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Blue Ocean Contact Centers Wins Bronze Stevie® Award in 11th Annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service

by Blue Ocean News in Blog, Blue Ocean News, Contact Center Awards

Canadian Contact Center Recognized Alongside Top International Sales and Customer Service Organizations at Las Vegas Award Ceremony Blue Ocean Contact Centers, an outsourced Canadian contact center providing high quality solutions for complex customer care requirements, won the Bronze Stevie® Award in the Customer Service Team of the Year – Recovery Situation category at the 11th […]

 

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Weighing the Pros and Cons of Cross-Trained Contact Center Agents

by Kim Campbell in Blog, Contact Center Coaching, Kim Campbell

Too tired to read? Listen to the audio via our podcast here: 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 […]

 

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Navigating Generational Differences in the Contact Center Workforce

by Patty Isnor in Blog, Contact Center Coaching, Patty Isnor

What makes a great contact center agent isn’t as easy to define as you might expect. Yes, they need to be great communicators and they need to have the chops to be able to navigate call center systems and software with unconscious competence, but the best skills and personality traits differ from agent to agent, […]

 

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Can You Train Contact Center Agents in Empathy?

by Susan Preiss in Blog, Contact Center Coaching, Susan Preiss

We already know most people hate calling tech support and even in basic customer service scenarios, consumers prefer to use self-serve options over contacting a customer service agent directly.  Regular readers of our blog know we frequently explore the factors that influence these choices and the overall customer experience and there’s no question agent empathy […]

 

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Blue Ocean Team Named Finalist in Prestigious International Business Competition

by Blue Ocean News in Blog, Blue Ocean News, News

Contact center agents are often the unsung heroes of customer satisfaction which makes it especially satisfying when the work of our contact center agents is recognized for excellence. On January 20, 2017 Blue Ocean Contact Centers was announced by the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service as one of the five finalists for their […]

 

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Is the Customer Really Always Right?

by Kim Campbell in Blog, Contact Center Coaching, Kim Campbell

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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Evolving Customer Service to the Next Level

by Susan Preiss in Blog, Call Center Agents, Customer Service Outsourcing, Susan Preiss

The evolution of the self-serve customer service solution isn’t exactly headline news as we enter this new year. We all know that many, if not most, consumers today prefer to avoid interacting with a live customer service representative if a self-serve option is available. But when a complex situation pushes a consumer to their wit’s […]

 

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How Does Customer Experience Impact Angry Customers?

by Susan Preiss in Blog, Customer Experience, Susan Preiss

We don’t want to ruin your good mood, but humor us for a moment and think back to a time when a company made you angry. Specifically, remember that moment you contacted customer service because of some error, mishap, or malfunction, only to hang up the phone feeling even more irritated. Perhaps you were on […]

 

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Customer Journey Mapping in the Contact Center

by Susan Preiss in Blog, Customer Experience, Susan Preiss

Think back, for a moment, to a time when you made a purchase of a product, service, or membership that has, for any number of reasons, caused you stress.  Maybe the payment didn’t go through, maybe something was broken or malfunctioning, maybe it’s just not what you expected. Perhaps you check the troubleshooting manual or […]

 

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Live Chat Best Practices

by Blue Ocean in Blog, Live Chat

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 Gartner report suggests that its presence as a customer engagement channel […]

 

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