7 Tips to Successfully Manage Call Centers

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Call centers have unique operational challenges, and management plays a crucial role in successfully handling each of these obstacles. Call centers deal with down time when not a lot of calls are coming in, but they also deal with high call volume. Some of the issues they face include employee burnout, getting the proper training to know how to handle each caller’s problems, and disengagement. Every call center manager needs to address areas of concern, and be prepared to set up the ideal environment that produces the best outcomes.

7 Call Center Management Tips

  1. Use Idle Time Effectively – Many managers use this “idle” time for accomplishing other tasks that need to be completed. One avenue managers have chosen to optimize use of time is to encourage call center employees to complete on-going training, or administrative tasks during idle periods. When call volume is low, employees can log in to the applicable programs and utilize this time to read, answer, and complete their training. This way they don’t have to stay after their shift has ended or come in before their shift starts. As long as they are accomplishing these tasks without negatively impacting their performance this idle time is prime to utilize in this manner.
  2. Focus on Engagement – Because of the nature of call centers it is important for managers to create avenues for agents to feel engaged. Some centers have trips they raffle off to top performers, have reward boards that they use to recognize employees, and they also create means of communication with agents to let them know when they receive positive notes from customers. It is important for managers to create ways for employees to feel involved, valued, and important. When they give so much emotionally to address customers’ needs sometimes they can feel burned out, underappreciated, or feel down due to call fatigue. Surrounding them with positive outlets and positive reinforcement can make a huge difference in their attitude, and how they deal with direct consumers.
  3. Invest in Technology – Managers need to know how important it is to have the right management technology. Call center scheduling software can have a huge impact on making sure your call center is staffed appropriately. Using this software can assist in decreasing employee burnout because you will have the right number of staff assigned to each shift, and can anticipate increases in call volumes. You can also use the call center scheduling software to schedule the right number of breaks for each employee so they can take the time to reenergize. They can then return to the phones fresh and ready to assist callers.
  4. Share Positive Customer Feedback – Keeping your call center employees motivated is important to morale, and their engagement as well. By sharing positive customer feedback regularly they will see tangible results from their work. Managers need to help by getting the positive feedback to the agent quickly. Most feedback processes delay the feedback or the feedback never makes it to the appropriate divisions and agents. It is important for the managers to track down customer feedback and ensure their team hears about their positive impact.
  5. Provide the Proper Tools and Coaching – Each call center agent needs the proper training to handle each type of customer call. They need to know proper responses and when to escalate calls. Beyond this, they need extensive knowledge of products and other departments so they know best how to answer customer questions, or know where to direct them.
  6. Build a Good Working Environment – Environment can play a huge role in call center employee retention, and how they interact with customers over time. Because employees can spend lots of time on the phone during high call volumes, they need an environment that helps them focus and stay calm. Beyond the physical environment the employees also need a stable work environment and have procedures that encourage a good working environment.
  7. Minimize Burn Out – Call center employee burnout is unique in the fact that a high percentage of the time the burnout these employees experience is emotional. Because of the nature of the job, these employees have to emotionally connect with customers so that customers feel like they have a good rapport with the representative. The customer needs to feel trust. This type of burnout can be extremely dangerous for the company as call center employees can engage is disruptive behaviors against customers leading to decreases in profitability. Call center employees have been known to misdirect callers to the wrong department on purpose, hang up on customers, and more. These behaviors tend to arise during periods of high call volume. Managers must have systems in place to address and tackle these behaviors. By creating the right employee schedule burnout can be minimized. Also, creating special quite spaces for employees to take breaks can also give the employees the needed “time-out” break spaces to reenergize and return to their phone refreshed.

Utilizing these tips for managing your call center can help improve your employee turnover rate, increase employee performance, assist in proper handling of unhappy customer calls, and decrease employee burnout.

Startup Advice List

Newbie businessmen often get overwhelmed with questions. Here are five tips which can help you get prepared for a startup launch

5 Tips on a Startup

There are millions questions every newbie businessman meets. It is obligatory to answer some of them before they launch their business. Here are some pieces of advice, which can help you concentrate on main things and turn your idea into a functioning project.By the way, in order not to waste time on university assignments and to do business as quickly as possible, it makes sense to turn to greatpaper.co.uk.

1. Describe Your Idea on a Paper

Any business starts from the idea. This is the real fact. And the main task for this stage is to represent the business-idea on a paper. After you write some words about what you plan to do, you’ll understand a lot more than you thought before. This is the way to structure your thoughts and to fill missing links you’ll find in a process.

Describe a product, thoughts it is associated with. Describe what you see your business to look like by using definitions for regular things: “cheerful”, “daring”, “bright”, “calm”, “family”. Write some words about your target audience Many businessmen do this all in a working process, but it will be more useful to deal with writing before you start.

Now share your idea with friends and relatives. Their questions and notes will help you to correct and expand your plan.

2. Count the Launch Sum

Numerous ideas dont get implemented because of failed check of this stage. So, let’s not deny accounting activities and take a look onto exes which will be required for your business to be launched:

  • Registration;
  • Own website creation;
  • Office rent;
  • Telephones;
  • Getting the required staff;
  • Polygraph design and printing (packing, for instance);
  • Photos and video recording;
  • Company promotion investments.

Dont forget to store nearly 20% of the sum youve got for unpredicted exes!

Planning and estimating of finances are the best ways to check your idea.

3.Create a Sales and Costs Plan

The ideal solution is to compose three plans:

  • Optimistic. This is a plan of the perfect realization for your business: the highest demand, big number of clients. Write down how much your clients buy daily. This is the way to count your monthly sales.
  • Realistic.Nom lower numbers from the previous plan by 30% and write it all down again.
  • Pessimistic.Imagine that your starting sales are not high, there are much less clients than you thought before. It is better to keep up with this plan. You wont get cheated by expectations.

Important thing: dont forget about your constant and variable costs. Remember about monthly loan or credit payments (if you need to take ones). Take everything into account, and write down numbers of pure income or lesion.

4. Plan Your Team

Now you need to decide what team will be able to provide realization for your plans. Here are questions you need to answer:

  • Does your business need any director except of you?
  • Will you give a part of responsibilities for outsourcing companies, or you want to get your own staff?
  • What will be your working schedule?
  • Determine the system of work payment for your workers. Salary, percent, bonuses or even non-material rewards.
  • Will you have internal, corporate learning, is it required in your field?

These questions seem to be unactual for lots of freshman employers. Yet experience shows that writing down all the answers on the paper beforehand helps to implement them in business practically a lot faster.

5. Determine Your Personal Responsibilities

Here are two interesting lifehacks for this.

First, you need to think in the way like you own a big international company from the very beginning. If to do so, your decisions will certainly lead business to a success.

Second, you shouldn’t devote yourself to the operative activities trying to be a chief, a loader, a courier and a manager simultaneously. Hire workers at once. Otherwise, you’ll waste much time which would be devoted to the development of your company.

Use these tips and make your idea real successfully. Thepointis, don’tbeafraidtoact, to make decisions and to take responsibilities. Maybe, it is your idea that deserves successful realization!

 

Burnout and Rest in Business

Burning out of energy and health is a serious trouble for anyone. Businessmen can trap themselves into this too. See how not to let that happen

How not to Burn Out in Business?

Sometimes, the will to devote all the time to job is stronger than a person. If you are one of those people, read this article. Here is the talk about how important is to give yourself the deserved rest from job or essay, which can be easily delegated to essaylook.com/write-my-essay.

You felt it all, or will feel in future. The first year of business launch is coming to an end, your friends call and write to congratulate you with the successful start of your cool idea. Many of them can say something like that in addition:

Mate, you worked hard and you need to take a break. You can’t work 365 days per year, you just won’t make it.”

You read that phrase and think:

Hah, only usual people need weekends and vacations. I don’t need them.”

This is a mistake.

Half-year after you’ll start getting totally tired. Sleep troubles may appear, and then you’ll feel the lack of interesting and creative ideas. Taking a weekend day (on Sunday, for example) won’t be easy and will seem to be expensive, but if you’ll continue working in a tough schedule further, it will cost you more sometime later.

After that heavy job, you won’t rest enough having one free day per week, and you’ll need a plan. Here are some tips about resting and not having troubles described above.

Choose Free Days Beforehand and REST

While creating a business, the wish to work 24/7 is too strong. It is easy to fill every free hour of your time with checking emails, brainstorming, coding, etc. But if you won’t rest enough, you’ll hit the stunning wall pretty soon, and it won’t be easy to overcome it. Insert free day into your schedule and enjoy time spent with family and friends.

It is not obligatory to leave for Goa or Bahamas in order to rest well. A single forest hike, a cinema visit with friends, or anything else will be enough for you to distract you mind. The point is getting far from computer and job for some time. This is what you really need.

Aim to earn a Sum for a Month During the First Week

One of successful businessmen heard this advice from his friend, and it became a discovery. If you are able to earn money you need for a month during the first week, you will have the possibility to relax for next three weeks. This doesn’t mean you have to work 120 hours in the first 7 days. This means you should concentrate on creating a good and earning business in order to be sure in your future.

Develop a Business Which Wont Demand Your Control 24/7

You still have to be the keystone of your company, but try building it in that way, so your presence was not required on a regular basis. Can you hire an assistant who would work with your mail? Can you hire a project-manager who will control your project even for a freelance payment? Can you take someone of your family so he or she could take care of small troubles even without having education?

Take a look at your working schedule and plan the deserved rest for the next week at once. But try getting away from work. No, you dont get it. Get away from it REALLY. Go for a walk, visit relatives, have a picnic, spend day and night with your girlfriend or wife, go to a pub with your best friend. Distract. You’ll thank yourself in future for it, just know that.

 

Are You a Start-Up Business? Here’s All You Need to Know about the Benefits of Fulfilment Services

Maybe you are thinking about an e-business and are wondering how the logistics of the whole plan will go. Maybe you have an ecommerce business going already, but are wondering how to make sure that all the customers are satisfied when it comes to ordering, packaging, and shipping. Or maybe you notice that, whatever business you are in, there’s always room for improvement and you realise you need professionals to take care of your logistics.

Not to worry, that’s what fulfilment services are for. Agreed, it’s always a little nerve-wracking when you realise you need to leave important procedures to a third party – but on the other hand, it may even be more nerve-wracking when you have to do it all yourself. If you’re having logistical problems, this one’s for you. Are you a start-up business? Here’s all you need to know about the benefits of fulfilment services.

Avoiding long-term contracts

If you’re not sure of the prospects of your business (which you never are), or you have discovered that your business is highly seasonal, it’s worth getting a flexible or short-term contract. Most fulfilment businesses will agree to this, which makes your growth potential more real. Get a partner that understands your needs.

On being more efficient

They have the equipment, the staff, and the know-how; they are much more efficient than you can ever be in a relatively short time. They’ve breached that learning curve, so the tendency is that they are more efficient and operate at a lower cost.

Forget your own staff

There’s no need to hire your own people – the third party has their own professionals ready to go.

When should I consider a third party?

Think about the following:

  • Seasonal sales – It’s safe to have a short-term or otherwise flexible contract when it comes to uncertain or seasonal sales. It allows for growth and affords you flexibility.
  • There’s no more time – If you feel you are overwhelmed with other activities and fulfilment simply eats up too much of your time, then consider it seriously.
  • Where to start? – You may want to do it all on your own but don’t know how to organise it; seek professional help first. Hire the best and learn from them.

Bear in mind, however, that there are certain conditions in which you should not consider the services of a third party – and this is in your interest as well as that of the third party. For example, if you are limited in cash flow, you may want to consider getting your credit problems straightened out first. However, if you feel your enterprise is ready to grow, check out the various ecommerce fulfilment services near you as soon as possible.

Image courtesy of scottchan/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

2018 sealants and adhesives market set to grow at 4.4 per cent

Market research projections in 2014 were positive about the prospects for the global adhesives and sealants market, predicting a steady average growth rate of around 4.4 per cent. The latest figures indicate that this was actually an underestimate, with the predicted average growth rate now upgraded to 5.11 per cent until 2021.

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The report from MarketsandMarkets explains that this growth is riding mainly on continuing expansion in the paper and packaging industry and in building and construction, especially in India, China and Japan. A growth in packaging is in turn based on continuing demand for consumer goods, with the building boom underwritten by expanding populations in most parts of the world.

Although the Asia Pacific region continues to grow fastest, the European market is the second largest and there is a strong focus on developing new, better and more environmentally-friendly chemicals.

Research directions

Manufacturers have particularly been seeking new and higher-performance solutions to bond dissimilar or particularly problematic materials, such as metal bonding adhesive, and to reduce their dependence on volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

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One such product is CT1, available from sites such as http://www.ct1ltd.com/. This is an environmentally-compliant, odourless adhesive and sealant that is free of solvents and isocyanates. It conforms to ISEGA standards as food safe, is resistant to chemical attacks, and prevents fungal growth.

This is an example of a new generation of universal adhesive solutions that will bond many different substrates, including different metals (even lead), metal to silicates, glass, wood, polystyrene, carbon fibre materials, and fiberglass. Modern adhesives of this type are flexible, withstand vibration and exposure to UV light or sea water, and most can be overpainted.

Export opportunities

A warning in the report was that stringent European regulations insisting on eco-friendly products could dampen market growth if research is not sufficiently successful in reducing VOCs and other potential hazards; however, success in developing low-cost adhesives based on different, faster, cleaner chemistry, such as the CT1 example, can be expected to fuel additional growth.

Asia Pacific countries such as China and India have poor controls for their consumption of high VOC adhesives and sealants and have experienced little incentive to develop better ones; however, once these are available as a result of western research, huge export opportunities are likely to follow as Asia strives to clean up its act.