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Teams are the way that most companies get important work done. When you combine the energy, knowledge, and skills of a motivated group of people, then you and your team can accomplish anything you set your minds to.

The contact center industry is saturated with new technology companies that promise to be the next big thing., but technological adoption for the sake of adoption should be viewed with some healthy skepticism.

The contact center industry is rife with technological horror stories which involve picking the wrong technology, disastrous implementations, and poor alignment with business needs.

Define Processes First

Don't fall prey to the flash and dazzle of new technology! If you select a new technology platform without fully understanding how it will affect your business processes, you will be in for a massive headache.

A thorough assessment of your current state business needs and future state vision will help you define and fine-tune your customer processes, which will help you select a technology platform that best supports your needs.

Buy for Needs Not Wants

When considering features and functionality, automate when possible and think in terms of real must-haves versus unnecessary bells and whistles. Evaluate your core reasons for wanting new technology. For example, do you need to do a better job offering omnichannel support? Do you need to do a better job gathering customer feedback?.

Adding more technology to areas that you don't really need to add can make your processes too complicated, which contributes to inefficiency and can create an unnecessary drain on your budget.

Take a Peek at the Competition

Do a Competitor Analysis to find out what your most successful competitors are implementing for their processes and technology? While this in itself shouldn't be your only criteria for evaluation, it certainly helps to understand what your competitors are doing right and what they may need to improve. Looking at their customer feedback can give you information about this.

Involve the Necessary Parties

Always involve key stakeholders in your selection process. Aside from leadership, include the contact center agents and other end-users so you can identify loopholes and potential areas that need to be addressed before signing the dotted line.

Know Who You Are Serving

Involve customer preferences and audience insight when choosing the right technology for your business. For instance, Chatbots are not seen to be very appealing to an older audience, but younger audiences tend to adopt such new technologies quickly.

Best Practices for Implementation

It's a good idea to have an implementation plan in place to ensure that the integration of your technology is a smooth and seamless experience.

Everyone comes across difficult people in every aspect of life—our jobs, friendships, and yes, sometimes even our family. We can’t avoid it, but we can do something about it. It takes work, but it is definitely worth the effort.

Here are five ways to approach these situations:

1- Avoid Labeling or Judging People
If you think you are dealing with a difficult person, you are setting up the conversation to be difficult. Unconsciously, you may put people in categories and then expect them to behave the same way every time. Resist that temptation to label or judge, even if their behavior.

2- Step Back Before You Respond
Your natural response may be a quick or critical comeback, but stop yourself! That comeback may, in fact, come back to haunt you and cause the conversation to go spiraling downward. Trust that the other person does not mean to be difficult. Take time to compose yourself before responding.

3- Stop Wishing They were Different
How many times have you thought, “If only she would be more responsive or positive or reliable, or whatever differences you wish to see in this difficult person? Well, you’ve probably realized by now that wishing doesn’t work. The best way to see a change in difficult people is to change your own thinking and behavior..

4- Use a Learning Mindset Approach
Approach each interaction with an open mind—avoid making decisions or predictions before you start. Really listen to what the other person has to say and remain open to their viewpoint. When people feel your support, they will be more willing to work with you.

5- Don’t be a Difficult Person Yourself!
It’s really easy to identify when someone else is being difficult. But, how many times do you look in the mirror and acknowledge that you are the one being difficult? Take responsibility for your actions without turning to your “dark side” so that you don’t become the difficult person that others avoid.

Wrap time, after-call work, ACW, post-call processing – these are just some of the names for that important bit of time in a contact center once a call has ended when the advisor can update the system with the caller’s resolution, next steps, details or order notes.
In this article we will show you how to make the most of just a few precious minutes to ensure wrap time or ACW is used properly and effectively.

Customer interactions, both good and bad, are likely to affect brand loyalty. You, as a customer service agent, must ensure that every caller is pleased with your service skills, so that the business which you represent is not negatively affected by the consequences of your customer interaction. To do this, you must be made aware of common customer service phrases that irritate callers.

Listed below are 5 such statements and suitable suggestions for how to refrain from using them.

1. What were your details again?
A common source of customer frustration comes from when they are made to repeat their personal information and details to a call center agent. Customers appreciate efficiency, so make sure that you have clearly recorded such details in your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, in order to avoid repeating yourself. As a representative of your company, the customer will consider your efficiency as a trademark for the business.

2. I’ll get him/her to call you back in a minute.
Putting an ambitious time limit on when a colleague will continue a customer enquiry can be tricky. If you offer the customer such a time restriction, and your co-worker fails to work to it, this can be misconstrued as laziness on your colleague’s and your own part. Thus, you risk damaging your company’s reputation. Unless you are absolutely certain that the other person will be able to contact the customer within the required time limit, never offer one.

3. Let me investigate.
Whilst it may seem a perfectly legitimate statement to make, this phrase is too vague and can cause the customer to feel like they are about to be involved in a massively drawn-out situation. You must remember that efficiency is crucial to effective customer service. Therefore, you should inform them of your action plan for resolving their query and provide them with a realistic time period in which you will deliver that solution.

4. You are our priority.
As a call center agent, you are probably going to receive hundreds of calls every day, and the majority of these callers will understand the sheer number of people that you have been talking to. Therefore, it is likely that the customer will feel patronised by such a comment, knowing that you have only said it to “sweeten them up”. So instead, divert yourself from using such language and simply present your intentions to solve the matter, whist ensuring that the customer is happy with each detail provided.

5. Please can you hold for a moment?
Being forced to wait is something that no customer enjoys and it can cause them to feel frustrated when they have little idea of why you have done so. In order to minimise such frustration, keep them informed of the actions that you intend to take while they are on hold.