A friend of mine works for a prominent university where one of his primary responsibilities is actively engaging with the alumni and athletic boosters, both directly and through social media channels, to garner large donations.  Recently his department compiled a tribute video for one of their most prominent alumnae (and donor) using recorded messages from some of their past outstanding football players.  It was a great idea in theory but tracking down this old player data proved to be rather difficult.

The life in academia is very much like our corporate lives.  We have TONS of data about past and present customers (students) but it’s not easily accessible, not well organized and definitely not easily analyzed.  My friend’s task sounded easy – track down football players that played for the university between 1974 and 2010, contact them, and get them to agree to appear in the tribute video that would air during this year’s homecoming celebration. What seemed like a...

Services for homeowners are intertwined.  I need a phone line for my alarm system to be monitored properly.  What happens when the alarm system cannot connect to the phone and neither the phone service company nor the alarm company will cop to the issue or help me resolve it?  The alarm company says it’s a phone issue, the phone company says it’s an alarm issue and the result is one frustrated customer with nowhere to turn for resolution.  We are all paying for your dysfunction.  What part of each dollar for your product or service is needed to fund your company’s dysfunction?  This is a serious question that I am asking you! 

The alarm company’s call center agent didn’t have access to the needed data, or the skills to help me troubleshoot the problem.  I am paying toward the existence of the call center but there isn’t a process in place to help the agents in a situation like this.  And while the phone company was able to connect me to a tech over the phone to help me...

In business we frequently see a very reactive approach when it comes to customer complaints or comments.  If someone tweets something about a product problem you may tweet them back to try and resolve it on a singular level.  But shouldn’t you proactively tweet out a solution to your followers that may be experiencing the same issue but haven’t yet come to you with their comments?

Have you seen the proactive push versus the reaction to customer comments?  Think about the mega super store that had a typo in the discount of their weekly coupon.  They of course realized the mistake as soon as the coupon was printed in the paper because angry customers were calling the company’s call center to say that they were turned away.

Do damage control with those calling, of course, but it doesn’t end with instructing your agents about how to handle the affected callers.  Take the negative customer sentiment and be proactive with a strategy to generate positive sentiment.  Alert...

Guidelines and talking points sound different to customers than do call-controlling scripts.  A call center agent who sounds like an advocate or advisor because they naturally converse (what they are told to say), deliver a better customer experience.  With your effort to help agents connect with the caller or to control the content of the call, your scripts easily become a cause of poor customer experiences.

You know that being a call center agent is extremely difficult.  Were you aware that multitasking is close to impossible for human beings to do?  Did you know that with each additional task added to the basic task of listening, efficiency and effectiveness degrade?  Add the need to say specific things during the call to the list of tasks that have already decimated the ability to perform and what do you get?  Well, you get call center agents who sound like idiots (and robots) because they resort to reading the script and not one who is thinking about what the caller is...