Birch Communications Contact Center Achieves its Third Certification as a Center of Excellence

BenchmarkPortal recognizes the exceptional efficiency and effectiveness of the Birch Customer Service Department by awarding it Certification as a Center of Excellence for the third year in a row. The granting of certification is based on a company’s operational metrics, customer satisfaction and agent satisfaction.

June 25, 2014 -- The Birch Customer Care Operations has been certified as a Center of Excellence by BenchmarkPortal, a leading contact center research and consulting organization. “The achievement of the Center of Excellence represents a contact center’s commitment to delivering customer service that is both effective and efficient,” said BenchmarkPortal CEO Bruce Belfiore. “It is the culmination of important initiatives that were undertaken to achieve sustainable service excellence.”   

Click here to continue reading this article: http://www.benchmarkportal.com/call-center-newsresources/press-release/2014/06/birch-communications-contact-center-achieves-its-thi

Customer Effort - CallTalk - Listen Now On Demand!

Just because research is published on the internet or in a business journal does not mean the research findings are true. Look at survey methodology and design to determine validity. Join host BenchmarkPortal CEO Bruce Belfiore and guest host Frederick Van Bennekom, Principal at Great Brook Consulting, as they discuss customer effort.

Guest Host: Frederick Van Bennekom, Principal, Great Brook Consulting

Dr. Fred Van Bennekom helps organizations collect and apply customer and employee feedback in a statistically valid manner. The author of "Customer Surveying: A Guidebook for Service Managers," Fred teaches operations management in Northeastern University’s Executive MBA program. Before earning his doctorate, he served as an information systems consultant for Digital Equipment’s field service organization. Through his company, Great Brook, Dr. Van Bennekom conducts workshops and advises clients on their survey practices.

Click here to listen to this show: http://www.benchmarkportal.com/call-center-newsresources/calltalk-online-radio-show/5/6/customer-effort

Tips on Adherence to Schedule Adherence

By definition, schedule adherence is the percentage of time agents are where they are supposed to be, according to their assigned schedules - - which can include work time, lunch and break time, training time, team meeting time, etc.  Poor adherence can be surprisingly expensive for a center. We can calculate that a single agent who is regularly “short” on work-time adherence by 20 minutes per day throughout the year, costs the company 83 hours of lost work and $1,000 in wages (based upon an avg. $12/hr.). This extrapolates to nearly 1,000 customer calls not handled by that agent over that same period!

Research suggests that there are two major reasons for poor performance in schedule adherence. The first is a general lack of understanding by agents of the importance and impact that schedule adherence has upon the company,  The second reason is poor supervision and management.

Of call centers surveyed, 71% track or follow adherence to schedule whereas 28% do not. Of those centers that track adherence, 66% use commercial WFM systems. About 42% of centers surveyed revise their workforce schedules as required, without established intervals; 20% of respondents revise schedules on a monthly basis, 15% revise on a quarterly-basis, and 4% revise weekly.

The following Best Practices are suggested by experts to help managers gain control over adherence:

Click here to continue reading this article:  http://www.benchmarkportal.com/call-center-newsresources/news-articles/2014/06/schedule-adherence

Have You Benchmarked This Year?

Benchmarking is an essential tool for optimizing the performance of your contact center, and no one has more experience in contact center benchmarking than BenchmarkPortal. Through benchmarking, managers can pinpoint areas of opportunity for improvement, and identify initiatives that will result in the best ROI for the center and organization. Benchmarking answers the question, “How good is good enough?” and allows managers to stay competitive within their industry and against industry peers. BenchmarkPortal has the world's largest and most respected database of contact center metrics, and provides reports which set the industry standard.
 
Click here to take our complimentary 18-KPI Benchmarking Survey: 
http://www.benchmarkportal.com/call-center-benchmarking/call-center-benchmarking-surveys

This complimentary 18-KPI benchmarking survey report will provide your organization with a quick snapshot of your company compared to the industry you have selected. Once we receive the information, we will verify the data and set up a 40-minute benchmarking Readout with a Certified Contact Center Expert! After the review, you will receive a copy of the 18-KPI report and the benchmarking presentation to share internally with your organization.
This benchmarking survey comes with the following:

• 18-KPI Benchmarking Survey Report
• Complimentary 40-min. report readout with a BMP Expert
• A copy of the analysis PowerPoint presentation

Complaint Resolution: When 30% of Your Time is Spent on “I’ve got a Complaint!” Calls

Across all industries the complaint ratio is approximately 7.5% of all calls, with complaints in the auto-manufacturing industry skyrocketing to a high of nearly 20%. Regardless of their nature and origin, the correct and proper handling of complaint calls is one of a call center’s most sensitive tasks.  Poor handling will result in lost customers; great handling can actually result in higher loyalty from customers, who are delighted with your response.  As managers, we need to keep in mind that complaints can be very emotionally taxing on front-line agents and can hurt morale as well. Here are some tips and guidelines for complaint handling:

Click the following link to continue reading: http://www.benchmarkportal.com/call-center-newsresources/news-articles/2014/06/call-center-complaint-resolution

Annual Inbound Sales Best Practices Survey

Annual Inbound Sales Best Practices Survey
Do you have an inbound sales center? See how your center performs in an instant. Click on the link below to participate in our Survey for Inbound and Blended Sales Centers and receive free instant reporting at the end of the survey.
You will receive the following:

• Instant Benchmarking Report - Find out how your center stacks up against up-to-the-minute averages on all reported metrics for the inbound sales industry.
• Instant Gap Analysis - Find out where to direct your resources and get the biggest returns by identifying your center's performance gaps.
• Emailed PDF Report - Find out where to direct your resources and get the biggest returns by identifying your center's performance gaps.

Click on the link below to start the Survey now:
http://benchmarkportal.inbound-sales-survey.sgizmo.com/s3/

Our surveys are the easiest way for call centers to benchmark themselves against peers. BenchmarkPortal has collected key performance indicators from contact centers worldwide, creating the world's largest database of best practices statistics.

First Call Resolution Revisited

First call resolution (FCR) is a double-edged metric in that it relates to the quality of calls as well as the efficiency of the call center. In terms of quality, FCR is a customer-facing metric, as customers are very aware as to whether their call was satisfied on the first call or not. In terms of efficiency, the more times a customer must call the center in order to satisfy an inquiry, the higher the costs. For these two reasons, FCR is recognized by many as the single most imporatant driver of call center optimization and performance.

According to research conducted at BenchmarkPortal, in their attempts to document First Call Resolution, the majority of call centers instruct their agents ask the caller at the end of each caller interaction if the reasons for their call was satisfied (not always accurate). Other methods include:

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AutoTrader.com Contact Center Achieves Its Second Certification as a BenchmarkPortal Center of Excellence

BenchmarkPortal recognizes the exceptional efficiency and effectiveness of the AutoTrader.com Contact Center by awarding it Certification as a Center of Excellence for the second year in a row. The granting of certification is based on a company’s operational metrics, customer satisfaction and agent satisfaction.

May 20, 2014 - The AutoTrader.com customer contact center has been certified as a Center of Excellence by BenchmarkPortal, a leading contact center research and consulting organization. “This certification attests to the fact that call center leaders have successfully balanced efficiency and effectiveness in their operations,” said BenchmarkPortal CEO Bruce Belfiore. “By optimizing their cost components and their ability to satisfy customers, they exemplify best practices in a very important consumer products sector.”

Click Here To Continue Reading This News Announcement: http://www.benchmarkportal.com/call-center-newsresources/press-release/2014/05/autotradercom-contact-center-achieves-its-second-cer

Gamification Principles and Best Practices

Host: Bruce Belfiore, CEO & Senior Research Analyst, BenchmarkPortal

Guest Speaker: Bob Cowen, Snowfly

Join host BenchmarkPortal CEO Bruce Belfiore and guest host Bob Cowen, Snowfly, as they discuss gamification principles and best practices. What is it, why all of the hype, and how can we use it for our daily challenges like retention, adherence, quality, FCR, and upselling?
Guest Host: Bob Cowen

Bob has been in the contact center industry for more than 30 years. During those years, he has observed agent incentive programs that used contests or games, leader boards, badges and various rewards. Creating and managing these incentive programs appeared to be labor intensive; they ran only periodically, for a relatively short duration and quite often the ROI was not even measured!

Then in 2006, Bob saw an article in the Wall Street Journal describing how a large bank was using an on-line incentive application that motivated employees to improve attendance, adherence and reduce attrition, especially new-hire attrition. It used brief on-line games, leader boards and rewards - - and it operated full time. This led him to Snowfly and the rest, as they say, is history.

Alliance Data Retail Services Customer Care Centers Achieves Its Ninth Certification as a BenchmarkPortal Center of Excellence

The Alliance Data Retail Services Customer Care Centers have been certified as a Center of Excellence by BenchmarkPortal, a leading contact center research and consulting organization. “Only the top 10 percent of those benchmarked annually achieve this distinction,” said BenchmarkPortal CEO Bruce Belfiore. “Achieving Center of Excellence certification is an acknowledgement of strong management and leadership in the call center industry.”  
 

To achieve certification as a Center of Excellence, a company must undergo a rigorous benchmarking process, which compares the organization’s operational metrics to those of its peers, using the world's largest database of contact center metrics. During this process, BenchmarkPortal experts audit and verify key data from the contact center applying for certification.

To continue reading, click here: http://www.benchmarkportal.com/call-center-newsresources/press-release/2014/05/alliance-data-retail-services-customer-care-centers-