Rattle That Tree! Tips to Deal with Facilitation ‘Lullaby Times’
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Calling all Call Center trainers! Here is an article by Guila Muir discussing training lull times. We hope you enjoy it.
According to Michael Wilkinson, author of The Secrets of Facilitation, standard “Lullaby Times” occur without fail three times during the course of any training or facilitation. These times are:
- Midmorning (10:30-11:00 a.m.)
- Just after Lunch (1:30-2:00 p.m.)
- Midafternoon (3:00-3:30 p.m.)
How does one combat these dreaded low-energy times? Here are three guidelines:
1. Re-set the Energy Level. Following each break, start with a burst of energy–the same level you would use to kick off the day. Your group’s energy will rise to reflect your own.
2. Be sure to Applaud. Especially in the afternoon, applause helps keep people energized. Set the expectation of applause early in the day, and applaud:
- Before a presentation
- At the end of a presentation
- After each team’s report-back.
3. Change Engagement Methods. Vary between brainstorming, working in pairs, and small-group breakout sessions.
Remember, a few short breaks will always rattle the “lullaby tree,” too!
Read more articles about Facilitation Skills. Learn about Guila Muir’s Facilitation Skills Workshops.
Guila Muir is the premiere trainer of trainers, facilitators, and presenters on the West Coast of the United States. Since 1994, she has helped thousands of professionals improve their training, facilitation, and presentation skills. Find out how she can help transform you from a boring expert to a great presenter: www.guilamuir.com
© Guila Muir. All rights reserved.
Call Center Services - Keeping Up With The Growing Demand
by GSET Publishing
Are your company’s call center services all that they could be? Even centers that were state of the art a decade or so ago might be out of date and inadequate today. As technology expands, so do clients’ expectations regarding communication. Nowadays, a client will normally expect to be able to contact a company representative more or less twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, either by phone, fax or email.
Clients expect a quick response and courteous, efficient service regardless of how the communication is carried out. Though the technology to support this level of service is readily available, it can be a challenge for call centers to keep up with. Moreover, the quality and scope of outgoing calls remains important, as global competition for clients is fiercer than ever.
Here are just some of the services that inbound and outbound call centers need to provide to be competitive in today’s buisness world. Agents must be able to take orders, process transactions, respond to requests for services and information, and provide effective help for clients who are having problems with the company’s products. A sort of ‘help desk’ is often necessary, with two or three tiers of agents who can respond to various requests and queries.
Regarding the outbound function of the call center, market research, polling and sales calls are conducted on a near-constant basis. Supervisors are needed to monitor the agents, and outcomes of calls are tracked and reported by various means. Usually, this requires the call center to have on-site supervisor stations, as well as up-to-date means of tracking and reporting.
These fairly traditional services are only the beginning; nowadays, a call center may also be required to respond to letters, faxes and emails, use computer telophony integration (CTI), and provide service through voice recognition programs for those times when the call center is ‘closed’. However, that really is the point - a modern call center should never really be closed at all.
Increasingly, clients may reside in different time zones, and they have the right to expect service at any time. Even within a given time zone, there is an expectation of constant availability. This, along with the proliferation of means of communication and the need to integrate and respond to information from various sources, adds to the modern call center’s tasks.
The need for all of these services puts considerable pressure on the modern call center, not to mention the company itself! For this reason, some small and medium sized companies may find themselves unable to meet all of these demands for service on their own.
Some companies may resist outsourcing their call center needs, perhaps feeling that the personal touch would be lost. According to call center service providers, however, they needn’t worry - the modern call center is more than able to provide knowledgable, personal service to clients. It has been proven mathematically that a single large call center is more effective - in terms of cost and service - than multiple small centers.
It is easy to understand why this makes sense. The larger the call center, the more able it will be to provide the full range of services needed today. Some technological solutions are expensive to acquire and update, but if their cost can be absorbed by a large call center that services multiple companies, everyone can take advantage of the technology without having to individually acquire all the hardware and software.
Moreover, in a large center, training and supervision becomes streamlined and effective. Individual agents gain expertise at a rapid pace; being exposed to a range of clients, their learning curve is huge.
All in all, there are many reasons to consider call center outsourcing, not the leas of which is the demand for an increasingly comprehensive range of call center services. Nowadays, companies really have no choice but to give clients what they want and need. A modern, fully equipped call center can help you do just that, at a reasonable cost and with updates available as often as you need them.
About The Author
Prodialing strives to provide concise information concerning the high tech arena of callcenters, including call center services (http://www.prodialing.com/call-center-services.html), predictive dialers, IVR and much, much more. See our website at ProDialing.com (http://www.prodialing.com).
Finding Offshore Customers for a Call Center Startup
by Altaf Khan
Finding offshore customers for a call center startup is a difficult proposition. The real challenge, however, comes afterwards - delivering and meeting the expectations of those customers!
First things first though - how to go about finding your initial customers? The first question that you need to ask yourself is why some organization should outsource work to you? For them outsourcing is certainly an attractive, but high-risk proposition. It is attractive not only because it lets them concentrate more on their core activities, but also because of cost-savings. Their risks are primarily quality and reliability related. As a startup you should be prepared to address these risks in a satisfactory manner.
For starters, you should be able to back the quality and reliability of your service. This can be done in many ways: you should try to do them in as many as possible. A standard device guaranteeing the quality and reliability is a Service Level Agreement (SLA). You should develop an SLA defining industry-standard performance criteria for your company.
You should also show the prospective customer some evidence about your track record (e.g. list of customers and testimonials) in the running of call centers. As a startup, you may not have such testimonials. In that case, you should highlight the call-center-related experience of your key team members.
Call center customers prefer specialists over generalists. Try to select a niche for yourself, e.g., order taking, helpdesk, telesales, etc., and try to build your whole selling pitch around that niche.
Before making a pitch to prospective customers, try to understand how their business work and be ready to tell them the following: how they can make-more-money or save-more-money or get-more-business or enhance-the-quality-of-their-service or improve-their-product by outsourcing their call center function to you?
Do tell them about the processes that you have in place to assure the quality of your services. An industry-standard quality certification will be invaluable in this regard. Do develop a disaster-recovery plan and share it with the potential customer.
Here are a few more suggestions: get in touch with your country’s expatriates in the target country for leads and other assistance. Register your company with country-specific organizations (like NASSCOM in India, PSEB in Pakistan) and international portals like offshorexperts.com. Write to other offshore companies in outsourcing powerhouses like India, Philippines, and Canada and see if they would like to develop a partnership with you.
About The Author
Altaf Khan
Managing Staff Turnover in Offshore Call Centers
http://www.altafkhan.com/ib/managing-staff-turnover-in-offshore-call-centers.htm
Delegation For Managers: What Should You Do And What Should You Delegate?
As a manager, you’re expected to decide what needs to be done, gather the resources to do it, and then decide who does what.
Okay, managing is a little more than that, but it certainly does include setting goals, gathering resources, and delegating tasks.
Now, if you’re like many managers, there sometimes isn’t any clear line between the work you think you should do, and the work you think your staff should do.
In fact, you may not be a "pure" manager (is there such a thing?) in the sense that you are expected to do some of the "doing" as well as the "managing".
For instance, you might roll up your sleeves and get behind the counter of your store now and again… you might go out on the road and sell at times… you might handle some of the consulting projects yourself… you might do a range of tasks that mirror those that your staff do.
Of course, you want to make the most of your time - and the time of the people who work for you - in order to generate the best possible results from your team as a whole.
So how do you decide who does what? How do you decide what you should do, and what your staff should do?
Now, you’re probably well aware that just because someone enjoys doing something it doesn’t mean they’re good at it… so I won’t insult your intelligence by suggesting that you allocate tasks purely on the basis of what people like to do.
On the contrary, your rationale may be: "whoever is best at doing a particular job should do it."
Unfortunately…
Bzzzzzzz! Wrong - thanks for playing!
Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
I know - it seems logical that if you - or someone else - is better at a certain task than anyone else, then you or that other person should do it.
But many times this does not generate the most overall value!
I’m not going to bore you with theory, but there’s an economic principle called "comparative advantage" that, when applied to management, essentially says that when allocating tasks among people, each person should not do what they are best at, but what they are "most best" at.
In other words, each person should do the things that generate the most value for the group as a whole.
So, let’s say you run a consultancy. We’ll keep it simple and imagine you can do two things very well - you’re an excellent manager, and you’re an outstanding consultant. In fact, you’re better at managing and consulting than each of the consultants you employ.
Now, given that you’re the best consultant you have, you may be tempted to forego some of your management duties to spend more time consulting.
But before you do so… ask yourself: what is likely to generate the best overall results (as in revenues, profits or however else you measure results)?
Is it focusing wholly on managing, or doing less managing and more consulting?
The article below by Anna Johnson may not be call center specific but many call center managers may find useful information on delegation within.
The answer is, of course, that it depends on what you are "most best" at. If you’re better at managing than consulting - in the sense that for every hour you spend managing your team you indirectly generate greater results than what you generate for an hour you spend consulting - then you should spend all your time managing. Regardless of how much you enjoy consulting, and regardless of the fact that you’re better at consulting than everyone else in your firm.
The principle of comparative advantage equally applies to allocating and delegating tasks to everyone in your team… and outside your team too - for example, outsourcing.
In fact, it applies to allocating every kind of resource you have.
So I encourage you to use this approach - you might be amazed at how much more time it gives you… and how much better the productivity and performance of you and your staff.
Anna Johnson is the author of the How To Manage People System, including her book, How To Manage People (Even If You’re A Control Freak!). Get Anna’s FREE 12-page report How To Be An Outstanding Manager - The 8 Vital Keys To Managing People Effectively
