Peggy Carlaw
Customer Loyalty: Starring the Sales Team
When thinking about who in the organization has the biggest role in creating loyal customers, we typically think of the after-sale service and support teams. But the sales team has a critical role to play as well. In fact, recent research shows that of four...
Does First Call Resolution Lead to Customer Loyalty?
It's long been thought that first call resolution is one of the main drivers of customer satisfaction. SQM's pioneering research found that for every 1% improvement in first call resolution (FCR), there's a corresponding 1% increase in customer satisfaction. Studies done by Customer Relationship...
Successful CRM Implementation Requires Software Plus Skills
Many organizations implement a new CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system hoping to make dramatic improvements in sales as well as to improve the customer experience. While a new system can certainly help, many companies find that a CRM system alone isn't sufficient to meet...
Using Call Center Sales Training to Help Your Team Upsell (Without Losing Your Team...
Call centers can be profit makers or losers, depending on how they're run and the type of company they're used for. Commonly, call centers are focused on customer service and used to help customers solve problems or find solutions – which may be great...
Soft Skills Training: 3 Keys to Success
Soft skills include character traits like common sense, empathy, and a positive attitude, and interpersonal skills like the ability to communicate well with people. They have more to do with who we are than what we know. The soft skills required for a customer...
Be an Attitude Adjuster
We post a lot about coaching here at the Impact Blog! One key reason why it's important to be a great coach is that your actions and approach to coaching can seriously affect your employees' attitudes and the overall level of morale in the...
The Strategic Role of the Call Center in a Recovering Economy
As the economy begins to recover and organizations begin reinvesting in key personnel and equipment, many areas of the organization continue to have to do more with less, including the call center. Rather than thinking of the call center as a cost center, however,...
Coaching Employees is Job #1
Whether you're a team leader, a supervisor, or contact center manager, coaching—giving feedback to your employees—is one of the most important thing you do leader. As a leader, your job is to set goals, and guide your team toward those goals as you inspire...
Call Calibration for Consistent Scoring and Coaching
This is the third post in a series on identifying performance gaps in call center agents. The first post focused on how to create a bullet-proof monitoring form, the second on how to develop a companion Call Quality Guide. Once these two tools are...
Assessing Employee Performance Gaps With a Call Quality Guide
This is Part 2 in a 3-part blog series about how to assess call center employee performance gaps. The first post dealt with how to create a form to monitor performance Standards and Objectives. Your monitoring form is the cornerstone of a program to identify...
Employee Performance Gaps: How to Identify Gaps in Call Center Agent Performance
There are three steps to identifying performance gaps in call center agents: Create a bullet-proof monitoring form Develop a companion Call Quality Guide Hold frequent calibration sessions. This blog post will address the first issue: How to create a bullet-proof monitoring form to aid in…
Uncovering Additional Opportunities to Serve Customers
Once a customer's reasons for calling have been satisfied, customer service representatives usually ask, "Is there anything else I can help you with?" If the customer says no, the customer service rep concludes the call. Better Customer Service: "Is there anything else I can offer?"…
Customer Service Manager Tip of the Day: Create Effective Incentives for Your Team
As a customer service manager, you undoubtedly deal with employees who lack motivation, or who just need that extra kick to get them in gear. You have metrics you have to hit, but you're running out of ways to keep your team focused on...
Customer Service: The Key to Brand Differentiation
"It's becoming more difficult to stay ahead of your competitors with just a product-oriented differentiation." — Ed O'Boyle, global practice leader of Gallup Marketplace According to O'Boyle, "You have to add more to the relationship there. B2B in particular, has a maniacal...
How Customer Service Builds Brand Loyalty
Karen Freeman, Patrick Spenner, and Anna Bird bring up Three Myths About What Customers Want in the HBR Blog Network. These myths are based on information from their recent consumer study. While the article is directed toward marketers, there are important lessons for...
Customer Service Training: The Seven Fundamentals of Follow-Up
At Impact, we're strong believers in customer service training methods that incorporate on-the-job follow-up into the process so that you and your supervisors can continuously offer the right kinds of ongoing support to your staff. We've written several posts on coaching in customer...
Call Center Best Practices
Call centers that handle service and support calls are, unfortunately, often viewed as cost centers. Although these centers usually don't bring in revenue directly, they do contribute to the company's goals in many valuable ways, most notably in reinforcing the company's brand and in...
Call Center Coaching: 5 More Tips to Ensure Your Success
Our previous post on call center coaching titled, "Call Center Coaching: 5 Tips to Ensure Your Success," gave tips to help you improve your management style in a support or call center environment. We're pleased to present the next 5 essential skills that will help...
Call Center Coaching: 5 Tips to Ensure Your Success
Managing staff—in any form–is hard work and requires a well-stocked repertoire of people skills, business acumen, and the ability to juggle multiple projects and deal with pressure. For those of you who manage call centers and support centers, you are tasked with watching operational costs...
When to Use Customer Service Games in Training
Customer service games can add spice to a training program. I ought to know, I wrote the book! Unfortunately, I've seen too many games used just because–well, I'm not sure why. The game was fun, but didn't increase learning or help participants perform better...