Jeremy Watkin: Building a CX-focused Contact Center
5 Lessons Learned While Attempting to Boost Contact Center Productivity
I’ve come to the realization recently after seeing several demos of various CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) platforms that there’s a flaw in...
3 Practical Ways Your Customer Support Team Can and Should Listen to Customers
I was recently thinking about certain practices we talk about in the world of customer experience. I can’t help but think that we’re sometimes...
6 Questions to Assess Your Contact Center’s Readiness to Identify Customer-Impacting Issues
A customer contacts us with an apparent product issue. With a bit of digging, we discover a larger bug or problem that may need...
4 Internal Customer Support Practices for the Modern Contact Center
Thinking back to the early days of my first management role in a small contact center, I can remember one day when a newly-hired...
Optimizing Self-Service: 4 Lessons Learned from Our Chatbot Journey
Almost exactly a year ago, I published a column titled How to Optimize Zendesk to Deliver Both Effective and Efficient Customer Support. In my...
How to Optimize Zendesk to Deliver Both Effective and Efficient Customer Support
Just a couple of years ago I was working at a contact center outsourcing company where nearly half of our clients were Zendesk users....
Macros Are an Essential Contact Center Tool… if Used Correctly. Here’s How
Macros, canned response, scripts, templates...call them what you want. They boast a number of benefits for contact centers handling text-based support channels like email,...
New Contact Center Leaders, Here are Practical Solutions to Four Problems You’re Likely to Face
My first job out of college was as a frontline agent in the contact center for a SaaS startup — and over the next...
Contact Center Agent Productivity: Do’s and Don’ts of Dual Monitors and Wallboards
Walk into a modern contact center and you’re likely to see screens prominently placed in a couple of different places. Your eyes are first...
6 Questions to Answer Before Your Contact Center Agents Work From Home
Current events have highlighted the importance of work from home as essential to a good business continuity strategy. And this certainly rings true for...
How to Deal with Customer Abuse and Fraud: 6 Recommendations
As a contact center leader for a number of years at a SaaS (software as a service) company, one thing that I’m not sure...
3 Ways to Bridge the Gap From Training to Proficient Customer Service
When I started out in customer service nearly two decades ago we had this homegrown ticketing system that was completely archaic by today’s standards....
4 Good Reasons to Kill Email-Based Customer Support
I recently sat with a group of customer service leaders who declared that email support was dead for their company. They were turning off...
Optimizing the Cancellation Experience: What’s the Right Amount of “Friction”?
In my work with a variety of customer service teams to understand their top contact drivers, especially in relation to customer satisfaction, I often...
4 Tips to Get Value From Contact Center Quality Scores
I have two scenarios for you regarding contact center quality assurance. In the first, imagine a manager or supervisor listening to a phone call...
Journey Mapping in the Contact Center: 6 Insights to Maximize the Value
I’ve recently been collaborating with my colleagues to improve customer satisfaction for one of our clients. While our approach has many aspects to it,...
Customer Service Edge Cases. To Empower or Not to Empower?
Have you noticed the change in professional sports television viewing over the past few years where it’s become standard for a rules official, oftentimes...
7 Essentials for a Customer Service Voice and Style Guide
Over the past few years, I’ve worked with dozens of our new clients at FCR to help them design a quality process for the...
Synchronous vs. Asynchronous Support Channels: Which is Better for Agents and Customers?
I’ve found the topic of support channel mix to be an interesting study in organizations. Traditional channels can be categorized a few different ways....
3 Reasons Why Customer Satisfaction Should Not Replace Quality Assurance
Not long ago I saw a demo of a cool product for gathering customer feedback called Stella Connect. They have a fun angle on...