The crew at Outsource Consultants recently held their mid-year strategic planning session at Arrowwood Resort in Minnesota! (more…)

In his recent article, Paul Selby recounts his experience working in customer service. From this experience he relates to the reality that customer service can be a difficult job for a variety of reasons, which is why the turnover rate in call centers is often quite high compared to other industries. Selby suggests the following ways call center managers can make the agents’ job easier in an effort to retain them: (more…)

The last decade or so has seen a major shift from people shopping in traditional, physical stores to shopping almost exclusively online. While shopping online may offer convenience and sometimes cheaper pricing, there is still one area where brick-and-mortar stores often have an advantage: personalized customer service. In her recent article, Margarita Hakobyan discusses the challenge of personalizing the customer experience online versus in a traditional store. The online experience has the disadvantage of not having people physically present to greet or help customers and make them feel like they’re in a welcoming environment. However, she provides the following ways to make the online customer experience more personal: (more…)

In his recent article, Fred Chua discusses how inbound call centers can benefit travel agencies. The travel industry has been booming in the last few years and, while the trend within the travel and hospitality industry is to move towards self-service on the internet, Chua points out that there are people who still utilize travel agencies to coordinate their trips; 16% of people, to be exact. While it’s not a major percentage of people using travel agencies, it’s still important that those customers’ needs are being met. For travel agencies wanting to provide consistent and reliable service to those customers, Chua recommends utilizing outsourced inbound call centers to handle reservation services. He offers and expands on the following four reasons why travel agencies should outsource their inbound reservation services to call centers to increase sales: (more…)

Many companies know that a solid customer experience is important within day-to-day contact center interactions, but one specific area within the contact center where customer satisfaction is important is in technical support or help-desk. In his recent article, Larry Alton discusses the impact of tech support on a company’s customer experience. Essentially, Alton’s point is that having knowledgeable and high-quality agents will help improve technical support customer satisfaction and retention, which ultimately improves your ROI and bottom line. The article goes into detail on the following eight suggestions for improving technical support in contact centers: (more…)

In his recent article, Fred Chua points out that while sales to potential new customers are important to companies, it can be just as important to sell new products and services to existing customers. This can be accomplished by call center agents using a tactic called up-selling, which is selling a more upgrade dated version of a product/service as opposed to the original intended product/service. Up-selling can result in boosted revenue due to increased order size. Chua’s article provides and elaborates on the following eight reasons why call centers should use up-selling tactics: (more…)

Company leaders foster customer-centric environments. From the president down to department managers, it’s critical that people in leadership positions are the ones setting the tone and providing an example for how they want their employees to approach the customer experience and improve customer engagement. However, sometimes it can be a challenge to get everyone at the company onboard even if leaders maintain a customer-first mindset, and as a result, the customer engagement goes downhill. In his recent article, Vikas Agrawal provides and discusses the following ideas for how companies can improve their customer engagement: (more…)

A recent article by Ian Golding discusses customer-centric leadership. He believes that having a solid customer experience program is related to how customer-centric the leaders are at the company. Golding provides the following six traits of successful customer experience leaders: (more…)

A recent article by Rob Daleman discusses the significance of customer experience in gaining and retaining customers and increasing revenue. Most companies agree that a high quality customer experience is good for business, especially when using omni-channel communication based on data to ensure personalized experiences. Daleman’s article says that companies are investing heavily into communication management systems and other software in an effort to improve the customer experience, which is showing improved customer satisfaction and financial ROI. The happier the customers are with their service, the more likely they are to remain loyal to a company and evangelize for the brand, which ultimately leads to more customers and more revenue. Dalemen also addresses four areas of customer experience companies need to focus on going forward, including: Importance of data quality, measurement and reporting, retention and loyalty, and 360-degree customer views. (more…)

In her recent article, Teresa Allen discusses the topic of utilizing customer service scripts. Many companies give their call center agents scripts to use in their customer interactions, but there is an argument that using scripts can remove the emotional connection from the customer experience by making the interaction robotic. While requiring scripts for every single type of call might lead to some stuffy customer interactions, Allen believes that eliminating call center scripts completely would be a mistake and they’re necessary to keep as a guide. (more…)