Increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of your agents can help to dramatically improve the results of your call center. Your SLA’s and service metrics will begin to reach their goals and even surpass them, with a few simple steps. Here are 7 ways to increase agent efficiency in your contact center: 

SpiceCSM believes in exceptional experiences and customer satisfaction in all interactions. Our platform was created with one goal in mind; to create an experience that will wow customers, and excite agents. By providing a flexible, interactive, and intuitive platform, companies can transform their customers’ interactions into winning experiences. Great customer engagements empower growth through customer and employee satisfaction, and SpiceCSM was created with the passion and power to do just that.

So you've decided to use cloud-based Help Desk / CRM software to provide your call center agents with a Guided Process Workflow with which to work from. The question written on the brick wall most people hit at this point is "Where do we go from here?" The answer to this question really depends on a number of characteristics about your organization, and how you will provide support to your customers. SpiceCSM is always a great place to start.

Yesterday I read an article by, Robert Reich, Former Secretary of Labor, on the Huffington Post, debating whether we are headed for a "double-dip" recession or just a lousy recovery? It is an interesting debate with many self serving opinions on all sides. I am no economist and have never been a fan of Mr. Reich, but I have to say...when it comes to business in this era, it just doesn't matter! You and your team have got to play like the bottom is falling out everyday. Bad economy or good, recession or not. You've got to be at the top of your game!

Deployment of any new CSM, CRM, or other customer management or call center software can be a stressful experience for everyone involved. New software leads to challenges on every level of an organization - Support representatives or other employees on the "front lines" will have to adapt to new processes on the fly, with only the prior skills/knowledge they have and the training they were given to fall back on. Management and Supervisor groups will have a similar struggle when dealing with reporting of KPIs and other metrics, as well as the stress placed on the entire organization during the 'cutover' to a new system.

I like experiments...in fact I love them. That's kind of how I got involved with Fused Solutions and SpiceCSM. Having grown up in Northern NY and having attended Clarkson University, I wanted to help revitalize an economy that hadn't weathered the transition from agrarian and smoke stack to technology very well. Its a long story but suffice it to say the last several years have been an interesting and fulfilling ride. But that is for a different day back to the experiment of sorts.

On December 10, the NECCF (North East Contact Center Forum) held its annual Winter Forum and holiday reception at the Henderson House in Weston, MA. I was lucky to attend the sold-out conference and was able to network with professionals across the call center industry in a wide range of businesses from LEGO to Prudential. The morning presenters, Amanda Marschall from LEGO and Matthew Storm from NICE, focused on effective and unconventional agent training methods and ways to get closer to your customers through multiple channels and technologies. All-in-all it was very informative and kept the audience intrigued.

We have entered the age of Big Data where massive amounts of data are being collected and stored. With the ever increasing pace of technology the amount of data being collected will also expand exponentially. However, this data is often housed in multiple locations. How do you get it to all work together and better still how do you get to the data you really need in a quick and effective manner?

SpiceCSM is proud to be a bronze level sponsor of the 2011 inContact User Conference. While we are attending this action packed event our CEO, Michael Ryan will be on the agenda to deliver a stunning presentation about “service level differentiation”. This will be done in coordination with two other speakers from other companies.