Mike Hasler
5 Evolving Contact Center Technologies and Where the Next Year Will Take Them
by Mike Hasler in Contact Center Technology, Customer Service Trends, Mike Hasler For all the grief, losses, and setbacks the pandemic unleashed, there is a general consensus that it also sparked a revolution on the technical front. The adoption rat...
Overcoming the Expense of Customer Service in Major Urban Centers
by Mike Hasler in Contact Center Outsourcing, Customer Service Outsourcing, Mike Hasler Cost Factors in Major Urban Centers In the past 18 months, we have seen more and more interest from companies looking for alternatives to operating custome...
What Happens to Customer Service When Unemployment Hits Historic Lows?
A low unemployment rate is cause for celebration. It means people are working, paying taxes, and bringing home the bacon. That’s why most people see the current 3.6% US unemployment rate as fantastic news – it’s an astronomical improvement over the 10%...
Oh, the Places You’ll Go: The 4 Contact Center Location Considerations
We talk a lot in this blog forum about partnership and who you should choose as an outsourcer contact center partner, but where you choose to outsource to is almost as important an element in the procurement process. Consider this post your GPS guiding...
Building the Contact Center SOW: The Framework for Success
You’ve heard it before – stress is the outcome of reality not aligning with expectations. And nothing takes a toll on relationships quite as quickly as stress. When outsourcing your company’s customer support – whether for the first time or the fifth time –...
4 Essential Resources to Read Before You Craft Your Contact Center RFP
You’re no stranger to RFPs. Love them or hate them, the undeniable truth is that they’re crucial to making informed business decisions about future vendors and partners. The purpose of a contact center RFP is no different: it’s an essential process to ...
5 Insights About Sourcing and Developing Strategic Partnerships
If your company is beginning the fiscal year in April, you likely have a stream of questions flowing through your mind. Are your goals for the fiscal year lining up with long-term priorities? Will your target budget support those goals? And will your c...
Is It Time to Outsource? 5 Questions to Ask Yourself
Every day, we interact with executives who are in the early stages of discovery, looking for ways to improve their customer experience and/or drive cost out of their customer care model. The conversations often revolve around whether the time is right ...
Chasing Unicorns: Is It Possible to Have a Strategic Partnership with Your Contact Center?
True or false: your outsourced contact center provider is just another vendor. Attempting to establish a strategic partnership with your contact center is like chasing a unicorn. It’s a valid question. There are plenty of areas of your business that you outsource without a second...
Live Chat Best Practices
In a world fueled by technology and a culture plagued by busy-ness, where many people turn to texting and instant messaging as their first and fastest route of communication, it makes sense why live chat is a growing channel for customer support. A recent...
Top 10 Mistakes to Avoid in Writing a Contact Center RFP
We know what it’s like to be pulling your hair out over writing a call center RFP. When you’re under pressure and your time is stretched thin, it can seem like an insurmountable task. And yet, it’s vital to the health of your company...
Which Customer Service Predictions Came True from 3 Years Ago?
Ever try to predict the outcome of anything? It’s no easy feat. Sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke said predictions about the future can be a “discouraging, hazardous occupation.” Either you sound believable, but are proved pitifully shortsighted or you sound loony, and are proven...
What Contact Centers Can Learn from Super Bowl Coaches
I know this is going to raise a few eyebrows – especially with Super Bowl XLIX right around the corner — but I firmly believe that managing a successful contact center is a lot like running a winning NFL franchise. I am not just...
A Sample Contact Center RFP Timeline
<what 's driving your Contact Center RFP timeline? Is your current outsourcing contract expiring soon? Are you switching vendors? Have you reached maximum capacity with an in-house solution? As you prepare to launch an RFP process to find the right partner for your customer...
7 Tough Questions to Ask Your Potential Contact Center Vendor
In the process of selecting the best outsourced contact center partner to handle your customer support, and when you have your top contenders identified, it will be time to throw some hardball questions at them. In our two previous posts, we offered up guidelines for...