Posts Tagged ‘better’

iPhone 4.0 a great device that deserves better reception

iPhone 4.0 a great device that deserves better reception
Despite its problems with AT&T, the iPhone’s easy-to-use navigation and sleek construction makes it easy to overlook the antenna nightmares. I reviewed a $199, 16G unit running Version 4.0.1 of Apple’s iPhone operating system and found it hard to criticize anything else about the phone.

Read more on Federal Computer Week

Call Center Contacts Make Good Business Better

I had been working at a call center in Dallas for many years. When I decided to quit the call center job with the intention of starting my own business my boss called me into his office and told me to keep the call center in mind if things went poorly with my business. I knew that secretly he was hoping I would return to work. I also knew that my business would be successful enough that I never would. My first few weeks were far from easy. I had been running the business part time for many years and it had seemed quite easily manageable during that time. I had never imagined that I would actually go full time would when I finally it, I was stunned to find that it was not easy at all. In fact, it was downright difficult!

I decided that I would need an internet site if I were really going to make it. After thinking it over I decided that the site should have a help desk option as well. I had done this type of work frequently through the Dallas call center I had worked in and knew one person could not do it alone. So I picked up the phone and made a call to my old boss. He and my friends at the call center were happy to help. The fee they charged for the service was low and my site was up and running in just a few weeks.

No sooner was my site was up then my business nearly tripled within no time at all. I was receiving calls all day and throughout the night too. At times I felt like I had gone back to work at the call center. It was time for another call to my old boss. My contract was easily reworked to include inbound call center services. This was helpful but was not really paying for itself. I had to make this work somehow so I decided to try out the outbound call center services. Again we expanded our contract. It was fantastic that this could be done so easily. Even better was the fact that as my number of hours used increased my hourly rate decreased. With all the services I added my price only increased by about $3000.

The last time we adjusted my contract my old boss suggested some additions I was not aware that the center offered. Either things had changed a lot or it’s just that I was not aware of these little extras that the company offered at the time when I was working with them. The center offered to monitor orders to determine a target audience for me. Additionally they suggested I add bilingual services so that I could expand my clientele. These additions were worth every dime I paid. I immediately saw an increase in business.

In fact because of the call center solutions I have received I may actually get down to realizing my dream of retiring early. My son has started showing an eagerness to take over the family business. We recently met with the Dallas call center staff. My old boss has retired but the new management was just as friendly. They have extended the contract on our business and even offered to add message services to the list of call center services my business is receiving. My son went with me to this meeting and I saw the fear in his eyes when he heard the initial cost. I assured him that the call center was an effective tool and that like me he would never regret using the excellent call center services they provide.

NACR Helps City of Houston Municipal Courts Better Serve Citizens

NACR Helps City of Houston Municipal Courts Better Serve Citizens
EAGAN, Minn., Aug. 26 /PRNewswire/ — For the City of Houston, Texas’ Municipal Courts Administration Department, providing better service to citizen-customers and improving efficiency was as simple as partnering with communications expert NACR (North American Communications Resource, Inc.). The result is the enhancement of the city’s One Call Solution Center, which provides callers with 24-hour …

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Speaking of Sports: Is the Eagles offense better without D-Mac?

Speaking of Sports: Is the Eagles offense better without D-Mac?
Every week the Main Line Media News Sports Team of Bruce Adams and Mike Beirne will address issues around the sporting world in what we like to call Speaking of Sports. Feel free give your thoughts. This edition, the guys talk Eagles.

Read more on Main Line Times

Better Content for Call Center Advantage

You will be drawn to fallacy if you think that content and call center are two entirely different entities. Content is essential for lead generation and other call center services. It begins with the concept that customers and clients are directed to a website. Telemarketing calls made to the potential customers also make use of a website as a landing page.

The content on these web pages will do the speaking on behalf of the clients. As obvious, the content has to be really up to the mark to make buyers and other business investors interested. Crappy content would mean that the business firm doesn’t take itself seriously enough to hire quality writers!

Content writing is a much abused art form these days. There are so many people taking up the keyboard to write content for websites when they can’t put two lines in the correct grammar. BPO companies, who are amateurs in web marketing services, fall for these so-called writers because they want cheap labor.

Some call center units are yet to realize the value of websites. They depend solely on telemarketing calls for lead generation. Websites and their optimization is still something that they do on the side. The scope of online marketing is beyond the comprehension of many call center services units and that is a hard fact.

The main objective of website content is to keep the reader/user interested till the last line. Scientific studies have shown that the attention span of readers online is much less than those reading stuff off paper. As a BPO manager, you have to ensure that the content on the website fits this bill. Writers have this tendency to go overboard. The call center manager has to rein them in. Brief them on what you need exactly.

Here, the business process outsourcing management has to be very clear in their thinking. If your briefs are not clear, the website will reflect that confused state of mind. It’s always better to get the content and designing right at the very start. Editing minor glitches is acceptable, but if you have to change major chunks and replace them with better-written paragraphs, your SERP will be affected grossly.

The modern consumer is busy, intolerant and paranoid. The BPO content writers must keep this in mind. Circumlocution looks good in poetry. But when it’s a B2B or B2C website you are writing for, leave those out. Get to the point straight. Think of yourself as a consumer. Would you read polished lines in immaculate language which does not take you anywhere or doesn’t answer your question? You would immediately be tempted to look elsewhere.

Call center managers often put the writers to the grind to fill up pages because they have deadlines to meet. That is a very wrong approach and generally only manages to get writing that is hurried, sometimes bored and more often than not, indifferent. Business process outsourcing planners have to realize this. If the writers don’t feel enthusiastic about writing a piece, you can take it for granted that readers would be even less bothered than the writers are.

Heavy Equipment Training Guide: Assistance for a Better Future

A proper vocation becomes an important thing as you dream of a career in construction. Operating heavy equipment to earn a living can be realized only with certified heavy equipment training. Today, we have a lot of great schools across the United States and Canada that give quite a good training in heavy equipment management.

The demand of educated heavy equipment operators in the infrastructure, construction and the mining industries are on the upward incline. The industries are immensely dependant on the heavy equipments as they serve the purpose of making a strong and long-lasting infrastructure. But lack of skilled heavy equipment operators in the industry, fails to meet the requirement. The demand for the qualified heavy equipment operators in last few years has been tremendous. Therefore, various training schools have opened up to serve the mounting demand for qualified operators. These schools teach you everything you should know as you operate bulldozers, dump trucks, cranes, excavators, wheel loaders, and much more.

Most of the training schools are operated through the people who have been in this industry for years and who are proficient enough to provide all the information you need to know as a trained heavy equipment operator. Basically, all these training programs are planned in a way, where a student’s safety comes first. Educational programs are generally divided in the following phases:

The home study phase

The resident training phase

The home study phase proves to be valuable for the people who are working currently and all the study materials provided during the course assist them as reference guide. In this phase the classroom attendance should be more than 50%. Practical training is also provided for skill enhancement. The schools are currently offering online courses too.

Across the Northern America, there are hundreds of manufacturing sites that urgently require trained and certified operators. Within less than 8 weeks, you can get training in heavy equipment operation that will enhance your skill as well as your confidence as an operator and a member of a respected heavy construction team. In general, these classes will cover topics like inspection and safety, controls, electrical systems, blueprint reading, math, map reading, land clearing, demolition, landscaping, mining, quarry operations, and safety.

Such training is offered in vocational schools, trade schools, and community colleges across the United States and Canada. Usually, a heavy equipment training courses teach the students the usage of construction-related machinery. Some schools allow the students specializations on equipments like diesel engines, cranes or bulldozers. It is important to receive a proper training or a certificate from a school, accredited by the National Center of Construction Education and Research (NCCER).

Top Ten Ways A Call Center Quality Monitoring Solution Creates Better Trained Agents

The following list represents feedback from multiple quality monitoring clients when asked about the ways that their investment in quality monitoring has resulted in better trained agents.

1) A quality monitoring solution provides the ability for agents to hear themselves speak:
Even the best agents make mistakes. Most don’t even realize when they’re making them. Playing back recorded interactions will enlighten them. When an agent first hears themselves going “Uhmmmm…”, you can see the funny look on their face as they think, “that’s what I sound like?”. Chances are after they realize that there IS room for improvement, they will embrace the opportunity to do just that.

2) A quality monitoring solution’s screen capture functionality allows for greater understanding of how agents use their applications:
Screen Capture technology isn’t only for nabbing solitaire players or web surfers during business hours – it can also be used to watch an agent navigate through a crm while helping a customer on the phone. Often time-saving process improvements can be made after observing CRM usage. Screen capture, and especially video-mode screen capture (where every on screen movement is captured, not just stills), can have a huge impact on ROI.

3) Evaluation functionalities speed up the learning curve:
This one seems rather obvious – before the evaluation process was automated, supervisors had to sit side-by-side with employees, take notes, fill out spreadsheets, develop training material and provide feedback to employees and compile reports for management. If this process took three hours, the automated process takes three minutes. That’s not an exact calculation, of course, but you get the picture. Even worse, recording calls without an evaluation element keeps you from improving at the rapid pace that is available to you.

4) Quality monitoring reports make it easy to identify employee strengths and weaknesses, and to identify where agents need training:
Typical quality monitoring systems come with agent performance reports that can identify where employees are struggling, even where entire groups falter across the board. This is key in developing relevant training materials that focus on specific problems.

5) E-learning features allow supervisors to send targeted training materials to agents:
Once you’ve completed some evaluations and identified where employees need training, you then will have to set out to work on the areas they need help on. Once you’ve created your training materials, deployment of the appropriate content to the specific employee can be automated via “E-Learning” functionality. Confirmation of completion is then sent back to the supervisor after the employee has viewed his training material.

6) Quality Monitoring “packaging” features enable you to create a “greatest hits” list of the best and worst call examples:
If your system has a “packaging” feature you have the ability to grab your recorded events and organize them together for training purposes. You can then publish your package to the web, a shared network drive, or burned to cd. You can create a group of events related to a similar training theme, or even a “greatest hits” collection of stellar service calls sure to impress the executives.

7) Quality monitoring can reduce turnover and stagnation by providing a measurable means of improvement:
A good quality monitoring system can provide managers with the ability to focus in on skill areas where employees need help. Implemented properly, a quality monitoring program can provide a continuous improvement of agent performance. Agents will grow less frustrated and stagnant. As their skills improve, so will their ability to get to the next level.

A successful quality monitoring implementation enables teams to work to common goals and expectations:
No QA program should be implemented without first having everyone on board with both the concept and the goals. Both management and employees should have common goals, expectations and metrics – the momentum of a cohesive team effort will often empower the ability to exceed those goals.

9) Quality monitoring can affect your entire organization. Customized reports can allow you to determine if training needs are for individuals, teams, or the entire organization:
Having the ability to focus in on training requirements for individual agents is one benefit of a solid reporting mechanism, but quality monitoring reports should also allow you to examine your teams’ deficiencies, and organizational problems across the board. This will allow you to deploy individual, team and company-wide training programs and improve overall call center performance.

10) Quality monitoring can rapidly deliver a return on investment:
Once a quality monitoring program has been implemented, the return on investment can be realized very quickly. This translates to the bottom line via more upsells, saves and new sales, less turnover, faster training cycle time for new hires, and much more.