Free White Paper, "Are you Ready For Outsourcing?"

As featured in a past issue of Connections Magazine, Taction - The Contact Center's Amelia LaRoche delivers the article, "Are you Ready For Outsourcing?" providing great food for thought for anyone who is considering outsource call center.

Download the .pdf here: http://www.taction.com/news/news.php

The Power of Two, Call Center Math

Customers don't always praise you in the Call Center world. Mostly they never call again, yet when they do the power of two can be immense.
On December 18th Customer A called and spoke with Agent X. Probably had a few questions, we're all comparison shopping these days.
And again on December 21st Customer A called back to place her order and spoke with Agent Y. The following Shift leader edited (for confidentiality) email hit our in-boxes not long after.

'I spoke with Customer A today. She placed an order with our very own Agent Y. She had the highest of praise for Agent Y. She said that Agent Y was polite and competent and was very impressed with her efficiency and customer service skills...'

And then this email...

'While I was speaking with Customer A (who sang wonderful praises for Agent Y) she said that she had spoken with Agent X on Friday, Dec. 18. She wanted to let me know that Agent X was also professional, pleasant, and efficient. She said that because she had received the highest quality service from not one, but two of our agents she would be purchasing of all of her products from [us] for a long time to come!! Thank you, Agent X for always being pleasant and professional. Your excellent customer service skills are greatly appreciated!'

So if Agent Y x Agent X= Customer A for life, then perhaps Agent Y x Agent X x Customer A= Customers B, C, D, E, F, and G?

We call these Accolades, and for customer acquisition, satisfaction, and retention it's like the "new" math only better!

Dedication, Call Center Workers @ Taction Have It

Flu and winter have finally taken hold in Maine with some folks too sick to make it in or sent home to save us all and others with frozen water pipes, closed day care woes, and other everyday obstacles to clocking in on time. As the annual reminder email to staff goes, "we are a small community of isolated villages and towns..." where the average commute is 30-40 minutes of icy and sometimes mountainous back roads.

It's a wonder we have any seats filled at all, yet ATTAs are flying 'round our in-boxes as Agent after Agent stays over two hours late on a shift or comes in an hour early to ensure we answer every call possible that comes in.

Good thing because with 4th quarter almost spinning off the rails the phones are humming with catalog sales flooding in and Customer Service Representatives trying to ease customers holiday anxiety we are full on in the busy season and grateful for our dedicated workers. You folks are truly world class call center in every aspect. Thanks.

Accolades and ATTAs, A Culture of Reward

This initial post is for future reference and to allow readers to gain insight into two very important cultural aspects of our call center community. Quite often our employees are rewarded for doing right with public recognition, this blog and subsequent feeds build value toward this effort, wherein announcements of either an Accolade or ATTA (As in ATTA Gal or ATTA Guy!) has been earned.

In our call center we represent many client companies with unique offerings and customers. An Accolade can be generated by either customer feedback and/ or client feedback and is defined as: When a customer and/ or client goes out of their way to praise an employee.

ATTAs were created to reward employees for generally doing good  including, but not limited to, working extra time to help out their fellow employees, shoveling snow or other housekeeping, even walking an employee to their car when it's late at night and dark.

As a culture that values reward, Taction - The Contact Center, will be posting Accolades and ATTAs quite often.