Contact Centers Online

Writen by Jimmy Sturo

Online contact centers are a great boon to customers. These centers handle e-mail newsletters, website inquiries and chats just like regular contact centers. They are provided with special software that would allow contact information to be routed to the correct people, enable contacts to be easily tracked and required data to be collected quickly.

Nowadays it has become important to provide excellent customer service on the Web. Most customers prefer the web to phone or e-mail. So the web self-service should be the top priority for every company. An effective web self-service environment can significantly reduce the workload of the regular contact center. Online contact centers can produce a substantial return on investment. Now many successful web-based service implementations are available for a wide range of industries. Contact centers online can satisfy the customers in a better way, reduce the contact center costs and provide the maximum value out of all your Internet investments.

Online contact centers act as a tool to increase sales, provide new revenue-generation opportunities and improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. The web collaboration allows the contact center agents to provide immediate answers to customer questions, backed by web pages and other web based contents. The agents can also help the customers to solve complex support issues through simultaneous voice-and-visual interaction. The agents can also share web pages with the customers during a voice or text chat conversation. And it is possible to fill the online forms collaboratively in real time. They can share any windows desktop application by using a web browser and also conduct one-to-one interactions and one-to-many or many-to-many online seminars. The multi-session chat capabilities can increase the productivity of contact centers online. So the customer?s waiting time can be decreased.

There are some online contact centers powered by software catering to the needs of online merchants who wish to provide live customer service online.

Contact Centers provides detailed information on Contact Centers, Hosted Contact Center, Contact Center Consultants, Contact Center Outsourcing and more. Contact Centers is affiliated with Inbound Call Center Services.

The Nine Principles Of Customer Service For The Travel Industry

Writen by Tim Warren

If you want to learn how to get your clients to do your selling for you through excpetional customer service, read on. Learn customer service secrets from tourism professionals, apply them to your business and prosper.

1. Be a Good Listener – Most important, listen to your customers' concerns and complaints, as well as their praise. Discover what it is they want. Your guests are your best source of information in assessing your services and performance. Well-written guest surveys are invaluable for getting feedback, testimonials, and referrals. Help prospects qualify themselves before signing up. Make sure they understand the rigors, responsibilities, and dangers, as well as the level of exertion, entailed in the experiences you offer.

2. Exceed Expectations – Under-promise and over-deliver on a consistent basis with exceptional service. This is what they'll remember and tell their friends about. It is amazing how small details can make a big impression. You work hard and spend big money to get qualified prospects to call your office or e-mail you. How professional, informative, and timely is your response? That first contact can set the tone and significantly impact a purchasing decision.

3. Practice Safety - Clients want to know the destination and activities are safe. They will feel more at ease during real or perceived risks if they have been educated about their new activities or environments in advance. Unfortunately, if most human beings' fears or worries are not addressed, their minds will grow weeds, not flowers. Advise on plant, animal, and natural resource cautions. Let them know that there is generally nothing to worry about if they respect the environment and heed your advice. Brief guests on your safety procedures for any excursions without staff away from home base.

4. Provide Great Food - Guests must eat well, never be hungry, and have adequate water and drinks. Fresh food with ample portions served at a scheduled time can make any adventure more memorable and satisfying. If meal service is going to be delayed, provide a little snack to tide guests over.

5. Cater to Sleep Needs - Guests need and want comfortable and peaceful sleep. Make sure everyone is comfortable with his or her bedding. Cater to individual needs by offering single accommodations. Charging an extra cost is okay. Provide easy access to bathrooms with safety procedures for nighttime use. Separate late evening social areas from sleep areas by distance and/or trees or a hill. Hand out earplugs if necessary.

6. Think Comfort - Provide first world standards when possible. Bathroom breaks and bathing is important on a regular basis. Give people every opportunity for comfort: hammocks, beach chairs, portable toilets, whatever you can provide. Never go too long between bathroom breaks. Some guests may have weak bladders and need more frequent breaks to feel comfortable and relaxed. Make sure everyone has adequate water, as well as appropriate clothing and footwear.

7. Be Sensitive to Capabilities - Never exceed physical or mental capacities of guests. Always ask groups and individuals if they are comfortable with the activity and exertion level before and during the activity. Be sensitive to the slowest as well as strongest in the group. Splitting the group into two smaller groups is a good option. Rest as needed. I believe in a trip rating or difficulty system that allows guests and outfitters to jointly participate in selecting the most appropriate trip.

8. Be Fun - Be friendly, helpful, courteous, and fun! Make sure your staff is there for the guests and not for themselves. Good storytellers, jokesters, and musicians can distinguish your staff and company from other companies. Be sensitive with humor and with families with kids. If you cater to kids, employ staff that loves kids. Guests sometimes need encouragement or guidance to try an activity. You are the guide and activity director combined. Discuss activities or mini- classes in advance so guests will know what is happening and when.< br>

9. Provide Information - An informed guest is safer and more relaxed, and has more fun. Our guests are educated and want to learn about their new environment. Assume that guests know little or nothing about their surroundings. Look for opportunities to provide a minimum of three details about each type of surrounding element during any outing. Be prepared to talk about the plants, animals, birds, trees, rocks, geological formations, fish, marine mammals, and shells. Include information about local culture, economy, and history, too. The more we can share, the more value we are providing our guests.

Like other businesses I know and have worked with, you, too, will experience more repeat clients and referrals by applying these details of great customer service. Your business, in time, will prosper like never before!

Since 1994, Tim Warren and Adventure Business Consultants, has helped dozen's of travel business, destinations, tourism Assn. and boards with customer service training, consulting and creating exceptional marketing material. Click Here For Free Bimonthly E-zine – Tourism Business Success - http://www.AdventureBizSuccess.com News, tips, tools and specials that you can use to increase your travel business success.

Customer Feedback The Breakfast Of Champions

Writen by Bill James-Wallace

Feedback is important in every sphere of life but more so in business simply because it tells how we're going and how we can improve.

If we continue to improve, we'll continue to grow.

The benefits of feedback are obvious:

1. Consolidates the relationship
2. Lets you know where you're falling down
3. Opens up communication
4. Can be the catalyst to valuable testimonials

But Many Businesses Still Don't Do It

So, why do so many businesses fail to implement a proper customer feedback process?

Every business will have their unique reasons and on the face of it, most will be very rational. Here are three:

1. Time - it's hard, in the traditional format to arrange constant customer feedback as well as track it and take action.

2. What to Ask - Some questions may seem personal, while others may seem to say "tell me how good I am". Where's the balance?

3. Customer Response - not to the survey questions but to the survey itself. Just not knowing people's reactions might hinder the implementation process.

But what if you could get the feedback when you wanted it, automatically and have it collated so you can get an overall feel for how you're doing?

How priceless would that be?

To know what your customer's think about you, your product and your service would be so powerful your business would be at the edge of its performance very quickly.

You see, you don't want "nice & fluffy" feedback.

You need feedback much like the Grand Slalom skiers are getting at the Winter Olympics in Turin at the moment.

If they miss by 2/100ths of a second, they get told. There's no apology or softening the blow.

That's what great business is about.

But How do You do This Quickly, Easily?

For those with assistants it may be easier but with any business there are simple and effective ways to get customer feedback. Some use checklists, others have it pre-prepared in the client file and hand it over or post it out at the same time every time.

One way I'm going to suggest is with an online survey.

Why Online?

To my way of thinking this is the best way to get client feedback today.

1. The population is increasingly "web aware" and are exploring the Web more and more.

2. An online survey (example below) is generally quick saving both you and your customer time.

3. Completing the survey privately will allow better responses. You can even have the responses go to a third party like a coach or a manager.

4. Inexpensive: this is a big one. Mail out surveys cost both time and money. Online surveys, once they are set up are done. All it needs is for clients to complete them.

Nothing Happens in a Vacuum

I can hear some people question the use of technology and how it might appear to be impersonal. I actually believe the opposite.

If any service provider has made enough of a connection then almost any tool used to promote the relationship (like a survey) will be beneficial. The means to that survey can be immaterial.

I will agree though that online surveys, just shot out of a cannon because it's the latest fad can do more harm than good. You need a well thought out strategy to go with the surveys.

Overcoming Resistance

If a client refuses an online survey, that in itself is feedback - not to change tools, but to develop a closer relationship, find out their objction to it and help them overcome whatever is getting in the way.

It is a signal to add value.

So How Hard Is It?

I'm not sure who said it but someone wiser than me stated: "The questions you ask are defined by the answers you need." (not want)

That is how you form your questions. And if you follow the advice the content becomes easier.

Click the link below and you'll be take to a survey site of mine where there are 6 short questions.

http://www.resultdrivensolutions.com/blog/_WebPages/CustomerFeedbackSurvey.html

Complete the questions (takes about 3 minutes).

You'll get an email with your responses and I will too.

There will be a question about wanting to discuss this tool further. Just let me know either yes or no and I'll follow your decision.

Now What To Do

The next thing to do is to work out 3 - 5 questions you'd like to know from your clients and write them out how you'd like to ask them.

If you'd like feedback on your questions you can fire them off to me and I'll oblige - f.r.e.e. of charge for the next two weeks.

I'll look forward to your responses.

Bill James-Wallace

p.s. if you know someone who is looking into this already, feel free to pass this article on to them.

Bill James-Wallace helps his clients grow their business through better and more strategic customer relationships. Drawing on his 18 years experience in the financial industry as a Sales Manager and Manager of Training & Development, he helps business owners play on the same field as corporate entities. Bill can be contacted at bill@resultdrivensolutions.com His blog-based website is http://www.resultdrivensolutions.com

Foreign Contact Centers

Writen by Jimmy Sturo

Foreign contact centers are the contact centers of a country in foreign locations. Foreign contact centers are also referred to as foreign customer interaction centers or foreign e-contact centers. These are the central points of an enterprise from where all customer contacts are managed. They typically include one or more online call centers also which process e-mail newsletters and postal mail catalogs and handle website inquiries and chats. These centers also maintain a comprehensive record of customers.

Customer feedback reveals that there is comparable difference in the quality of domestic and offshore agents. Foreign contact centers train their customer care representatives in accent neutralization, which helps them to speak slowly and include idiomatic American expressions in conversation. Foreign support agents are often well educated and a rigorous screening of applicants is usually conducted because of the high competition for jobs in developing countries.

The primary things that the companies should consider when they want to start a foreign contact centers are: their expertise in managing remote locations, the caliber and skill set of the labor force, the cost of labor, language skills, telecom bandwidth, cost and reliability, infrastructure, political stability, enforceability of intellectual property rights and business contracts, and the general maturity of the business environment.

The most obvious benefit of having foreign contact centers is the low cost. You can set up your business with excellent infra structure at reasonable costs. You can get some of the best talented people to work for you at half the cost you would otherwise incur. They provide world-class service to your clients. The foreign contact centers offer high quality, reliable and cost-effective solutions. They also provide full service-project and account management support for their clients, from initial planning to pre-delivery, straight through to final implementation, assuring that the client?s requirements and objectives are met at every stage.

Contact Centers provides detailed information on Contact Centers, Hosted Contact Center, Contact Center Consultants, Contact Center Outsourcing and more. Contact Centers is affiliated with Inbound Call Center Services.

Customer Service Speaker Asks How Many Difficult Customers Do You Really Have

Writen by Dr. Gary S. Goodman

One of my worst mental habits is over-generalizing; I admit it.

When I'm trying to drum up business, and I get rejection after rejection, I'm tempted to tell myself, "Gee, they're just not buying out there, today!"

Well, that's just plain foolish, isn't it? "They" or at least some of "them" are certainly buying something. I just haven't found them yet, right?

Customer service reps also over-generalize, especially when they encounter a form of rejection specific to their work. Often it's called conflict or anger or simply gathered under the heading of "dealing with difficult customers."

Conversations get ragged and emotions fray, and people's voices start to elevate while faces flush. It's not a happy time, to be sure.

But really, how often does this kind of "bad call" happen?

I've done some surveys along this line and I can tell you this: Most people over-generalize when it comes to quantifying the proportion of their conversations that are negative or filled with anger or conflict.

When you ask reps, you'll frequently hear numbers up to "80%."

When the same reps' calls are monitored for customer negativity, anger, or conflict, the truer proportion is closer to "5%."

Why the gap?

A few reasons come to mind:

(1) CSR's and their supervisors crave respect, and one way to elicit it is to be seen as heroically handling one tough situation after the next.

(2) It seems a part of human nature, and possibly a deeply rooted survival mechanism, to overvalue negative feedback from our environments. That which is wrong and threatening gets our attention more than what's normal or even comfortable.

(3) Memories are selective. I can look back on certain seminars that I've taught where 99% of attendees raved about them, but 1% griped in their evaluations. Guess which ones I remember from those programs, weeks and months later?

(4) Conflict is juicy, interesting, and provocative. Secretly, some people like it because it keeps them awake and on their toes, adding drama to an otherwise routine task. For this reason, some reps unconsciously provoke negative response from customers. (If you think this is crazy, like firefighters setting blazes for the thrill of watching or snuffing them, see the fine movie: "Backdraft.")

Of course, there is a very practical hazard in over-generalizing about the amount of flak we're facing. We're more likely to develop the bad habit of "ducking" to avoid it, even when it isn't there.

We'll approach calls sounding defensive, ourselves, expecting fights where they wouldn't occur, otherwise.

And can you guess what happens when we sound defensive, especially at the beginning of conversations? Customers ECHO it back to us, and we think they "started it."

So, if you're a manager, do your own audit of transactions and note for yourself how the perception of rampant conflict is exaggerated. Then share this insight with reps.

This might reduce their stress and defensiveness, and once this happens, your customers may follow suit.

Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service, and the audio program, "The Law of Large Numbers: How To Make Success Inevitable," published by Nightingale-Conant. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC's Annenberg School, a Loyola lawyer, and an MBA from the Peter F. Drucker School at Claremont Graduate University, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations from Santa Monica to South Africa. He holds the rank of Shodan, 1st Degree Black Belt in Kenpo Karate. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com. For information about coaching, consulting, training, books, videos and audios, please go to http://www.customersatisfaction.com