Joanna Jones
Four Performance Metrics to Improve your Call Center
Call centers are at the core of the customer experience and are often under constant scrutiny from the public and industry to ensure a high level of service is provided. Businesses today acknowledge that the sustainable differentiator between companies is driven by the level...
A Day in the Life of a Customer-Facing Tech-Support Agent
I’m a client-facing tech support agent for a software company. In a nutshell, my job consists of going to client’s offices, diagnosing problems, solving the problem, and moving on to the next client. However, my job entails so much more than that. It’s a...
The Don’t List of Customer Service: How to Avoid Comcast’s Mistakes
The Comcast customer-service call that went viral last week is still lighting up the internet. The call, which a customer recorded, captures a frustrating (okay, let’s just say it – hellish) conversation that he had with a Comcast customer service rep. For those of...
How Improving Company Culture Can Change Employee Behavior
If you are in management, you are tasked with the never-ending job of coaching employees, guiding their behavior, and helping employees perform their best. When employees are in a workplace with a well-defined culture, your leadership tasks become immeasurably easier; in an environment with...
In Honor of July 4th: Top 4 Call Center Management Tools
July 4th seem like an appropriate time to bring out a top 4 list. This week, we’ll be exploring the top 4 management tools that you can bring to your call center. Your end goal as a manager is to achieve increased customer satisfaction, so...
Customer Service Tip of the Day: How to Master Email Etiquette for Business
Email in the business world unfortunately gets overlooked in customer service training courses these days – in fact, it’s almost seen as passé. It’s assumed that everyone is so comfortable with email by now, that to take extra time to train people on email...
How to Improve the Customer Experience with Your Omni-Channel Strategy
In customer service, you often have to put yourself in your customers’ shoes and visualize their experience so that you can understand where there are gaps in the customer experience, and to help you see what processes and technology you need to adapt so...
Service Training Reinforcement: How to Make Training Lessons Stick
A well-trained employee can make all the difference when it comes to customer service and how the employee deals with customer escalations, solves customer problems, and upsells or cross-sells your products. When you invest in training programs for your employees, you’ll probably find that...
Reduce Employee Turnover with These Tips
If one of your goals this year is to reduce employee turnover, you’re not alone. Employee turnover is costly, aggravating, time-consuming, and it erodes hard-built teamwork efforts. An article in Fast Company discussed the issue of employee turnover, and it gave tips for reducing...
The Who’s, When’s, and Where’s of Asking for Referrals
Asking for referrals and actually getting successful referrals are two separate things. If you are relying on your customers to tell others about your business, simply because you asked them to, you’re essentially asking your customers to do the work for you. While some...
Digital Learning Day: Why eLearning Should Be A Part of Your Telesales Training Program
Telesales can be an intense environment, and telesales teams are often on the move, in and out of the office. Asking your team to stay abreast of the latest product changes and to keep current on their training can be a hassle – yet...
A New Year and New Employees: Best Practice Hiring Tips for Your Call Center
If you work as a call center manager or executive, hiring new call center employees, unfortunately, tends to be a frequent activity. In an industry notorious for high turnover rates (60% is an average for many call centers), recruiting, screening, and hiring employees is...
New Year… New Employee Training Tips for Field Service Technicians
A well-trained field service team is the face of a company. When a technician arrives at a business or residence for troubleshooting and repair, the impression he or she leaves will be more telling than a company’s snazzy brand promises or expensive commercials. If...
What Great Management Skills Do Top Leaders Have in Common?
If you peruse through the business section of any bookstore, or if you happen to be browsing the bestseller book titles at the airport book kiosk, undoubtedly, you'll see a whole host of books and titles related to management skills and insider tips from...
Making Our List
If you are around kids at all during the holidays, you may be noticing their lists being made for Santa. This got us thinking … what would an adult list for Santa look like? Since we happen to work in the world of customer...
Learn the Top Customer Service Skills Used at Amazon.com
Amazon.com's rise to a $75 billion/year company did not happen accidentally. At the helm, CEO Jeff Bezos has strategically crafted his customer service practices, business prowess, and attention to metrics into every facet of the company. A recent Bloomberg in-depth article profiles the man...
Live Chat and Technical Support: Make it Work with These 5 Tips
Using live chat to assist customers with technical support issues may sound like a thorny combination, especially if you have a complex product or service that reps in your call center typically handle. However, live chat is a great medium for technical support customer...
5 Ways to Make Your Customer Service Really Shine this Holiday Season
Halloween was just here – pumpkins still grace doorsteps, and the leaves are falling – yet step into a retail store, and you're likely to hear holiday music blaring and be greeted by green and red colors bedecking the shelves. Yes, the holiday "season" is...
How Organizational Psychology Can Help Your Call Center Coaching Program
There is a reason why organizational psychologists are often called in to help companies restructure work flows, advise on coaching practices, and develop plans to help motivate and inspire employees: It works. Sometimes just rearranging subtle differences in corporate structures and workflows can have...
Top Soft Skills Training Tips that will Propel Your Career
Here's a pop quiz for all of you who are wondering what skills will be required to advance quickly in your career: Name the top skills that companies want from their employees: Technical skills/hard skills Social media skills Soft skills You may think that with…