Yours truly found the opportunity to get away to see hallowed baseball ground.
I had the privilege of attending ICMI’s 2014 Contact Center Demo in Chicago. It’s a fantastic event packed with insight, technology and great people. Rather than writing a comprehensive review of the show, I want to simply share my top five AHA moments.
1. What else can I help you learn today? I have a bit of an obsession with asking “Is there anything else I can help you with” at the end of each call. I’ve written a couple posts over the years debating the validity of that question. Keynote speaker and author, Chip Bell offered “What else can I help you learn today” as an alternative. I love it! It’s so far from the typical question which seems to push the customer off the phone faster. Chip also shared numerous inspiring ways companies offer distinctive experiences to their customers. Click here to read about Trixie the Goldfish!
2. Don’t be in no man’s land. I got this little nugget in a session with Brad Cleveland about gaining the most from our small contact centers. His point was in regards to technology and the fact that we either need to fight for new technology or accept what we have and make the most of it. It’s not acceptable to sit in no man’s land wishing you had better tools or technology. As small contact centers, we simply do not have that luxury to wait when it comes to solving problems. This was one of many takeaways from this fantastic session by Brad.
3. Call of the month. In a session with Tim Montgomery of CSG about getting the most from our quality assurance program, I learned about a call of the month program. Not that every call is going to be a WOW, but this is a friendly competition for the best call of the month. At CSG, the agent with the best call as determined by the staff gets a bonus of $500! In addition, CSG has a fantastic and refreshing approach to managing their employees. As long as employees show up to work, stick to their schedule and continuously improve, they can be successful.
4. If you would never say it, it doesn’t belong in an email. I attended a fantastic session with Leslie O’Flahavan from E-Write about writing great email in the age of social media. I loved this simple and sage advice of never writing in an email what we would never actually say. So often we attempt to write email in a way that is “professional” and ends up making it sound stodgy (Leslie’s word) and failing to make a meaningful connection with our customer.
5. What is the value of your training? In a session about training contact center agents, Justin Robbins challenged us to not simply train for the sake of training but instead determine the value of a training program. For example, if we are doing sales training, how many more sales can the team close as a result of the training? This was one of many terrific tips from Justin shared in the session.
Those are my five ahas! What were some of your favorite insights from the conference?
