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Call Center Tips
October 6, 2005
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This week's Call Center Tips issue is full of great information on Call Center Training. We are sure you will find something that will improve your training practices or make your Customer Service more effective.

Have a great weekend!

The Call Center Cafe Staff

5 Simple Steps to a MAGIC Facilitation

As a customer service trainer I teach associates how to use the Five Steps of MAGIC (Make A Great Impression on the Customer) to create an exceptional customer experience. But do your customers-- program participants--leave your training programs feeling as though they had an exceptional learning experience?

Apply these five simple steps to your own customer service training program--you may find this will leave them wanting to come back for more.

Step 1 Make a Connection: The earlier on in the course you can make a connection with each individual participant; the more engaged he or she will be in the learning. A connection helps to build trust between you and the participant and lowers any resistance to the customer service training he may have. Here are a few examples of how you can do this:

  • Greet each participant as they walk through the door
  • Speak clearly and slowly, with an upbeat tone
  • Shake hands and smile
  • Ask for (and use) their name as soon as you hear it
  • Listen for concerns they may have and respond to them with empathy and appreciation for their attendance
  • Connect on a personal level by looking for things you have in common with individual participants
We recommend Video Professor!
Call center scheduling can sometimes seem like a guessing game for managers. Deciding what hours to give agents and working around their schedules, holidays and other events can be daunting enough. Introduce the idea of staffing agents based on their skill sets and the need to change staffing levels based call volumes--- and an even more difficult element is created.

With the proper call center scheduling solution in place, managers are able to better calm the flurry that arises in the call center whenever changes or disruptions in the scheduling occur.

Managing call center scheduling can become difficult when overlapping time-off requests, holidays and over-, or under-staffing occur.

Having a call center that is not properly staffed, not only offsets productivity levels, but also drains resources and lowers the efficiency of the overall operation. With call center scheduling, forecasting call volumes and assigning agents to work based on their skill sets, avoids employees who are 'just hanging around'.

Scheduling agents based on their skill set is also a way of reducing the need to route callers. This helps increase caller satisfaction, when they reach an agent who can help them right away, the chance of a repeat customer increases.
We live in a do-it-yourself - or DIY - world: ATMs, pay-at-the-pump, grocery self-check out lines and of course restaurant buffets. So naturally, when consumers have an issue with a product or service they want it resolved - FAST.

Businesses are responding by offering customers another convenient DIY option: online self-service. Everyone benefits from this no-hassle solution during this - National Customer Service Week, October 2-6 - or any, busy time of the year.

Adoption of online self-service by consumers is certainly on the increase, as today most customer issues and questions can be done quickly on the web, usually 24 hours a day, seven days a week. By registering on a company's Web site, you gain complete access - at any time of day - to account information. And, customers can view and pay bills, submit application or order forms, and report customer service-related or technical issues all online without ever stepping foot in a store or having to pick up the phone and call a customer service department.

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