It's finally here, the moment you've been waiting for - Call Center Magazines's 2004 Product of the Year Awards.
And 2004 brings a lot to celebrate. After years of companies hawking the latest and greatest (and often most expensive) features that technology has to offer, 2004 has brought the focus back to one of the most important assets of every call center: the agents.
More and more executives and managers are realizing how important it is to arm agents with the proper skills and tools they need to solve problems, satisfy customers and, in some cases, generate revenue.
The market is finally putting its money where its mouth is, as some of the top products of 2004 are all about empowering agents to take control of customer relationships. These are real tools that let agents develop career-worthy skills and put their knowledge to best use. After all, what good is the best technology if you don't have the best people with the proper knowledge to use it?
Some of these technologies enhance training, add coaching and measure skills like The Call Center School's computer-based training software, Employment Technologies' software for evaluating agents' written bilingual skills, and quality assurance software from Verint. Other products, such as software from Instranet, KnowledgeBase Solutions, TigerPaw Software and Symon, focus on organizing information and helping agents manage and maneuver through the vast knowledge of your company. There's even an innovative speech rec product from TuVox that's helping to bridge the gap between live and automated customer service.
Services are products too!
This year we've also included services in our awards, to recognize the many fine and innovative companies that provide call centers with services such as benchmarking, design, real estate and selection, outsourcing, staffing, retention and training.
Appropriately enough, our winners include Customer Relationship Metrics, whose survey service enables call centers to remove much of the guesswork in gauging customer satisfaction by capturing customers' reactions within a timely manner. Also in the winner's circle is KSBA Architects, for its design concepts that build out attractive, ergonomically sound and cost-effective call centers.
But companies and call centers are still striving to cut costs, improve flexibility, and boost productivity without going offshore and many are realizing that the best option is not a "call center" per se. That's why we honor Willow CSN, which offers contracted self-employed home agents who can be scheduled to take calls in increments as little as 30 minutes.
Innovation, performance, choice, and versatility. Isn't that what great products (and services) are all about?
As the year progresses, we hope to see more of these virtues in new products and services but for now we honor the products and services that have made 2004 such a positive year for our industry.
The Call Center School's Call Center ABCs Curriculum
When computer-based courses on customer service were novelties, it was easy to overlook the tendency of these courses to emphasize platitudes. Of course, agents should be polite to customers and refer to each of them by name.
Only in recent years, have courses zeroed in on the unique challenges of serving a wide range of customers by phone. And only a few computer-based courses explain what it takes to run call centers well.
Enter Call Center ABCs: Fundamentals for Call Center Staff from The Call Center School (TCCS; Lebanon, TN). As we wrote in a test drive last month, this thorough curriculum comprises five courses about the call center profession, performance management, workforce management, technology and customer relationships.
Among the curricula for call centers that debuted last year, Call Center ABCs earns a Product of the Year award because it is the best at helping agents and managers understand concepts that underpin effective call center management. The examples and test questions in Call Center ABCs reinforce these concepts, and relate them to each other, throughout the courses.
TCCS offers its ABCs curriculum as a standalone program or with its Web seminar series, Masters Series in Call Center Management, which covers many of the topics outlined in Call Center ABCs. TCCS also provides live courses, on-line courses and consulting services to call centers. 615-812-8400, www.thecallcenterschool.com
Customer Relationship Metrics' Completely Automated Telephone Surveys
Customer satisfaction is one of the most important performance criteria organizations need to gather.
But traditional paper or periodic outbound voice or e-mail customer surveys do not often capture customers' reactions accurately. The data is not as actionable because customers' memories have degraded since their latest interaction with the center.
Telephone customer satisfaction surveys can be skewed by having the same agents or teams making the survey calls as those who were on the original calls.
Call monitoring is also a flawed customer satisfaction data-capturing tool. A study by Customer Relationship Metrics (Sterling, VA) found that out of 17 items monitored, only one item - interest in helping - showed any relationship between callers' perception and the monitoring.
To provide accurate, fresh and unbiased customer satisfaction data at a reasonable cost, Customer Relationship Metrics devised the Completely Automated Telephone Surveys (CATs) initiated via inbound or outbound.
In the inbound scenario, prior to speaking to an agent, callers are invited to evaluate the service experience when the call is over. When their business with the agent concludes, callers are then transferred to CATs to participate in the survey.
The outbound process is somewhat different. CATs calls customers soon after the service transaction. If the customer is available (and willing), the CATs system initiates the surveys.
If CATs encounters a busy signal or no answer, the call goes back in the outbound queue; if the software encounters an answering machine, it leaves a message inviting the customer to call a toll-free number or the software mentions that it will call back at a later time.
Inbound or outbound, CATs asks questions and collects both quantitative information (via touch-tone) and qualitative information (via voice). Customer Relationship Metrics records the results, transcribes customer comments and delivers actionable reports to provide feedback to the agent level.
You will receive daily, weekly or monthly reports that identify the drivers of caller and company satisfaction, and which offer you a true picture of first-call resolution.
Customer Relationship Metrics works with clients to set up customer research programs to provide statistically valid results and give you a true "voice of the customer." The information enables you to engineer your service delivery to maximize customer satisfaction. 336-288-8226, www.metrics.net
Employment Technologies' e.Skills Bilingual
More call centers than ever operate bilingually for voice calls - but can you replicate that effort with bilingual e-mail or text chat?
The first step to hiring capable reps is to evaluate these skills in applicants. Employment Technologies (Winter Park, FL) offers its e.Skills Bilingual multimedia simulation software, which assesses candidates' ability to respond to customers in both English and Spanish.
In simulations, applicants take on the role of an agent working in a call center that serves the customers of three hypothetical companies, which include a cellular phone service company, a credit card company and a gourmet food service company.
e.Skills Bilingual is a standalone product that candidates access from a PC. The software consists of three optional sections that measure e-mail composition skills, data entry skills, plus keyboarding speed and accuracy in English and Spanish. The sections are timed and run about 15 minutes each.
In the E-Mail Composition section applicants receive e-mail messages from customers with questions or issues. The candidate has to look up customer and product information to prepare an appropriate response. The software scores the applicants' responses for grammar, spelling, organization, tone, completeness, and accuracy.
During the Data Entry section candidates listen to customer messages and process their requests. Applicants must enter information into appropriate fields on the order form, including items such as account numbers, addresses and credit card information.
And in a third section, Typing and Keyboard, candidates view written e-mail messages and retype the messages as quickly and as accurately as possible. The messages include alphabetical and numerical information.
e.Skills gives you their scores in the form of success profiles, which you can view on screen, print or e-mail to others within your organization. Employment Technologies works with you to help you establish an appropriate benchmark for passing scores.
With the E-Mail Composition simulation, you view the e-mail composed by the applicant, along with a checklist of things to score the e-mail on. 800-833-3279, www.etc-easy.com
