Jeremy Watkin
Jeremy Watkin
Jeremy Watkin is the Director of Customer Support and CX at NumberBarn. He has more than 20 years of experience as a contact center professional leading highly engaged customer service teams. Jeremy is frequently recognized as a thought leader for his writing and speaking on a variety of topics including quality management, outsourcing, customer experience, contact center technology, and more. When not working he's spending quality time with his wife Alicia and their three boys, running with his dog, or dreaming of native trout rising for a size 16 elk hair caddis.
Thoughts on Serving Ungrateful Customers
Image by Vlad Vasnetsov from Pixabay Have you ever assisted a customer and you really, really wanted to find a solution for them? Yes, I...
The Anatomy of an Effective Contact Center One-on-One Conversation
Image by Mikko Koivuneva from Pixabay Whether it’s called a one-on-one meeting, or a coaching conversation, or a performance check-in, this regular conversation between a...
Why Contact Center Quality Assurance Matters
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay Throughout my career in the contact center, I’ve had a love-hate relationship with quality assurance (QA). I was already…
Features, Bugs, Insights and the Art of Solving Customer Problems
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay It’s been 10 years since I wrote an article on this blog about the importance of never saying “No”...
Response Etiquette for Public Customer Comments
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay Nothing can derail a perfect day in the contact center like a public comment from a customer calling your...
The 5 Essential Behaviors Before Concluding Customer Interactions
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay Early in my career as a contact center manager, I did many things that make me cringe nowadays. One...
Angry Feedback is Still Valuable Feedback
Image by ashish choudhary from Pixabay We’ve had a certain lingering bug for a long, long time. We suspected that a bug existed in our...
Is Resolving the Customer’s Issue Good Enough, or Can We Do Better?
Image by StockSnap from Pixabay As an early-morning runner with a dog, one of the most essential pieces of equipment to ensure success is my...
Tags in Your Ticketing System: How, Why, and When to Use Them
In a world of social media, especially Instagram, I fear that we’ve fallen into a belief that more hashtags is better. Think about the last…
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...
The Way It’s Always Been Done
Meet Mouse, our corn snake. I’ve never really considered myself a “reptile person.” On those occasions where I’ve encountered snakes while hiking or working in…
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...
Sometimes you win and sometimes you learn
My kids have this sign hanging in their room that says “Sometimes you win and sometimes you learn.” I’m pretty sure it’s just a cheesy…
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...
Striking the Right Balance as a Customer Service Leader
As a customer service leader, there’s a certain balance I’ve struggled to find. Specifically, I’ve found myself feeling like I was failing my team on…
Online Reviews: A Window Into the Truth About Your Company
Image by PIRO4D from Pixabay Since beginning my new role as a customer service and experience leader, I’ve gained a bit of new experience. I,…
5 Favorite Quotes from “Excellence Wins” by Horst Schulze
For those of us in the business of serving customers, when Horst Schulze, co-founder and former president of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company speaks, we listen.…
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....