The Closer
The Daily Show
Dexter
Eureka
Glee
The Good Wife
House
Life
Life on Mars
The Mentalist
Mystery!
Psych
Saving Grace
Seinfeld
Stargate Universe
Two and a Half Men
White Collar
ADELE
Black Kids
Carolina Liar
Feist
Fleet Foxes
Flight of the Conchords
Fountains of Wayne
Kaiser Chiefs
Kathleen Edwards
Keane
KT Tunstall
Lemon Jelly
Liz Phair
Mark Knopfler
Mary Chapin Carpenter
Massive Attack
Matchbox Twenty
Melody Gardot
Nada Surf
Plain White T's
The Pretenders
Santogold
Sea Wolf
Shelby Lynne
The Shins
Snow Patrol
The Ting Tings
U2
The Verve
I was disappointed by the naivite displayed in this post on the The 1to1 Blog, titled “When Will Contact Centers Be Taken Seriously?” I suppose people who only look into call centers now and then, or base their take on the state of the industry on a lunchtime gripe session at a conference are bound to miss what the actual trends are and may have an outdated view of the current state of the call center industry.
Sure, plenty of call centers still struggle with being perceived as cost centers, but the true trend we’ve been seeing in the industry is a positive one. More and more contact centers *are* getting recognized for the incredible value they provide to the organization. The value of call center data for analysis has never been higher, and the wide array of tools on the market to leverage this to understand the customer experience speaks to the attention executives are paying (in dollars, no less) to their frontline point of contact with customers: call centers. Read the rest of this entry »
The cheap-chic store, Target, has whacked the proverbial bees’ nest by disrespecting a blogger who complained about one of the chain store’s ads, and that has the rest of the blogosphere (present company excepted) in a tizzy. The NYT, a traditional media outlet, was able to get Target’s spokesperson to comment in this article, “Target Tells a Blogger to Go Away.”
Early this month, the blog’s founder, Amy Jussel, called Target, complaining about a new advertising campaign that depicted a woman splayed across a big target pattern — the retailer’s emblem — with the bull’s-eye at her crotch.
OK, I’ve read Marshall McLuhan so I understand the impact that subconscious messages in images can have, so call me insensitive if you must, but I think this is a good example of hyper-sensitivity to complain about this.
Wired Magazine piles on with a pithy little piece *cleverly* titled, “Why Things Suck: Customer Service.” Terribly original, isn’t it? Looks like they spent at least 5 minutes researching their facts on the Internet (probably relied on Wikipedia) and marshalling their robust logical arguments, too. Good thing they’re not entering a high school debate, or they might get their clocks cleaned.
Nonetheless, it’s another black eye from the media. It will get picked up and spread all around, until the dubious “facts” it cites are taken for granted. Sure feels good to be sucker-punched again, doesn’t it? call center management
In case you are a regular ICMI’s QueueTips reader, no, we did not miss our deadline last Friday. Well, we did not publish on the regularly scheduled day, but it’s on purpose so we can continue to test whether Monday is a better day to send the ICMI’s QueueTips notification email.
After our initial test two weeks ago, we noticed significantly more readers were active on the website and forums. If Mondays are better for more of you than Fridays for ICMI’s QueueTips to be published, that’s fine with me! call center management
I just published an interesting response from a frontline supervisor to a question in ICMI’s QueueTips: “Call Center Management Structure” (Response #3). But it wasn’t the content of the posting that got my attention as much as her closing comment:
I would love to know more about how other call centers are structured as I am writing a master’s thesis on the topic of call center leadership. — Karen, L.L. Bean, Inc.
Pretty cool! Do you know how many of your frontline supervisors are writing a thesis on some aspect of call center management? How much are you doing to encourage this kind of professional development in your management team? call center management
I just posted a great rant from a CSR about Average Handle Time (AHT) objectives in her call center, and how miserable she is trying to work under them. It’s not the most eloquent argument you’ll ever read, but it is heartfelt, passionate and shows that she “gets it” better than her management team does: doing a good job responding to callers’ needs is more important than an arbitrary (and in this case, unreasonable) AHT target.
The post is in ICMI’s QueueTips, under the topic, “Average Handle Time Standard.” It’s Response #6, so scroll down the page if you want to skip directly to it. If you’ve got AHT standards in your call centers, this rant is must reading! Could she be working in your center right now? call center management
I recently posted a response in ICMI’s QueueTips Forums, responding to a call center manager who was struggling to find the right words to explain her call center’s value proposition.
Since in my first career I specialized in teaching writing, I suggested a couple of methods to help get the words flowing (free writing, role playing), and I also attached a free copy of an article from the ICMI Members Online Archive, “The Elevator Conversation and Other Call Center Management Challenges,” written by a leading industry expert, Kathleen Peterson, and published in Call Center Management Review.
Well, it took hours of my time, largely because I am learning by trial and error, but I finally got my first video posted on YouTube, in the ICMI QueueTube channel. It’s not going to win an Oscar, but I think I did a decent job with the production of it, and I hope to become more skilled with practice.
It’s an interview by ICMI’s Brad Cleveland with Wolfgang Neuhauser, 2007 Call Center Manager of the Year in Austria. This was part of ICMI’s Global Forum at ACCE, the Annual Call Center Exhibition, our global conference on call center management, in September 2007.
I’ve started hearing more people talking about automated callback technology in glowing terms. That’s when an announcement plays while you are waiting for your call to be answered, offering to have the call center call you back instead of making you wait in the queue. Even my mother likes it (she always tells me what she likes and doesn’t like about call centers she has called, every time we get together). But I admit I have never been that fond of the practice of postponing calls to be handled later, and I further confess that my bias was heavily influenced by a discussion years ago with Jay Minnucci, ICMI’s Vice President of Consulting Services.
So I emailed Jay recently to see if he’s been won over to the automated callback approach. In a word, “no,” but his response is more fun to read than that: Read the rest of this entry »
In case you are a regular ICMI’s QueueTips reader, no we did not miss our deadline last Friday. Well, we did not publish on the regularly scheduled day, but it’s on purpose so we can test whether Monday is a better day to send the ICMI’s QueueTips notification email. We’ve been sending it on Friday afternoon for so long that it seemed like a good time to test changing it. We’ll look at the statistics and decide whether to stick with Fridays or change to Mondays. call center management
I was disappointed by the naivite displayed in this post on the The 1to1 Blog, titled “When Will Contact Centers Be Taken Seriously?” I suppose people who only look into call centers now and then, or base their take on the state of the industry on a lunchtime gripe session at a conference are bound to miss what the actual trends are and may have an outdated view of the current state of the call center industry.
Wired Magazine piles on with a pithy little piece *cleverly* titled, “
call center management 
I’ve started hearing more people talking about automated callback technology in glowing terms. That’s when an announcement plays while you are waiting for your call to be answered, offering to have the call center call you back instead of making you wait in the queue. Even my mother likes it (she always tells me what she likes and doesn’t like about call centers she has called, every time we get together). But I admit I have never been that fond of the practice of postponing calls to be handled later, and I further confess that my bias was heavily influenced by a discussion years ago with 
