The blueprint for accelerated supervisor success

By Jim Rembach Sink or swim! That’s been the most common experience for contact centre supervisors when it comes to their skill development. 59% of frontline supervisors come from the agent ranks according to an International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) report, Agent Apathy: The Root Cause of Poor Customer Service1. …

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How to optimize agent hiring and retention

By Jeff Furst Contact centre hiring managers are facing stiff challenges in ensuring their centres are fully staffed. Low unemployment, competition with other industries that are expanding and pay rate pressures are making it difficult for them to meet fill rate targets. Not surprisingly contact centre agent turnover continues to …

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Eight steps to improve agent performance

By Scott Kendrick Contact centre performance is only as good as the average of its agents. Delighting customers and creating efficient experiences to increase positive outcomes can only be accomplished with a strong staff that is well trained and invested in their roles. Therefore, contact centres must engage in continual …

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Keeping contact centre employees engaged

Flexibility, empowerment are keys to success By Kelly Koelliker With the growth of consumer preference for self-service transactions—and the technology that enables them—many service issues don’t reach the contact centre at all. While this is a great development for the customer experience (CX) and efficiency the issues that do reach …

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Ending the contact centre “tug of war”

By Karim Chabane As more organizations adopt a customer-first approach to doing business, the role of contact centre agents, who are on the front lines of customer and organizational profitability, is changing along with their expectations. The newest entrants into the workforce may want it all, i.e. independence in a …

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National Bank of Canada’s customer-first digital transactions

By Paige Pace Digital reach enables businesses to connect with customers anywhere. Developing a strong online presence was essential for the National Bank of Canada to engage customers and encourage growth across the country, particularly in areas with low numbers of bricks-and-mortar branches. National Bank deployed Adobe Experience Cloud to …

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The marketing time bomb

Interactive digital customer engagement lit the fuse By Derek Lackey There’s a massive problem brewing, and we marketers had better wake up because, like it or not: marketing is broken. Last year the Harvard Business Review published a piece titled Why CMOs Never Last1 citing an all-time low trust score …

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The changing landscape of consumer insights

Moving to tapping customer relationships also may help market legalized cannabis By Matt Chong We live in an era where consumer data and insights are among the most valuable commodities possessed by ourselves as modern marketers. As technology has evolved we now have far more access to customer intelligence than …

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A miracle (marketing) cure

How tailored direct mail and telemarketing revived Mackenzie Health Foundation’s donor programme By Allen Davidov The Mackenzie Health Foundation, which raises funds for Mackenzie Health, the Toronto, Ontario area’s York Region health care provider, was faced with a challenge. Its one-size-fits-all fundraising strategy wasn’t clicking with the community: its annual …

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Direct mail still best way to reach out to customers

By Drew Tremblay Over the past few years online technology has had an effect on how we connect in our everyday lives. Whether in communicating with others, buying products and services, banking or being entertained it has changed our thinking. Think about it. We all have monthly payments that come …

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