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February 01 Best Practices = Best Agents   Quality monitoring and agent coaching has evolved over the past five years from the most basic techniques to highly specialized and technology-enabled processes. At the same time, few, if any, organizations have figured it all out. The establishment of best practices allows centers to learn from their counterparts and to choose the path that will most likely result in an increasingly effective frontline staff. Click here for more information.

January 01 BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina: A Case Study   BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina (BlueCross) was once an over-worked, under-staffed call center. David Boucher, the assistant vice president of Health Care Services at BlueCross was unwilling to accept the situation as the status quo. He decided to use new technologies to make the BlueCross call center services more efficient and more effective. Here is the BlueCross story. Click here for more information.

December 27 The Art of Agent Hiring   In the contact center industry, it is possible to shrink agent attrition not by eliminating stressors that are inherent to the agent's job, but by hiring agents that are able to work and succeed under such inherent stressors. Click here for more information.

December 01 The Next BIG Thing in Call Centers!   Seldom have we been so excited to be at the forefront of change in customer service contact centers. This article examines why the Emerging Model of call monitoring an coaching is a much better utilization of resources to produce very quantitative change within a contact center, including behavioral change at the agent level, and policy and procedural change at the supervisor, manager, and company levels. Click here for more information.

November 09 Understand the Data to Achieve Workforce Optimization   Inbound call center operations are, without question, one of the most difficult processes to manage with a high degree of efficiency and effectiveness. And, while modern technology continues to offer tremendous advances in automation and functionality, a thorough understanding of the data that drives the WFM process is prerequisite to achieving workforce optimization. Click here for more information.

November 08 Key Steps to Achieving Workforce Optimization - Self-Managed Agent Productivity Gains   Initiatives to make your contact center more efficient cannot ignore the WFM process. Click here for more information.

November 01 Enabling the Disabled   An emerging trend in outsourcing brings the workplace to disabled Americans. Click here for more information.

October 20 Up-Selling and Cross-Selling: Transforming your Cost Center to a Profit Center   From our database of thousands of call centers, we recruited a group of ten “Best-In-Class” companies that represented major industries to participate in a study to determine what makes a successful up/cross-sell call center. Click here for more information.

October 06 An Exciting New Trend In Call Monitoring And Coaching   While the criteria companies used in most centers was well-intended, we found that it didn’t produce the desired and/or necessary results of specifically improving the caller’s experience. Click here for more information.

September 21 Ensuring the Effectiveness of Your Agent Compensation Plan   If money flowed more freely from the corporate bean counters to their call center agents, then agent turnover would not likely be the thorny issue that impacts so many call centers today. Click here for more information.

August 31 To Benchmark or Not to Benchmark   How can one process have such a widespread impact on the call center industry, its partners and its customers? The answer lies in understanding the process of benchmarking, the benefits it offers when implemented effectively, and the possibilities it opens for the future. Click here for more information.

August 03 Ten Steps to Designing a Self-service Speech Recognition System   Read this new article by Dr. Jon and you may discover that your contact center is capable of delivering more business advantage than you realize Click here for more information.

July 11 Empower Your Callers With Self-Service Speech Recognition   When a company elects to offer automated self-service options to its callers, it must realize that its very survival may depend upon how well it delivers the self-service options to the customer. Click here for more information.

June 15 Doing More With What You've Got   A survey carried out by Purdue University Center for Customer-Driven Quality shows that 53.9 percent of contact centers have implemented a system for workforce management in the past five years. Click here for more information.

June 01 Nationalism and the Offshore Outsourcing Phenomenon   Read the latest article by Dr. Jon on a study that sought to identify the American consumer’s reactions to the offshore outsourcing of customer service calls. Click here for more information.

June 01 Hearing is Believing   Read how cutting-edge companies have raised the bar on what customers expect from automated speech solutions. Click here for more information.

May 09 Saying "Yes To Speech Recognition   Depending on who you talk to speech recognition—or speech reco for short—is anything from, and I quote, “just plain cool” to “irrelevant”. Clearly, it’s a technology that says different things to different people, if research carried out by Purdue University Center for Customer-Driven Quality is anything to go by. Click here for more information.

April 27 Five Reasons Why You're Losing Staff   Research carried out by Purdue University Center for Customer-Driven Quality shows that two-thirds of contact centers lose 10 percent or more of their employees every year. One in five lose 30 to 49 percent; nearly one in 10 lose more than half. Find out more in this new article by Dr. Anton. Click here for more information.

March 11 Outsourcing: Sensible or Sinful?   Outsourcing is nothing new. It’s been around for years and is simply the process of moving an internal business function to an outside provider. What is new, however, is today’s technological ability to re-locate these functions as easily to India as Indiana, or Australia as Austin. Find out more in this new article by Dr. Anton. Click here for more information.

March 01 Headset Management: An Oft Untapped Savings Source   Mismanagement of headsets can contribute to poor customer service, increased agent stress, and unnecessary expenses. Find out how in this new article by Dr. Anton and Cory Gunderson. Click here for more information.

February 01 Find out What Customers Really Think!   How come nearly four out of 10 contact centers aren't asking their customers what they think? Find out more in this latest article by Dr. Jon. Click here for more information.

February 01 To Outsource or Not to Outsource   Read the latest article on Outsourcing by Dr. Jon Anton and Cory Gideon Gunderson. Click here for more information.

January 18 Chat Technology: Changing the Way We ‘Talk’ to Customers   If a customer is Internet-savvy and happy to make contact online, why get them to reach for a telephone when they need help? Find out more in this latest article by Dr. Jon. Click here for more information.

December 21 Applicant Screening and Testing: Is it Worth the Cost?   It's one thing for contact center managers to find and hire candidates who are reliable, patient, service-oriented, problem-solving, and effective communicators. It is yet another to throw these new team members into the typically stressful environment of a contact center and retain them for as long as you'd like to make the recruiting and training process worth the investment of time and money. Click here for more information.

November 30 Top 6 Reasons Why You Can’t Afford NOT to Benchmark   Still trying to decide if you can afford the time and money it takes to benchmark your contact center? As a pioneer in the field of benchmarking contact centers, let me share with you the reasons that you can’t afford not to. Click here for more information.

November 09 Home-Based Agents: An Alternative To Offshore Outsourcing?   Could home-based agents resolve the dilemma that U.S. contact centers face, under ever-constant pressure to deliver quality service to their customers while controlling costs, by keeping their agent jobs onshore? Click here for more information.

October 18 Automated e-Mail Management Solution: Are you a Boon or a Bane?   In today’s fast paced world, everyone is looking for shortcuts, especially when contacting a company for needed help or information. Click here for more information.

October 14 Herbalife Springs New Life Into its Contact Center   Herbalife’s journey to improving the health of its call center began with a benchmarking audit of current performance metrics. Click here for more information.

September 01 Changing the Focus from Cost to Customer   According to research conducted at Purdue University’s Center for Customer-Driven Quality, there are two future trends that should be of interest to call center managers, namely: 1) quality management in call centers will be driven by such key performance indicators (KPIs) as first call resolution, average hold time, average number of transfers, and more; and 2) quality management in the call center will be driven directly by caller satisfaction scores. Find out more in this new article by Dr. Anton and Tom Hammond. Click here for more information.

August 02 Improving Image is Everything   Read how we show there is a correlation between a company’s image in any one year and the company’s annual revenue in the same or subsequent years. Click here for more information.

July 01 Combining Service Quality with Profitability   In today’s challenging business environment, customer contact centers are looking for ways to transform themselves from being cost centers to profit centers on their way to becoming strategic value centers, adding value to the whole enterprise. Click here for more information.

June 29 The Truth About Outsourcing   Outsourcing: just the mere mention of the word seems to conjure up images of unpatriotic contact centers fleeing U.S. soil in droves and robbing Americans of jobs. Read more on this hot topic in this latest article by Dr. Jon Anton and John Chatterley. Click here for more information.

May 25 The Art of the Possible   The biggest single challenge in customer service contact centers today is improving the quality and quantity of calls handled. Thanks to the Echo System, now you, too, can turn the “impossible” into “I’m possible”. Click here for more information.

May 22 Seven Secrets of Minimizing Agent Turnover   What can you do to tackle turnover? Here's our 'Seven Secrets of Minimizing Agent Turnover.' Click here for more information.

May 20 Spoiled by Choice   Your customer’s got a problem and wants to contact you. What’s the best way to get in touch? Dr. Jon Anton & Anita Rockwell explain. Click here for more information.

May 15 It’s Not about the Individual – It’s about the Team   Having the “right management team” is mission-critical to achieving “Center of Excellence” status in your customer service contact centers. Find out more in this article by Dr. Jon Anton and Kathy Dean. Click here for more information.

April 15 Looking Up Customer Satisfaction in the Index   What’s your Anton Index? Dr. Jon Anton and Anita Rockwell explain. Click here for more information.

February 13 Organizer or Optimizer?   Read this article by authors' Dr. Jon Anton and Anita Rockwell to learn why Workforce Management (WFM) is no longer about simply “managing schedules.” Click here for more information.

January 03 Best Practice Makes Perfect   What will it be: Butterfinger? Baby Ruth? Or maybe a Reese’s Cup? It’s hardly the sort of question you’d expect your CEO to be asking. Click here for more information.

December 15 Taming the Turnover Tiger   Imagine if your favorite football team lost half of its players each and every season and replaced them with rookies. How unfortunate would that be? Click here for more information.

December 01 The Call Center’s Impact on Company Image and Brand Article   Take the caller who’s impressed that they were answered on the third ring only to become the caller who’s not so impressed there was a five number option... Click here for more information.