About five years ago, we entered a discussion with a prospective client. They had been outsourcing their customer service to a call center with a predominantly “work-at-home” (WAH) model and one of the first questions they asked us was about work-at-home agents. They’d had a bad experience with that model and were keen to move […]
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One of the fundamental questions that gets asked in the call center services procurement process is: will we have a dedicated team of agents or will they be shared? It’s a great question and seems pretty straightforward, right? A dedicated team is always the best solution … or is it? Say you’ve been charged with […]
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It may seem outrageous to those in the customer service business, but the answer is most definitely “no.” Nowhere in the call center industry is this more evident than in insurance claims support scenarios. The need for insurance of some description is one of those morbidly certain things in life like death and taxes. Unfortunately, […]
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A GPS unit that provides a general sense of direction based on landmarks (“turn left at the train station, head South after the statue of the town mascot”) could feasibly get you from point A to point B. But if you want to cut the confusion, speed up your journey and create an overall less […]
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In our world, it’s a little bit soul crushing to know that one third of people in the US would choose to clean a toilet over talking with customer service. But it is also a call to action. If the call to customer care is a dreaded and distasteful last resort, how do we adapt […]
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Outsourcing. It’s basically the corporate equivalent of walking down the aisle. You’re making a decision to trust someone else completely and you’re inviting them to build a future with you. Not a decision to be taken lightly. And it can induce more than a little anxiety in even the toughest executive. We’ve heard stories from […]
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Don’t we all wish that customers came with a lifetime guarantee? They’d make their first purchase and be irrevocably smitten for life? In that perfect world, customer retention would be at 100% and customer turnover would be zero. Since that’s not the world we live in, customers need to experience prompt and dedicated attention at […]
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Thanks to emerging customer support channels like social media and live chat, as well as evolving technologies like speech recognition, there are more ways than ever for customers to initiate (and resolve) a service inquiry. And when they have options at their fingertips, customers are showing a growing preference for self-service options using automated IVRs, […]
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You’ve conducted your “experience audit” and walked miles in your customers’ metaphorical shoes. You’ve labored over reworking processes and playing diplomat to keep the management team in alignment on the customer experience strategy. You’ve trained your teams to deliver on the company’s “experience” vision. You’re measuring key metrics tied to the customer experience to keep […]
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Everyone believes that improving customer experience (CX) is good for business. And brands like Apple, Nordstroms, Starbucks, and Trader Joe’s attribute their phenomenal success to providing consistently superior customer experiences. But evidence that customer service is worth investing in goes beyond anecdotes and marketing copy. There is solid research from many fronts that supports the […]
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