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Best Practices for Workload Distribution and Dynamic Employee Engagement

As demands increase and budgets tighten, organizations that can respond to customer requests in a timely manner will not only gain a competitive advantage, but they will also minimize costs and optimize resources. To do so requires a contact center and back office staffed with the right people available at the right time in order to meet predetermined service levels.

To find out how your company can answer these challenges, review Best Practices for Workload Distribution and Dynamic Employee Engagement. This four-part series of articles, features:

• Rethinking Contact Center and Back Office Processes: The Challengers of Achieving Balance and Consistency

• Staffing and Workload Management: Challenges and Opportunities

• The Importance of Proper Hiring, Training, Career Path Development, Skilling, and Routing

• Sustained Management: Changing the Game with Genesys iWD

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American Apparel now live on Infor WFM Workbrain
Infor, a provider of business application software serving over 70,000 customers, announced American Apparel, Inc. has selected and implemented the company's WFM Workbrain solution to manage the company's global workforce. American Apparel needed rrcca flexible and scalable tool that could be deployed across its global operations, allowing the company to better manage its global workforce with integrated time and attendance and store labor scheduling. By leveraging its existing timeclock hardware, American Apparel was able to implement the Infor Workbrain Time and Attendance solution in just 15 weeks.

VPI Launches VPI EMPOWER 5.2
VPI, a global provider of contact center recording, quality management, analytics, reporting and workforce optimization solutions, announced the availability of VPI EMPOWER version 5.2. VPI EMPOWER 5.2 is the latest generation of analytics-enhanced solutions for interaction recording, quality monitoring, performance management, and eLearning. VPI EMPOWER 5.2 builds on its advanced application core and adds hundreds of new features and enhancements that focus on improved customer experience, data security, access to critical information, efficiency in quality management and training, as well as faster deployment and time to value.

HDI Announces Release of 2010 HDI Practices & Salary Report
HDI, a global association for IT service and technical support professionals, announced the release of the 2010 HDI Practices & Salary Report, a comprehensive study that presents an overall look at the state of the IT support industry and allows managers to see how support centers are handling the demands of doing more with less in the 2010 economy.

Report highlights include:

• As support centers are continually asked to do more with less, the number of incidents continues to increase for most (67%) organizations.
• Twenty percent of support centers are utilizing chat as a support channel and 5 percent are now receiving tickets through social media.
• E-mail management tool use went up 5 percent, and configuration management tools are being used by 8 percent more support centers than in 2009.
• The primary tool implementation initiative is incident management software (14%), followed by knowledge management software (10%), and self-help tools (9%).
• Results indicate that over 80 percent of support centers are maintaining at least single service level agreements, with a rise in the percent of those maintaining multiple service level agreements.
• Hardware support and repair is still the most outsourced support function, though down slightly from 2009. The top reasons support centers are not outsourcing more are due to concerns about control of service, service quality, and customer acceptance, then cost.
• Telephone performance, as measured by average speed to answer, abandonment rate, and first call resolution, has seen improvement across the industry.
• Ninety-one percent of survey respondents believe an effective support organization must have a customer satisfaction tool; however, 16 percent of support centers do not measure customer satisfaction.
• On-the-job training (88%) is the most utilized method for training new hires to the frontline. This is followed by mentoring/coaching (78%) and call monitoring (57%), which are, in turn, followed by the more structured types of training, such as computer-based training, formal classroom training, online training, webinars, and virtual classroom training, formats that might require more resources. The primary training concern for new hires to the frontline is customer service skills.
• Training is considered by most respondents to be the most influential factor with regard to customer satisfaction (90%), performance metrics (85%), and successful product implementation (81%).
• Twenty-five percent of support centers are paying certified employees more than those who are not certified, a 3 percent increase from 2009.
• The percent of support centers expecting layoffs, hiring freezes, and salary freezes is down. Over 34 percent are actually anticipating an increase in hiring in their support organizations.

More...

IBM Survey: Frugal, Yet Optimistic Shoppers Driving Smarter Retail Through Technology and Mobility
A new IBM survey of more than 30,000 consumers demonstrates that, while shoppers are optimistic about the future, they have developed attitudes during the global recession over the past several years that still dictate their behavior:  They buy what they need, search for items on sale and wait longer to purchase, and they have embraced the use of technology throughout every step of the process.

According to the study:

• Seventy percent are positive about their income situation.
• However, the shopping attitude is that frugality reigns.  Their top three shopping attitudes are to only buy what they need, search for items on sale and wait longer to purchase.
• Forty-nine percent of respondents were "instrumented consumers" -- those who use two or more technologies, e.g. a website, mobile device or in-store kiosk to shop -- a 36 percent increase since IBM's last retail study a year ago.

In this new environment, service is paramount, and consumers should be at the center of any retailer's strategy. In order to succeed, retailers need to do three things:  listen to, know and empower consumers.

• Listen: From Facebook to Twitter, to blogs, YouTube and reviews, shoppers are leveraging social media more than ever before to discuss retailers, products and brands with friends, family members and strangers. Retailers that listen to and participate in these conversations can obtain added insight into what customers want.
• Know: While listening is important, a personalized shopping experience is still dominant in the mind of the consumer. By offering promotions on items they regularly buy and remembering things such as preferred payment methods and receipt types, retailers can increase spend and loyalty among shoppers.
• Empower: Finally, retailers must empower consumers by making it as easy as possible to shop seamlessly across channels and letting them choose how to interact. Forty percent of the people we surveyed want to check product prices wherever they are and get promotions based on the items they scan, while 50 percent are willing to use a personal mobile device to avoid the checkout lane.

More...

2010 Service and Support Metrics Survey Results

Budgets are stagnating. Support volume is increasing. The complexity of support transactions is up. And, curiously, customers are happier. Does something have to give in this equation? Yes -- support is taking longer than it used to, compared with last year's survey. The centerpiece of the SupportIndustry.com 2010 Service and Support Metrics Survey, our review of support metrics, shows a clear trend that productivity metrics are beginning to slow down under the weight of cost and resource burdens.

View the full results of the survey.

The Learning Effects of Monitoring
It's a challenge that all good managers face: How do you strike the right balance between encouraging autonomy among your employees and mitigating the risk that they'll make bad decisions? Using both field and quantitative data from the MGM-Mirage Group, this paper discusses how management controls affect the learning rates of lower-level employees.
Full Article...

How to Foster Teamwork Among Techies
Collaboration is all the rage among corporate executives these days, which means IT is busy providing systems that turn that vague concept into a real business benefit. But what happens when it comes time for techies themselves to collaborate?
Full Article...

Management Flubs Made by Rookie Bosses
Being the boss is a difficult job for many business owners to master. Their expertise is typically in the products or services that they sell and not supervising others. As a result, entrepreneurs are often guilty of handling employee mishaps poorly -- or for allowing such blunders to occur in the first place. Here's a look at other management mistakes entrepreneurs confess to having made -- and how to avoid them.
Full Article...

The Future: Preparing for the Next Generation of Agents
Generation Y, also known as millennials, are getting their fair share of attention with respect to today's workplace and their place in it.  Born between 1981 and 2000, millennials expect interesting and challenging work.  They anticipate fast and upward mobility, along with ongoing mentoring and feedback from their supervisors.  Unfortunately, in the minds of many millennials, it appears that meeting such expectations in a contact center environment is not a likely scenario.  To help change these dynamics, contact centers need to prepare for the next generation of workers and create an environment that appeals to generation Y's working style.
Full Article...

Making Change Happen, and Making It Stick
Few organizations have escaped the need for major change in the past decade, as new technologies and global crises have reshaped entire industries. Change is, at its core, a people process, and people are creatures of habit, hardwired to resist adopting new mind-sets, practices, and behaviors. To achieve and sustain transformational change, companies must embed these mind-sets, practices, and behaviors at every level, and that is very hard to do -- but it has never been more important. A successful business transformation effort must capture the hearts and minds of people who need to operate differently to deliver the desired results. The good news is that it can be done.
Full Article...

The Top 10 CIO Issues For 2011
2011 is the year in which the CIO profession -- once and for all, permanently and without any do-overs -- casts off all of the residual crutches that have for so long often rendered CIOs last among C-level equals. Among the all-time stinkers in that smelly pile are ones like "we're a support organization" or "the business just doesn't understand IT" or "we can run what we have, or we can innovate, but we can't do both." In that context, I'd like to offer up my list of the Top 10 CIO Issues for 2011.
Full Article...

The Elements of Power: Lessons on Leadership and Influence
by Terry R. Bacon

For more information, or to order your copy...

More books can be found in the RecognizeServiceExcellence.com Required Reading section: http://www.recognizeserviceexcellence.com

Free Research on the Service and Support Industry
Are you looking for the latest research available (for free!) on the service and support industry? Then check out the research section of SupportIndustry.com. Some of the current offerings available to members are:

• Research Insight: Average Speed to Answer, Wait Time and Handle Time
• 2010 Service and Leadership Trends in Customer Support
• Research Insight: Effectively Measuring Customer Loyalty
• Research Insight: Cost Per Contact (Phone & E-Mail)
• Research Insight: First Contact Resolution
• 2009 Service and Support Metrics Survey

All of these reports can be accessed by clicking here...

White Paper: Best Practices for Coaching Your Support Team to Handle Anything

This white paper provides a step-by-step game plan for solving your support agents' worst nightmares, based on the author's experience in successfully "turning around" support performance, as well as current research in the psychology of how we communicate with people. In the process, you will learn how specific, procedural skills -- both for how your agents respond to customers, and how you coach your team -- can change everything about how your interact with customers, in a way that will impact both your support metrics and your bottom line.

Get the full white paper here!

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Carolyn Healey, Editor - chealey@recognizeserviceexcellence.com

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