As you are aware from my previous blogs, my background is based in leading customer care organizations. There is no question that the most rewarding, and at times the most frustrating aspect of running a customer care organization is managing large groups of people. It can be very difficult to operate at a high level of efficiency and effectiveness and the slightest misstep can create chaos.

Here are two factors that drive success.

The first factor of success is leadership, but not just the leaders, Director of Operations, Operations Managers and Supervisors interacting with the front line CSR’s, but how they interact with other departments like Workforce Management, and Human Resources.  

Leadership development starts from the top down. Inspect what you expect on a daily basis. Every operation I have been directly involved with has an attendance policy. The policy is usually based on some form of excused and unexcused absenc... read more >

Workforce Management solutions have been around for years and for most current users, they can’t live without the advanced tools they have become accustomed to using for Forecasting, Scheduling, Reporting, and Real-time Management.

Today, use of Workforce Management solutions has expanded beyond the contact center. Many companies are using the WFM solution for back-office, branches and beyond (think enterprise) and companies are recognizing the same performance improvements they realized when implemented the solution in the contact center.

Weather you have already moved beyond spreadsheets and are using basic or complex WFM software, knowing the ROI is key to validating a purchase or upgrade. In addition, if you are looking to expand the use of your solution beyond the contact center, here are six benefits you can use to evaluate your next Workforce Management Solution.

Reduction of Overstaffing - Workforce Management enables the prec... read more >

“ The Call Center School ” defines workforce shrinkage as “the amount of time agents are paid to be there but are not available to take calls”. This includes some things that are not changeable, such as vacations and breaks, but there is often a fair amount of time lost due to agents just not being in place and available when the schedule is expecting them to be.

“ Knowlagent, now Intradiem ”, recently conducted a survey of more than 100 industry leaders – across all types of call centers – to find out what activities make up shrinkage in their centers. According to the study, the average amount of an agent’s time spent in shrinkage is around 24%, or roughly one fourth of the work day.

Traditionally, shrinkage is broken down into three categories:

Planned – activities such as breaks, scheduled training, meetings and one-on-one’s are included in this category. These activitie... read more >

I know this is a company blog, and don’t want to bore you with my personal life, but to me they are one and the same.  I ran the Ironman a couple weeks ago (March 17) in Los Cabos.  A few weeks leading up to it had been consumed with 80 – 100+ mile bike rides with a run off the bike on Saturdays and a 13+ mile runs on Sunday.

One hundred miles on the bike solo takes me 5 – 5 ½  hours depending on the terrain and weather conditions.  That is a lot of time to dig deep and put things in to perspective. Saturday,February 23 my mind took me to the place it often does on long rides, to my career in customer care.  I started thinking about Workforce Optimization (WFO), not without reason, but because like in customer care training was the order of the day, I was monitoring my statistics, thinking about the quality of my ride, thinking about my coach, but most importantly I was thinking about the finish line.

So, l... read more >

Two weeks ago, I attended our annual Genesys Sales Kickoff (SKO) meeting in San  Francisco. During the week of Main Stage presentations, breakout sessions and training, I learned a lot, more than I can remember. But one statement made by our CEO, Paul Segre @PaulSegre , made me think. The words he spoke, “fail fast” apply to so much of what we do in our daily routines, but more importantly for this post, to our most valuable resources—our employees and customers.

To me, failing fas t means quickly recognizing the wrong path has been taken and making a change in direction. For a large Customer Service organization with thousands of employees recognizing failure can be extremely difficult, but changing direction quickly can be impossible without the right people, processes, and systems in place. Here are steps you can take to “fail fast” that will help your organization provide world-class customer service: 
<... read more >