, they leave bad managers. Since you’re reading this article, we’ll assume you’re one of the good eggs! If you’re looking for ways to strengthen your professional relationship with your agents, the following questions will help you understand how they perceive you as a call center leader.
    Example questions:

    What is your preferred method of receiving feedback?
    Do you have any concerns about management that I can address?
    How can I make myself more available to you?

    Call Center Agents: How to Prepare for a Performance Review
    Agents are frontline workers, and the main connection between the call center and its callers. But even the most seasoned team members can find performance reviews unnerving.
    That’s because call center work can be unpredictable. Between call spikes and frustrated customers, an agent’s individual performance metrics can spike and dip unexpectedly. Because there are so many factors that play into call center performance, it’s important for agents to be able to speak to their successes and challenges, be aware of their strengths and weaknesses, and be able to present a plan for improvement.
    While call center managers will be leading the performance review, it’s up to the agent to reflect on their performance and come prepared with information that will help move the conversation forward and prove their commitment to development and growth.
    Identifying Strengths
    Call center managers want to know that their agents are able to self-evaluate. To demonstrate this, agents should be able to identify their strengths in their role, whether it’s working under the pressure of high call volumes, making genuine connections with callers, or maintaining exceptional KPIs such as FCR and AHT.
    Areas for Improvement
    Speaking about work challenges can be daunting. To the agent, it may feel like they’re admitting weakness in the moment. But having these discussions is essential to improving the call center operation. A good manager will understand most shortcomings and offer more support. This may involve upgrading call center technology, addressing policies that hinder service, or setting up more training or mentoring sessions.

    DID YOU KNOW?
    Call-back technology is a simple, but powerful solution to high call volumes, sudden spikes in demand, and customer frustration. Find out how eliminating hold time can improve your call center.

    Goals and Outlook
    Goal setting is an essential part of the performance review, because it allows managers to track and measure agent success. Using SMART rules is the best approach to setting clear goals. Agents should be ready to discuss progress from earlier reviews and to set new goals as needed.
    Career Development
    Call center managers invest heavily in their agents, especially during the hiring and training period. The goal is to maintain high agent engagement and encourage internal career progression. Agents should consider their strengths and weaknesses and be prepared to work with their manager to set career goals with the organization.
    There you have it! Whether you’re leading as a manager or contributing as a call center agent, everyone has a role to play in performance reviews. We hope your next one produces positive outcomes for your organization.The post Call Center Management: The Best Questions to Ask During a Performance Review first appeared on Fonolo.

  • How Pardot (Account Engagement) Throttling Works (+ 3 Use Cases)

    Throttling in marketing automation exists to limit the automated actions a system can make within a set period of time. It’s commonly used for controlling email volume (the number of emails the system is allowed to send at during a period of time), to prevent… Read More

  • Whining and status

    Toddlers don’t get afforded a lot of respect. They whine all the time about how unfair things are, and it’s difficult to take them seriously.

    Lately, in our quest for victory, we’ve established that some winners get there via whining, and perhaps this is a useful strategy. It seems as though working the refs, blaming the conditions and questioning the score is all good as long as it helps you come out on top.

    In fact, whining isn’t resilient or scalable.

    People with confidence, power and reserves are able to admit when they are wrong, when things aren’t working and when it doesn’t turn out the way they hoped.

    If you’re hoping to demonstrate power, confidence or status, taking responsibility is a better signal than whining.

  • How To Run An NPS Survey With Pardot (Account Engagement)

    NPS (net promoter score) is designed to measure loyalty and brand promotion among your customers by asking: ‘how likely are you to recommend us?’ on a scale of 0-10 (not at all likely, to extremely likely). Scores result in three categories: Detractors (0-6), Passives (7-8),… Read More

  • Automatically Post Your TikTok Videos To Instagram Reels

    Hi guys! I have about 10 Instagram reels accounts that reposts tiktok contents which I managed to monetise some money from. I have managed to make this fully automated and I am just wondering if this would be an automation tool that is worth developing on top of and if marketers thinks they will save time by using such a tool? Because if it is I am willing to share this for a super low cost to just cover the server cost with a handful of beta testers to help marketers save some time from uploading a short form video multiple times. submitted by /u/gomey93 [link] [comments]

  • A Comprehensive Guide to Email Marketing Jobs

    An email marketing team is responsible for planning, executing, and measuring email marketing campaigns. The team typically consists of people with different skill sets, including creatives and copywriters, designers, analysts, and project managers. With a team like this, you’re giving your business the best chance of creating email marketing campaigns that will achieve the desired…
    The post A Comprehensive Guide to Email Marketing Jobs appeared first on Benchmark Email.

  • Should there be a social responsibility for a company to correct this kind of error?

    I am administrative assistant arranging a Christmas party at a venue. The venue repeatedly sent me emails asking for a logo for a souvenir for our company for about a week and my department voted on one to put on it. Afterwards, the venue emailed me after I sent them logo that they had made a mistake and the souvenir was not included in our package and we would need to pay if we wanted one. Since this conversation was started on their side, would good customer service be for them to provide the souvenir for free? It just seems to me that they wasted our time and refused to take responsibility for their error. submitted by /u/mecarzy [link] [comments]

  • New Salesforce Org Checklist: 13 Tasks to Complete

    Without a doubt, my favorite thing about being a Salesforce Consultant is working on new Salesforce orgs. There’s absolutely nothing but sample data in there – everything can be set up correctly right from the beginning, and data quality can be guaranteed right from the… Read More

  • What HubSpot’s Highest Performing Blog Posts Have in Common & Why These Elements Work

    Wondering what elements make up a successful blog post? We reviewed our top 8 blog posts on the Marketing Blog in 2022.
    Traffic-wise, each of these posts has received over 500,000 organic views since publishing and earns at least 40,000 views monthly.

    Let’s see what they have in common and what marketers can learn from them.

    445 Best Instagram Captions for 2022: Good, Cool, Funny, & Cute
    12 Incredible Answers to “What Is Your Greatest Weakness?” — That Aren’t “Perfectionism”
    70 Fun (Not Cheesy) Ice Breaker Games & Activities Your Employees Will Enjoy in 2022
    45 Quotes That Celebrate Teamwork, Hard Work, and Collaboration
    20 of the Best Professional Bio Examples We’ve Ever Seen [+ Templates]
    27 Mission and Vision Statement Examples That Will Inspire Your Buyers
    How to Type the Shrug Emoji ¯_(ツ)_/¯ in 2 Seconds Flat
    The 11 Best Free (and Private) Email Accounts and Service Providers of 2022

    1. Eye-Catching Headlines
    What you’ll notice with all of our top-performing posts is that they have an attention-grabbing headline.
    Some of the components of an eye-catching headline are:

    Numbers
    Action verbs
    Descriptive adjectives

    In 2013, Moz ran a study that found that articles with numbers in the headlines outperformed those that didn’t. Our data suggests that the same is still true nearly a decade later.
    All but one of our top-performing posts features numbers, at the beginning of the headline. One reason why numbers are effective is that they set expectations. Blog posts can be a bit overwhelming and when you add a number in your post, it removes some uncertainty and lets the reader know exactly what they’ll get.
    2. Descriptive Intros
    When a user lands on your blog post, the first thing they’ll likely read is your introduction.
    Your intro should cover three areas:

    Who this article is for or about
    What will be covered in the article
    Why the reader should care

    Your intro can also be a good place to present a new piece of data or an anecdote that leads into your topic. You can also present a situation or a question that invites the reader to keep reading.
    For instance, the 20 of the Best Professional Bio Examples We’ve Ever Seen [+ Templates] post starts by posing a question: “Be honest, does your professional bio make a statement?”

    From there, the writer outlines a common challenge that many readers have likely experienced and then highlights the importance of a professional bio.
    There are so many ways to approach an intro but as long as it covers those three Ws and has an empathetic lens, it will surely keep your readers engaged.
    3. Comprehensive Listicles
    In 2020, a study by one blogger found that 41% of the top Medium articles in 2020 were listicles. Similarly, our top 8 performing blog posts from this year are also listicles.
    Listicles are great because they are inherently scannable. The reader can quickly navigate to the section(s) they’re most interested in.
    These listicles are also very comprehensive, serving as a detailed guide that readers can bookmark for future use.
    Take the “445 Best Instagram Captions for 2022: Good, Cool, Funny, & Cute” blog post. When it was originally published, the article did not feature 445 examples. However, with every update, we consider the SERPs and how they will fare against competitors.
    From there, we decide what content updates will be most valuable for readers. For this post, in particular, that meant adding more captions to make the post more comprehensive.
    4. Table of Content
    When you have a lengthy blog post, one of the best elements you can add to the page is a table of contents with jump links. A jump link is a link that, when clicked, will take the user straight to a section on the page.
    However, a table of content can be just as valuable as a short post for readers who are looking for specific information.
    In the 445 Best Instagram Captions for 2022: Good, Cool, Funny, & Cute article, the table of contents section is broken down by category.

    5. Featured Snippets
    A featured snippet is a Google search feature in which an excerpt from a website is shown at the top of the SERP if it matches the search query.

    Image Source
    Because a featured snippet will appear at the top of the page, it leads to more clicks – making it a coveted feature that every website wants. But to gain a featured snippet for a particular query, your webpage has to be optimized and beat out other web pages.
    Although this can happen organically, bloggers can optimize sections on their page to increase their chances, such as:

    Schema markup
    Headings and paragraph tags
    Paragraphs that are 50 to 60 words long

    6. Scannable Sections
    Another common element in all of our top-performing posts is an emphasis on scannability.
    Every post features short paragraphs and bullet points – and that’s not by chance, it’s by design.

    Image Source
    We know readers often scan blog posts to find the most relevant information. Large text blocks can be visually intimidating and lead to high bounce rates. To prevent this, we opt for bite-size paragraphs that work on both desktop and mobile.
    7. Visual and Interactive Elements
    With so many distractions at our fingertips, it’s not enough to have a blog post with just words. The more interactive and visually rich elements you can add to your post, the more engaged your readers will be.
    This can range from video embeds, jump links, and images to quizzes and polls.
    In addition to increasing engagement, these elements also help to break up the visual monotony of written text. They give the readers something new to see, read, and engage with.
    There you have it – seven elements that have contributed to the success of our top-performing posts. Although every reader is different, these are universal elements that will provide a better user experience and higher engagement rate.

  • A Crisis of Disconnection: Three Workplace Trends Slowing Business Growth [New Data]

    This post is a part of The Crisis of Disconnection, a thought leadership series examining the latest research and insights to uncover how businesses can meet their growth goals, even amidst unprecedented changes to the way we work.
    It’s no secret that reaching customers has become more challenging in recent years. Interested in going a few steps further to develop meaningful, lasting relationships? That’s an even taller order. To sustain business growth during trying times, many of us are realizing we need to reimagine how we attract, engage, and delight the communities we serve.
    Until recently, it’s been equally tricky to pinpoint a root cause for what feels like an uphill battle. The struggle, as they say, is real.

    When we zoomed out, we discovered that disconnection is widespread across internal systems, among cross-functional teams, and — increasingly — between brands and their customers.
    Yamini Rangan, Chief Executive Officer at HubSpot, sums up the Crisis of Disconnection best:

    How did this evolution come to our attention? We’re glad you asked!
    Research we’ve conducted over the last year has helped us bring these trends to light, and we’re eager to share our top findings. After all, overcoming The Crisis of Disconnection starts with understanding the challenges ahead. Let’s start with some high-level commentary on growth, or what’s top of mind for most in our current macroeconomic climate.
    Growth Challenges Are on the Rise
    Are times tough for most small businesses? All signs point to yes.
    The economy is on a rollercoaster ride, the stock market is giving new meaning to the word “volatile,” geo-political conflicts are escalating, and a global pandemic may have more unprecedented times in store. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Tried-and-true methods for effective lead generation and organizational growth are becoming less and less reliable.
    HubSpot’s Research Team found that 63% of businesses agree that growth strategies they used in the past are less effective than they used to be. Other top concerns for businesses right now include:

    Increasing expenses
    Increasing costs to reach customers and prospects
    Slowing growth

     

    While growth challenges can be attributed to many factors, the heart of the problem stems from the same place: a lack of connection. New chasms between proliferating systems (leading to disconnected data), siloed teams (leading to internal friction), and companies and their customers (leading to disjointed experiences) are forcing businesses to evolve existing strategies and rethink their growth playbooks:

    A mere 22% of businesses report excellent data connectedness.
    Only 49% of U.S. workers feel their teams are working effectively in a hybrid environment.
    64% of businesses agree that sales engagement is struggling more now than pre-pandemic.

    Looking for a silver lining? The challenges we’re facing can pave the way for us to reconnect — with each other and our customers — in new ways. To understand how early adopters are (re)connecting the dots, let’s take a look at the main drivers behind The Crisis of Disconnection, starting with the biggest pain point for scaling businesses (and the first of three emerging workplace trends threatening sustainable business growth).
    What’s Driving Disconnection?
    1. Internal systems are disconnected.
    When COVID-19 first broke out, we shifted many of our daily activities from in-person to online. We did it out of necessity, both personally and professionally. Now, as companies embrace increasingly digital ways of working on a permanent basis, streamlining systems to increase efficiency, decrease friction, and accelerate connectivity is more important than ever.
    Spoiler alert — achieving that aim is proving to be easier said than done. Disconnected systems are the #1 pain point for companies in our market.
    According to our research:

    74% of businesses report they need to switch between many different tools to get their jobs done. (Fun fact: the average growing company uses 242 SaaS tools).
    While 65% of businesses have invested in creating stronger connections among their systems in the past 12 months, only 26% currently have all their tools seamlessly integrated or built into one core platform that would truly enable those stronger connections.
    “High data quality” is the #1 desired feature of a new CRM platform.
    77% of marketers say that data is important to their overall marketing strategy (to help them reach their target audience, understand which marketing strategies are most effective, and create more effective content), but only 19% have access to “very high-quality data.”

    So what does this mean, in practical terms? Teams are spending more time finding, consolidating, and verifying data from various point solutions than they are on enhancing the end-to-end customer experience.
    To enable teams to do their best work, businesses must first acknowledge that the status quo isn’t cutting it. For business owners, proliferating point solutions can make managing total cost of ownership a bear. For senior leaders, manual/complex reporting can eat up time ideally spent on analysis and action. For individual contributors, constant context-switching between tools can lead to productivity loss at best and burnout at worst.
    The path to sustainable growth — and more connected customer experiences — starts with a streamlined tech stack and centralized customer data. When teams are aligned around a single source of truth, everyone — including your customer — wins.
    2. People are working in silos post-pandemic.
    Remember life pre-pandemic? We were in the office five days a week, regularly chatting with co-workers and likely complaining about having to commute into the office. Those days feel like a lifetime ago, with 81% of businesses believing that the global pandemic has fundamentally changed the way we live and work.
    If you’ve tried leading an annual kickoff on a Zoom call, you know connecting and collaborating across teams has fundamentally changed. With many organizations shifting to either a hybrid or entirely remote workforce, it’s no longer always possible to swing by someone’s desk for a quick conversation. In our post-pandemic world, 81% of businesses believe it’s imperative that we find new ways to connect with one another.
    According to our 2022 Hybrid Work Report:

    40% of remote workers miss spontaneous, in-person connections with their colleagues.
    49% of in-office workers found staying motivated and connected with their team to be the biggest challenge.
    31% of flex workers cited relationship-building as a difficulty for them.

    The stats don’t stop there, either. Only 31% of marketers and 23% of sales professionals report strong sales and marketing alignment at their organizations, with a lack of effective communication, visibility across teams, and complete data on customers all factoring into this sentiment. While 55% of marketers and 45% of sales professionals say alignment became more important in 2022, neither go-to-market team says they’re working in lockstep. 
    Think the tides will turn when more employees are called back to the office? This may not happen — particularly if employees have anything to say about it. HubSpot research reveals that 36% of employees would rather visit the dentist once a month than work in the office five days a week.
    Employers don’t have it easy either, with employees simultaneously vocalizing their need for connection and expressing their desire for remote/flexible work environments. If your people are a big part of your value proposition, it’s just about impossible to overstate the importance of building bridges between siloed teams and facilitating communication across geographic lines.
    3. Connecting with customers has never been harder.
    Disconnected systems and people are clearly two impediments to rocketship growth, but how is our “new normal” affecting the way we connect with customers?
    Research consistently shows that customer experience is critical to an organization’s short and long-term success. 57% of businesses measure customer satisfaction as a way to track performance, making it the most commonly used performance metric.
    So how’s it going out there on the sales floor? 31% of sales professionals say building trust and rapport with prospects became more crucial in 2022 vs. 2021, but it’s getting harder — and more expensive. Recent sales engagement data backs this up:

    46% of salespeople say remote selling is less effective than in-person sales (and 68% of companies are doing at least some remote selling in 2022).
    49% of businesses say that Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) has increased in the past year.

    With approximately one in four companies citing a lack of depth in relationships with customers as one of their top challenges this year, it’s clear that the strategies we’ve all relied on in the past won’t carry us into the future. This isn’t to say that all old methods are now obsolete — it simply means that modern-day challenges require modern-day solutions. To win in this new world, we need new go-to-market strategies, new ways to think about our technology choices, and ultimately some new playbooks that don’t exist today.
    Feeling overwhelmed by the task at hand? Take heart in these words from Jon Dick, Senior Vice President of Marketing at HubSpot:

    Next Up: The Crisis of Disconnection and Your Business
    First, there was The Great Resignation. Then, there was “quiet quitting.” Now, there’s The Crisis of Disconnection, driven by rapidly growing gaps between data and systems, cross-functional teams, and companies and their customers.
    You’ve seen the research. You might [already] be living the experience. So what does The Crisis of Disconnection mean for you and your business, exactly? In the next installment of this three-part series, we’ll analyze the consequences of being disconnected, and how those might manifest in your cost of doing business, customer experience, and growth trajectory.