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The Perfect Agent: Tools and Technology for Coaching Your Support Team

Thursday, December 10, 2009 - 11 AM (PT) / 2 PM ET

How do you motivate people to deliver excellent performance, whether they are in the next cubicle or far away? Communications skills expert Rich Gallagher joins with Citrix Online to share the secrets to getting the best out of today's distributed support team. Topics this Webinar will cover include:

• The psychology of a typical agent
• Strength-based coaching techniques that create real performance change
• Managing performance problems from near and far
• Making your agents part of a team
• How technology can help improve your team's performance

Register today!

Agent Alliance Selects inContact
inContact, Inc., a provider of on-demand contact center software and agent optimization tools, announced that it has been selected by the Agent Alliance as the group's preferred contact center software solution to offer into the marketplace. The Agent Alliance is an established organization of premier marketing and sales companies within the telecommunications industry. The inContact platform has grown from an Automated Call Distributor (ACD) with skills-based routing, Computer Telephony Integration (CTI), and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) with speech recognition, to include an online hiring solution, an eLearning and communications application, workforce management functionality, and a customer feedback and survey solution.

ING Australia Implementing Enterprise Workforce Optimization Suite from Verint
Verint Systems Inc. announced that ING Australia Limited, one of Australia's largest financial services providers, is deploying the next-generation Impact 360 Workforce Optimization suite from Verint Witness Actionable Solutions. As part of a large-scale project to consolidate the company's leadership and competitive positioning, the organization implemented the unified, analytics-driven software -- which includes quality monitoring/recording, workforce management, speech analytics, data analytics, customer feedback surveys, performance management scorecards and eLearning -- across its contact center operations earlier this year, and is now in the process of deploying the technology across its back-office operations.

Cisco Transforms Unified Communications With Innovative Business-to-Business Solutions
Cisco has introduced a ground-breaking version of its unified communications platform, featuring innovations and enhancements designed to reduce costs and increase operating efficiencies between and within global enterprises.  Cisco Unified Communications System Release 8.0 enables organizations to collaborate in new ways that remove barriers to communications with partners, suppliers and customers through integrated voice, video, presence, instant messaging and Web sessions. Cisco Unified Communications System 8.0 includes advanced integrated Internet Protocol (IP) applications that allow businesses to extract more value from their communications through federated presence across devices and platforms, and through instant messaging, customer care, conferencing, video and mobility capabilities.

IT Employee Confidence Index  Up in Third Quarter of 2009
The IT Employee Confidence Index increased 4.4 points to 50.2 in the third quarter of 2009, according to a recent survey commissioned by Technisource, the technology placement division of Spherion Corporation. The survey, conducted by Harris Interactive, reveals increased confidence among IT workers, as more technology professionals reveal confidence in the economy and job market. Additionally, 40 percent of workers are likely to look for a new job in the next 12 months (compared to 37 percent in the second quarter of 2009).

Results from the IT Employment Report:

• Despite nearly one-third of technology workers (31 percent) believing the economy is getting weaker (compared to 48 percent in the second quarter of 2009), more workers are likely to search for a new job in the next year (40 percent versus 37 percent in the second quarter).

• Fewer IT workers are confident in the future of their current employers. Specifically, 57 percent say they are confident versus 64 percent in the previous quarter.

• Sixty-three percent of workers believe there are fewer jobs available opposed to 73 percent in the second quarter of 2009.

More...

Number of Companies Planning to Reverse Salary, Hiring Freezes Jumps Sharply Since August
Approximately half of the companies that froze salaries and hiring in the past year now plan to unfreeze them in the next six months, according to the latest update to an ongoing series of surveys by Watson Wyatt, a global consulting firm. Nevertheless, employers remain concerned about their ability, both currently and in the long run, to attract and retain critical-skill employees.

According to the survey, more than half (54 percent) of employers that froze salaries plan to unfreeze them within the next six months, a sharp increase from 33 percent in August and 17 percent in June. Almost half (49 percent) also plan to reverse hiring freezes at least partially in the next six months, compared with 38 percent two months ago.

The survey also found that an increasing number of employers are planning to reverse reductions to 401(k) match contributions in the next six months -- this number has increased to 35 percent, from 24 percent two months ago and only 5 percent in June. Overall, 56 percent of companies have instituted a salary freeze and a hiring freeze since the economic crisis began, and 25 percent have reduced their employer match. Watson Wyatt's latest bimonthly survey was conducted in October 2009 and includes responses from 201 large employers.

Looking ahead three to five years, half (50 percent) of employers expect an increase in difficulty in attracting critical-skill employees, and 55 percent expect an increase in difficulty in retaining critical-skill employees. In light of the recession, 44 percent of employers have encouraged managers to make greater use of recognition plans. However, only 8 percent of these employers have seen managers actually increase their use of these plans to a significant or great extent.

Other findings from the survey include:

• Thirty-seven percent of companies think their results have already bottomed out, compared to 27 percent in August.

• For companies expecting to reinstate their 401(k) or 403(b) match, 70 percent will change it back to the original level. Thirteen percent will reinstate the match at a new, lower level, while 17 percent will vary it by year, based on company profits.

• For companies expecting to make offers to new hires, 83 percent will do so for professional, non-managerial staff, followed by 71 percent for director, manager or middle management positions. Only 47 percent will be hiring for senior management or executive level positions.

• Only 37 percent of employers plan to organize a holiday party in 2009, compared with 47 percent that organized one in 2008 and 70 percent in 2007. Two in five (41 percent) that are planning a holiday party have seen their budgets decrease.

More...

Conquer the Mobile Workforce Challenge

If you've got branch employees, field workers and telecommuters who work on a variety of devices, like PCs, Macs and smartphones -- you're not alone. Your helpdesk should be equipped with the right tools to support an increasingly mobile workforce. If you're still using tools like VNC and RDP, you may be hindering both your helpdesk and the mobile employees you support.

See how easy it is to support anytime, anywhere workers with LogMeIn Rescue.  

Start Your Free Trial Now...

Truth or Consequences: How to Give Performance Feedback
Many of us put off giving feedback to our employees even though we intuitively know giving and getting honest feedback is essential, says Judith Lindenberger of The Lindenberger Group, LLC. Maybe, she ventures, it is because there are so many ways to screw it up. This article details the most common feedback mistakes.
Full Article...

The Challenge of Employee Engagement
Employee engagement has emerged as an important issue in recent years and whilst it might be a current 'in' term, it's not necessarily a totally original concept. Issues like teambuilding, motivation, and empowerment have always been important and engagement is essentially an umbrella concept which pulls all these strands together. An engaged employee is not only happy in their job though, but translates that satisfaction into higher productivity. But what can be practically done to more fully engage employees?
Full Article...

Managing with the Brain in Mind
Although a job is often regarded as a purely economic transaction, in which people exchange their labor for financial compensation, the brain experiences the workplace first and foremost as a social system. People who feel betrayed or unrecognized at work -- for example, when they are reprimanded, given an assignment that seems unworthy, or told to take a pay cut -- experience it as a neural impulse, as powerful and painful as a blow to the head. Leaders who understand this dynamic can more effectively engage their employees’ best talents, support collaborative teams, and create an environment that fosters productive change.
Full Article...

Developing Managers for Team-Driven Success
Investors know that past performance is no indication of future returns. Unfortunately, this can also hold true for employees as they rise through the management ranks.  When new managers fail to recognize that they're on a path with greater responsibilities, they may cling to tasks at which they once excelled but that now belong to those they lead. Managers need to learn how to correct any behaviors that hinder leadership and unintentionally obstruct or alienate employees.
Full Article...

How Workforce Management Decisions Can Ruin Everything
I will now share with you one of the two fastest ways to run your call center straight into the ground. It's called "following your gut." Oh, you might get lucky once in a while with your gut, but a steady diet of following it will be the business equivalent of sticking your hand into a wasp's nest. Workforce management is particularly prone to the same sort of "gut" instinct mentality and the gently rippling pool of lunacy that the gut will drag you into -- kicking and screaming. The way around the humiliation and despair that will ensue in this disaster of your own making? Like almost everything else at call centers, software offers a rope long enough to pull you back to the sandy shore of good call center management.
Full Article...

Customer Centricity through Workforce Optimization
by Bill Durr

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

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

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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