Category: Customer Experience

Whenever there’s a speculative bubble going on (or a cultural one, for that matter) life inside the bubble seems rational and normal.

And so artists at Miami:Basel are talking about minting NFTs. Not because they understand them (they don’t) or because they provide actual utility (they don’t) but because that’s what life is like inside of this particular speculative bubble.

And people outside the bubble are supposed to feel left behind, because that’s part of the fuel of life inside the bubble.

When a corporate culture begins to get insular, or a community starts acting like a cult, the same thing happens.

Culture is “the way we do things around here.” The very nature of a bubble is that there’s an inside and an outside, an expanding reality-distortion field that assures people inside the bubble that they’re doing things that are rational and normal.

If you’re confident that the bubble is here for the long-term, perhaps we shouldn’t hesitate to play along.

But when the bubble bursts (and speculative bubbles always do), be prepared for reality to disagree with your assertions.

“Art does not lie down on the bed that is made for it; it runs away as soon as one says its name; it loves to be incognito. Its best moments are when it forgets what it is called.” –Jean Dubuffet

At first glance, a call center manager job may seem easy compared to the agents they oversee. After all, they are not the ones who have to navigate call center software, ensure customer satisfaction, and take all the phone calls.
But strong call center management is essential in managing call center operations, quality monitoring, and employee engagement — among a long list of tasks that ensure the center meets its day-to-day goals.
For these reasons, hiring an effective all center manager should be a vital goal for all call center leaders. Let’s take a look at what makes a great call center manager and how to find the right fit from the hiring stage.
Industry Report: State of the Contact Center 2022
Call Center Management Duties
Call center managers have many job duties, many of which take place behind the scenes. Here’s a list of a few call center management responsibilities:

Managing daily operations and contact center performance.
Engaging and motivating team members.
Setting KPIs and other performance goals.
Conducting training and evaluations.
Hiring and onboarding call center agents.
Handling call escalations; addressing customer concerns.

On paper, a prospective call center manager might have all of the above experience. That’s why evaluating soft skills for this role is so critical.
7 Skills to Look For in a Call Center Manager
Clear communication.
Managers must communicate with many different parties on a daily basis, including agents, customers, executives, stakeholders, and more. It’s important they have the flexibility to address each party clearly and concisely in a tactful fashion.
Emotional intelligence.
An effective call center manager should have the ability to handle customers and employees, no matter the situation. Since the call center industry is known for high attrition rates, managers play a key role in retaining strong agents. This requires empathy, which can be helpful when providing constructive feedback and support.
Coping with Labor Shortages in the Contact Center
Analytical skills.
Call centers rely on metrics and data, from average handle time to customer satisfaction scores, to ensure quality monitoring and influence business strategy. Call center managers should have the analytical skills to interpret the data and translate them into actionable insights.
Self-awareness.
One of the top causes for agent attrition is poor management. A good call center manager recognizes opportunities for self-improvement, whether it’s through further training or more time on the floor to gather insights. They should also be open to receiving feedback from team members.
Decision making.
Call center managers should have enough intuition and confidence to make tough decisions that ensure smooth operations and efficiency. They should feel comfortable making important decisions, whether for hiring agents or picking the right call center technology.
Time management.
Call center managers have a long list of duties, and only so much time in the day. Time management skills are essential to help managers stay on track, delegate tasks when needed, and ensure call center goals are met.
Technical skills.
Up-to-date and innovative call center software is essential to meet and surpass the competition. Call center managers should have basic technical skills (or be willing to learn them) to figure out how to use and optimize call center technology. Luckily, Fonolo’s Voice Call-Backs and data-rich reporting from the Fonolo Portal are both intuitive.
The Ultimate Call-Back Tactical Handbook
How to Hire the Right Call Center Manager
Call center managers can learn a lot on the job, but your best bet is to hire one with a strong foundation of skills to ensure success in the role. Here are some tips to help you hire a great call center manager:
Hire from within.
Nobody knows your call center better than the people currently working in it. Assess agent performance and experience, and ask yourself: are any agents ready to advance into a management role? Not only does this help you find someone already well-versed on your center’s processes, goals, and unique issues — it also supports employee engagement, as a lack of career advancement is a top reason for attrition.
Gather advice from your network.
Call center leaders have a wide network- from internal call center executives to contacts in industry associations. If you don’t have anyone in mind for a call center management role, your network might offer a strong referral.
How to Foster Agent Engagement in a Hybrid Contact Center
Nail the job posting and description.
If you must hire externally, pay special attention to your job posting. You should include industry-standard qualifications, as well as requirements that your contact center currently could use. For example, if you have a high agent attrition rate, you’ll want to make sure that your posting clearly indicates a need for a candidate with extensive experience in managing a team. If your call center is on a downward trend in customer satisfaction, you should emphasize analytical skills and customer service experience in your ad.
You might also consider adding relevant keywords to your job posting to ensure prospective candidates can access it:

Customer service manager
Call center
Operations manager
Customer Service
Call center manager

Some typical call center manager job postings include the following qualifications:

Several years of customer service and management experience
Experience working in a call center
Demonstrated experience in building and motivating a team
Experience working with up-to-date call center technology
Excellent organization and analytical skills

Ask the right interview questions.
The interview is your most insightful look into how a candidate will perform in a call center management role. You should ask them specific interview questions and request examples demonstrating:

Call center experience
Team management experience
Evidence of improving call center operations or agent performance

Catch red flags quickly.
In the recruiting and hiring stages, you might notice a few key indicators that a candidate won’t be a good fit. Look out for these call center management red flags:

Lack of specific examples demonstrating experience
Passivity or lack of eye contact
Overly negative descriptions of past employers, team members, or customers
Avoiding questions
Weak understanding of call center industry terminology, like service level, call volume, workforce management, first-call resolution (FCR), etc.

Embrace onboarding best practices.
Hiring a strong candidate isn’t all you need to secure an effective call center manager. Your next step is giving them the best onboarding experience possible so that they can jump into the role smoothly and confidently.
Here are some quick tips for onboarding to help your new manager thrive:

Tailor the onboarding strategy to the candidate’s specific experience and needs
Make time for regular one-on-one meetings
Offer interactive, gamified training
Keep track of management performance
The post How to Spot (and Hire) a Great Call Center Manager first appeared on Fonolo.

If today was a holiday in your honor, what would it be about?

If we had to examine everything about you, your work, your impact, your reputation–what would be the positive caricature we would draw? What sorts of slogans, banners and greetings would we use to celebrate you and your work?

It’s never accurate to boil down an organization or a person’s work to a simple sentence or two, but we do it anyway.

What’s yours?

My first computer game design was in 1977–I came up with a version of Star Wars. It was almost nothing like the movie, but it was a pretty good game for something running on a mainframe.

The Godfather isn’t a perfect retelling of the book. But it’s a better movie as a result.

A really good recording doesn’t sound like a live concert or what you’d hear sitting in the studio. It sounds like a really good record. And when Alan Dean Foster and I turned Shadowkeep from a computer game into a novel, the goal wasn’t to replicate a computer game, it was to create a good novel.

When a medium arrives, or time shifts, it’s sometimes tempting to aim for a complete reconstruction of what came before. Follow the rules, don’t innovate. But that’s a mistake–a safe choice that’s actually a trap.

People desire media that is in and of itself. Each form of media has its own character, and fidelity from one form to another is a compromise that rarely works.

Because the world has changed, original isn’t original anymore. It can’t be, even if we want it to, because now it’s out of place. Just as we can’t step in the same river twice, each innovation in media forces us to walk away from fidelity to honor what’s possible.

Fidelity might feel like an option, and it takes effort and care. But is fidelity the best you can do?

When we switch media, or time zones, or cultures, or technology, it’s up to us to make the idea what it can become, not simply an unpalatable simulacrum of what it was over there.

Last week, I talked to Miranda Cain, the managing director at Elev-8, a consultancy dedicated to changing behaviours to elevate business performance. The team behind Elev-8 won over 27 awards, including the UK Business Awards™️ in 2021. With over 25 years of experience in the L&D arena, Miranda understands well what it means to create…
The post Vulnerable leadership is key: building a bridge from intent to action appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

After coming out of a very change-heavy two years, an anticipated trend for call centers in 2022 is an increased focus on workforce management.
With remote work becoming a permanent fixture of the contact center industry, proper staffing and scheduling is trickier than ever. Keeping tabs on agents in many different locations is no easy task, let alone ensuring that the right number of staff are scheduled to work at the right times.
Industry Report: State of the Contact Center 2022
That’s where call center forecasting comes in handy. Using historical data, call center forecasting finds patterns in contact volume to help you predict future levels. If you know what days and times are likely to be busy or slow, it’s much easier to staff accordingly. An accurate forecast can lead to a decrease in staffing costs, an increase in agent retention, improved CSat scores, and more engaged and efficient employees overall—the rewards are well worth the work.
Although forecasting call volume can be tough, there are many ways you might choose to go about it. Here are some of the more common methods we’ve come across.
5 Common Call Center Forecasting Methods
The Best Tips for Forecasting Your Call Center Volumes Like a Pro
1. Long-term forecasting.
When it comes to call center forecasting, you can analyze data collected as far back as you’d like. Comparing numbers from years past can reveal a lot that you may not already know, particularly about specific trends and seasonality. For example, you may notice a decrease in calls around certain holidays like Mother’s Day or a long weekend and then a sharp increase the day after the holiday. If this pattern persists from year to year to year, you have a good idea that it’ll likely continue to happen.
2.Short-term forecasting.
As much as long-term forecasting can be incredibly insightful, short-term forecasting also has its place. Let’s say your call center offers a repeating discount on a service that comes into effect at different times throughout the year. Short-term forecasting allows you to see what the call volume is like during those periods so you can staff appropriately the next time the discount is on. Plus, short-term forecasting may be the only option if your company is just starting out.
3.Triple exponential smoothing.
Using the triple exponential smoothing forecasting method takes levels, trends, and seasonality into account, providing you with a forecast that puts greater weight on the most recent data in a set. As a simple example, say you’re looking at the past three months. Triple exponential smoothing may weight the most recent month at 1/2, the month before that at 1/4, and the final month at 1/8. It takes historical data into account while also recognizing changes over time.

FACT:
Keep in mind that triple exponential smoothing is generally only used for long-term forecasting and doesn’t really work for day-to-day predictions.

4. Neural networks.
How do we know the future is now? Artificial intelligence has neural networks that mimic human brain neurons, and they’re able to use them to help determine your call center forecasting. Although statistically 10% of call centers still forecast with pen and paper, we’re happy to let the tech take control. It’ll save you time and ensure your forecast accuracy stays on point.
5. Autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA).
Arguably one of the most complex forecasting models around, ARIMA uses historical data to illuminate current trends within your statistical data and make predictions of what’s to come.

TIP:
Oftentimes, call center managers will use two, three, or even four forecasting models at a time, depending on their specific business needs—never feel limited to using just one.

How Can I Determine if My Forecasting is Working?
After diving in for a period of time (we recommend monitoring your numbers over the course of a quarter), compare your predictions with your actual numbers to see if your forecasting method has been successful. A simple equation can work for this:
X – Y = Z
Z / X = A
A x 100 = B%
X is your actual number of calls
Y is your forecasted number of calls
B is the percentage difference between your reality and your prediction
Once you’ve determined whether your method is working for your call center, you can make adjustments so it evolves with your business needs.The post The Latest Forecasting Methods in the Call Center Industry first appeared on Fonolo.

Benchmarking involves looking at every element of what you offer and comparing it to the very best element of any of your competitors.

So your door handle is as good as the Audi’s, and your brake pedal is as good as the Volvo’s and…

It’s pretty tempting to do this. Who wants any element of what they do to be inferior to a competitor’s?

And yet…

That’s almost never what makes something remarkable (it’s worth noting that the Ford Taurus was the car that brought benchmarking to my attention… who wants a Ford Taurus?).

What makes something remarkable is a combination of its internal synergy—the parts work together as a coherent whole—and its imbalance. Something about it is worth talking about. Something about it is hard to find. Something about it helps us achieve our goals if we talk about it.

This uneven allocation of attention is the opposite of benchmarking. Find your edge and go over it.

There’s always something a bit magical about ICXA. Over the past three years, I’ve had the privilege of judging and engaging with some of the best CX initiatives in the world. Many of these inspire fresh thinking about how we practice customer experience. Some raise the bar for excellence and innovation. A few are game-changers…
The post The winning story: how is troy revolutionizing the debt collecting process? appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

Drift has released their new report, which analysed 41 million conversations looking at how conversations can convert to leads which will bring about more conversions, pipelines and happier customers. This is a short overview of the report: “The Science and Art of a Conversation” from a customer experience standpoint.    Conversations led to leads Over a…
The post Drift’s new report: how personalized conversations can convert to leads appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

Whatever “it” is.

That’s probably a mistake.

People don’t know what you know, don’t believe what you believe, don’t fear what you fear. They’re not equally skilled, equally fast and equally equipped.

“If I were you” isn’t that helpful.