2008 will be a year to focus on customer service. Fear of a recession has led many businesses to start making cuts. As the economy slows down, businesses will be trying harder and harder to keep the customers they have. NewsReleaseWire has commented on this, as has Precision Marketing.
Harvard Business school has an interesting article about “The New Math of Customer Relationships.”
Phone service costing you a fortune? Small businesses can dramatically reduce the cost of internet and telephone by installing a shared T1 line.
T1 Rex explains that T1 lines have recently dropped in price so dramatically that businesses with only 6 lines can save money if they were to switch.
The Growth Guy is reporting on studies which show that negotiators who name a price up front generally produce more clients.
Dr. Victoria Medvec has a released a DVD interactive course and companies are utilizing it with great effect. In 2007 Apple Tree was listed as the fastest growing copmany in the PCI (private company index). CEO, John Ratliff, has put all of his key leaders through the program, as they have found it to be an invaluable tool.
It seems you don’t have to have perfect eye-sight to work in an answering service, and Drishti’, a call center in India, is proving that on a daily basis!
Drishti’ is the Hindi word for vision, and they have formed an employee base made of only visually-impaired operators. Their system is setup in such a way that it removes all the barriers sightless people have answering phones. They are, in a sense, giving their employees a new found vision by giving them a freedom they have never experienced.
Aruna Shinde, an employee of Drishti’ comments, “It is a challenging work but we can work independently, without taking help from anyone else, So, we are feeling good while working here.”
Another employee, Mangesh Indulkar says, “This is my first job and I really like it. I thought it would be tough working in call centers but it took me eight days during the training. Initially I faced some problems but now it’s fine.”
If your office has many lines and you have not switched to VoIP, consider the advantages it has over tradition PSTNs (public switched telephone network):
For more reasons, please visit TMC’s blog post.
The fourth quarter of 2007 showed a decrease in the number of Americans satified with customer service experiences.
The Peformance Improvement Blog attributes this to a weakened economy. Businesses simply have less to spend on their customer service options. If you’re in customer service, it’s time to buckle down.
TMCnet has another report about what to expect this year in the call center industry. It will be hardest for the many large contact centers who are updating their equipment. However, they stress that this may be the what is needed to reduce overall operating costs. They also point out a trend of specification and the need to corner your market.
Ah, headsets.
Our answering service is in the market for headsets, but we’re having a rough go of it. We have tried several, but all have had problems.
CRM news explains that the most important factor you need to look at (other than price, I suppose) is durability. They explain that headsets go through great beatings at call centers. Headsets are also traded around call centers and adjusted several times a day. This constant strain can lead to breakage.
I would like to add to this. Firstly, try to get a headset with an external mute button. When an operator has a sudden sneezing fit, the mute button is the first place they go. They would never put a customer on hold just to sneeze.
Another nice feature you can find is volume limiters. If you answer phones for businesses, you know that many of the calls you get are intended for fax machines. You know this because there is an ear peircing ‘BEEP’ followed by modem chitter-chatter. However, if your headset is filtered, you will only hear a small, tiny, heartwarming ’beep.’ These limiter are very effective and trust me, your eardrums will thank me.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting the findings of a UC-Santa Barbara economics professor and Ph.D. student. Apparently we’ve all been wasting money and energy by switching our time back and forth every year.
I live in Indiana and until a few years ago, we did not have to worry about this. Our time never switched! This created a lot of confusion for the states around us (not for us, of course! No!). So in 2006 Indiana decided it would be a good idea to mandate that all counties follow daylight savings time.
Well think again Indiana! Your flip-flopping has provided the data for a shocking revelation in daylight savings time mentality!
…You should read the article for the full information,
and remember to set your clocks forward this weekend!
But don’t try to upsell them either! This is what research performed by two marketing professors and and a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania has shown.
The full article is listed over at CRM Buyer. The article is very informative. It goes against what has been conventionally thought in the answering service industry.
In it, however, they call their low-value customers “slugs.” I want to let our customers know that I would never consider any of them “slugs.” I like all of our customers equally, and I love talking to each and every one of them!
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