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| The Nine Timeless Truths of Call Center Design |
| Are you underestimating the value of your contact center environment? You may be surprised at what a few small improvements can do for your bottom line. If you cram your agents into tiny little boxes, they're going to feel like lab animals -- and will likely perform about as well. Managers need to take great care in designing the layout of the call center floor to keep the agents from feeling crammed in and underappreciated. |
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[Full Article]
Jul-18-2008 |
| 'Not a Site, but a Concept': Tapping the Power of Social Networking |
| Mini USA, the American branch of BMW's Mini Cooper line, tracks everything being said about its brand everywhere on line --- in blogs, discussion groups, forums, This is just one of the companies savvy enough to participate in the "groundswell," according to Forrester's Charlene Li. The groundswell is a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations. The more you know and understand the individuals who make up the groundswell around your brand and your company, the more you can use the new social networking phenomenon to your advantage. |
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[Full Article]
Jul-18-2008 |
| Real Estate Discovers CRM: Trying Out the Tools |
| As more buyers and sellers look to the Web and as other parties in the real estate value chain move to Web-enabled business software platforms, the real estate industry has begun to embrace CRM as a sales tool. While enterprise-level leaders such as Oracle and SAP AG don't have specific CRM offerings for real estate agents, they do offer real estate management tools for their clientele. Meanwhile, development and growing use of Software as a Service (SaaS) CRM solutions is beginning to change the competitive landscape, and the way real estate agencies manage their sales and work forces. |
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[Full Article]
Jul-18-2008 |
| Six Technologies That Make CRM Better |
| On its most basic level, CRM is a customer database that provides insight into clients and helps you manage relationships with them. Though the abilities of CRM are certainly advantageous, the tool is just one part of the enterprise application picture. There are many available technologies that complement CRM and boost its capabilities. Some are large enterprise-software packages, while others are smaller tools that can provide an effective way to use CRM. |
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[Full Article]
Jul-18-2008 |
| Training, Retaining and Maintaining the Workforce Management Professional |
| All contact centers face significant challenges in hiring and retaining good personnel. Yet so much attention is paid to agent staffing that organizations often forget to make sufficient investments in the staff that keeps the contact center running smoothly --- workforce planners. Without a clear plan to develop and retain skilled workforce planners, the center can compromise the goals of the entire organization. A comprehensive training and retention strategy for these employees can preserve continuity in the workforce planning office and, by extension, bring order to the contact center as a whole. |
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[Full Article]
Jul-17-2008 |
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