7 Tips To Help You Maintain Your Discipline While Working at Home

Take the 15 Day Trial Today. Learn more about this Call Center VIP membership site now.

by: ameenmk

The good news about working for yourself is that you don't have a boss breathing down your neck. The bad news about working for yourself is that you don't have a boss breathing down your neck.

Working for yourself can be great, but it can also be frustrating, especially if you don't feel that your self-discipline is in good working order. Self-employment gives you more flexibility to decide when you will go to work, what your priorities are, and when you need to take a break. But running your own business generally requires more self-discipline than you would need if you worked as an employee.

Thing is, self-discipline is critical. It is easy to get distracted or procrastinate. Family interruptions and our own resistance-especially when it comes to tasks that we don't like doing but that still need doing-can get in the way of making steady progress. Without a boss and coworkers around to help keep you focused, it will be easy to spend too much time eating, sleeping, watching television, golfing, or even working. You must be disciplined.

Here are some initial suggestions to help you increase your work discipline:
Treat the business as a business. Simply having this attitude can easily eliminate many problems. When you treat yourself like a real business, others will too.

Keep office hours. A realistic daily schedule fosters discipline. For many loan officers, discipline means getting to the office by 9 a.m. and putting in a full day of work. Decide what your standard office hours will be and stick to them. Break an hour or so for lunch as you normally would, but treat it like work.

Make a daily task plan. Plan what you are going to do in the course of the day, and when you will accomplish each task. Consider making a rule that when you are done with the tasks on that day's schedule, you are done for the day. This will help avoid workaholism or burnout.

Know your rhythm. Some of us are morning people, some are best in the afternoon, while others thrive at 3 AM. It is important to use your most productive time wisely. Determine your best times of day, and arrange your schedule according to those times as well as to the demands of your work-if you rock and roll at 3 AM, for example, there will be some tasks you can do then, and others (like calling a client) that won't be practical.

Set rules for yourself. Decide the circumstances under which you will take time off to play, read or watch television, what interruptions you are willing to allow, and when you will do household chores.

Dress for work, even at home. Similarly, some folks find that it helps to dress nice. No suit required, but the casual Friday look, for example, might be appropriate.

Create "company policies." In addition to setting rules for yourself, it is equally important to set policies so that family, friends, and business associates know what to expect from you and how to behave. For instance, you may find that your spouse or a neighbor expects you to do chores while they are at work. You may want to do this, or you may not. Either way, having policies that include this kind of thing makes such decisions easier.

Article Source: http://www.ArticleStreet.com/

Customer Retention Team Development

By Diana Liffick

Handling account cancellation calls goes by many names.  Whether you call it simply “Cancellations” or “Customer Saves” or “Membership Retention”, it’s all the same thing:  bad news.   

Here are some pointers to give your team to help turn bad news into good news more often every day. 

         Use the tools your company provides for customer retention, such as special deals or V.I.P. services, when it might be applicable.

I always had representatives on my “saves” team who were repeatedly not offering the deals that we provided, but couldn’t understand why they weren’t saving enough customers.  Adopt the motto, ‘Use what works!’

Don't sound the same on every call — unless you get the same customer with the same reason for canceling on every call.  Remember “Bueller?  Bueller?”  Avoid that.  And musicians whose songs all sound the same get flamed for it. Mix it up!  Sound alive.

All of the truly, honestly successful “saves” representatives I dealt with sounded personable, and customized how they handled every call to that specific customer.

Remember nothing "always" works "every time".  In fact, avoid saying “always” or “never” unless it’s really applicable.

You might have representatives who quickly dismiss customer retention methods after they do not work on one or two customers.  Comparing the conclusion to your, your team’s, or your company’s large-scale tracking of what really works with the rep can be helpful in keeping them from abandoning good customer retention methods.

You have to really WANT the saved customers.   You must be truly DETERMINED to get them. They will not just fall in your lap all the time — you have to earn them.

That is to say, representatives don’t have to be full of longing — they just have to be committed to succeeding in order to do so.

Constantly develop and adjust save maneuvers. Even if you can’t help but sound the same on every call, if the ways your company handles the competition isn’t cutting it, then there isn’t much you can do besides pass that information ‘up the chain.’

Your company needs to stay on top of the competition, as well as problems that can cause customers to cancel.  Listen to your representatives when they tell you why customers are leaving and what your company needs to do about it.  Don’t quickly dismiss all feedback from the front lines just because some or most of it isn’t going to help.

Hopefully, these tried-and-true tips that I learned will help your team be very successful at saving customers from canceling their accounts.  Remember, if you are properly coaching a representative, using the standard feedback cycle, until it becomes obvious that they will never ‘get it’, then ask yourself, Why are they taking only customer retention calls?  Their skills should be re-evaluated to see where they belong.   Good luck!

 

Management Coaching Tip - Hire Smart or Fire Dumb

By Leanne Hoagland-Smith 

People buy from people. And people will buy a lot more from other people when they receive authentic and excellent care specific to what they are buying and even more importantly what they are experiencing.

I was watching a video You Can't Send a Duck to Eagle School when once again I realized that a lot of smart business people in management roles truly do not hire smart and that results in them firing dumb.

Hire smart means that you hire for great attitudes, for respect, for the simple acts of being polite and kind. You can teach your products and services, but it is far more difficult to teach how to be nice to people. Management Coaching Tip: Find individuals with the necessary self-leadership skills.

Fire dumb means that firing people who you should not have hired in the first place is costing you a whole heck of a lot of money. You were dumb by hiring them. This stupidity is draining your various banks accounts and not just the one that holds your greenbacks. Your other bank accounts are: productivity, performance, progress, perseverance and potential. Management Coaching Tip: Your banks accounts are also your operating systems or Points of Potential.

One of my mentors, Michael Sleppin, shared this story about visiting one of his clients who was complaining about all the "numbchucks" in his organization. Michael in his very simple and direct manner asked this question: "Who hired all those numbchucks?"

Many companies go to great lengths to find the right person. Personality tests are given, background checks are undertaken and yet there is still a lot of dumb hiring going on. Part of this reason could be the fear of lawsuits and to the shortage of qualified workers.

Of course, the K-16 educational process does not help nor does the disconnect between today's parents and their children. However, organizations can still hire smart. They will need to be just a little more innovative and discerning in their hiring process.

How are your leaders doing within your organization. Get this free self leadership skills checklist.

What other strategies are you using to leverage your human capital? This free customer loyalty audit may help better understand how to cultivate loyal customers by turning them into raving fans.

Leanne Hoagland-Smith, chief customer officer with offices in Chicago & Indianapolis, helps organizations through business coaching training services to return to the purpose of business that being building ravings fans while increasing productivity and profitability. Her clients double their results in 30 to 90 days. Call 219.759.5601 to schedule a free business coaching training consultation.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Leanne_Hoagland-Smith

 

Want To Improve Your Call Center's Performance?

Watch The Video

 

I put together a mind-map of call center issues and some possible solution used by top call center.  More important you can get two free samples of employee motivated games designed to improve performance and employee morale at:  CallCenterGames.com

I would really like it if you could leave a comment letting me know if you think I am on target, what's missing and what information you would like to receive.  This is the first video in a series of call center performance videos.  In future videos I will discuss in detail the solutions mentioned in the video.

If you want notification of new video added to the series, please visit:  CallCenterGames.com