9 Characteristics of Successful Contact Centres - FOCUS

Read more on my & fellow Expert contribution ---- http://www.focus.com/content/download/25917/

Birth of SmartConnect Technologies

Orchestrate | Channelise | Unify

The hunger to create an enterprise, and the urge to "make a difference".  The gumption to dream, and the will to make the dream come true. The ability to do, and the ability to do it well.

SmartConnect was a dream that truly started on the proverbial table napkin in a restaurant.

The spirit of enterprise, fuelled by pure adrenaline. A finger on the pulse of emerging technologies, very throbbing minute. A consuming awareness of the fact that no human endeavor is left untouched by advances in technology and an uncompromising stance on customer satisfaction.

When we first gazed over the emerging UC landscape, we couldn't help but notice a glaring hole in the way integrators provided solutions. Sure, customers could go to one consulting house for IPT, another for contact-centre, third for Web Services, others for Unified Communications et. al. But we could not see anyone out there with the skills to package it all together.

Wanting to fill that void, we decided to rewrite the rulebook and build the strengths internally through a combination of services & IP, which could turn it into a full service provider (FSP).

We saw the opportunity to bring vertical-industry solutions together by wrapping strategy with technology components to provide a fully integrated solution. Since then, we've taken this concept of being an FSP and run with it.

Your Success !!!

Success - starts in your mind.
Positive Thinking creates the advantage.

Success - comes with a good mood.
Listen to your most preferred CD before an important meeting.

Success - is increased with a little attention.
Give others something - maybe a nice gesture is enough.

Success - comes when your body is healthy.
Body and soul are inseparable.

Success - comes with partnership.
Show this others by thinking for them.

Success - is also a question of your outlook.
Do not leave it up to coincidence; instead plan carefully - from head to toe.

Success - is determinant with your security.
Everyone wants to be on the side of the winner.

Success - is ruled by your target.
Set yourself realistic but always higher goals then demanded.

Success - is a question of stamina.
Stay in the court! Hang in there! (Even when things seem to drift away)

Success - is based on systematic work.
Without engagement no success.

Success - is predetermined.
Train over and over again all possible situations.

Success - is a state of your mind.
Check and - if necessary - change your old attitude towards others and situations.

Success - is also the success of others.
It is no secret how they are successful! Watch them and let them teach you.

Success - is the opposite of failure.
Delete the possibility of failure from your mind, since you are successful only.

Eight ways to get Fired (www.baselinemag.com)

Doctoring your Resume – This one cost Notre Dame football coach his job
Sexual Harassment or Misconduct – Unless you are a politician, of course.
Absenteeism – Half the job is showing up, so you need to show up.
Too much personal business – The internet takes this to a whole new level.
Theft – Come on people, this one’s in the Bible.
Poor Job Performance – Jay Leno and his boss can pull this off, but not you.
Being a Jerk – The bar is pretty high for this one, for better or worse.
Insubordination – The modern, team-oriented workplace still has its hierarchies.

Profit Minded Contact Center

Building an ROI Case for Customer Interaction Solutions in Financial Services.

Executive Summary

The contact center is in a state of transformation. As financial services firms increasingly focus on organic growth, contact centers, which span phone and Internet channels, are expected to drive cross-selling efforts as well as strengthen customer relationships.

But what must happen to make today’s contact centers a powerful contributor to profitable growth?

One critical factor is the recognition that inbound, customer-initiated interactions must be managed with extreme care and precision. If financial players are to provide an exceptional service experience and strengthen customer loyalty, they must be able to rapidly identify and act on customer issues. If they are to capitalize on customer-initiated interactions to drive growth, they must be able to address their customers in a personalized fashion and present offers that are highly relevant. Unfortunately, most financial firms presently lack the ability to truly personalize and contextualize interactions with their customers. They are prone to pitching irrelevant or inappropriate offers that can actually damage the customer relationship. They undermine perceptions by failing to manage customers across channels in a seamless way.

To thrive in today’s hyper-competitive markets, companies must invest in intelligent interaction platforms that are designed to provide a compelling customer experience and strengthen profitability. Truly intelligent solutions of this kind must provide a single view of the customer across channels. They must have the ability to apply real-time analytics and business rules to customer profiles drawn from historical data and contextual data captured during the customer interaction. Leading financial firms now understand the value of highly intelligent, fully integrated and profit-minded contact centers. By enabling multi-channel interaction, delivering a full-spectrum view of the customer and providing real-time guidance to agents, Customer Interaction Optimization solutions will take contact centers to the next level of performance.

Brief analysis herein, shows how contact centers can deliver differentiated customer service, build more profitable customer relationships and demonstrate the ROI on customer interaction solutions.

Market Drivers: Key Trends in Financial Services.

Several industry mega-trends are influencing the environment in which contact centers are now evolving. Among them:
1. Intensifying Competition.
2. Customer Backlash.
3. Organic Growth.

The Challenge: Irrelevant Offers and Inappropriate Interactions Undermine Relationships.

Against this backdrop, financial firms are looking to their contact centers as a force for profitable growth. As the front line connection to customers, these centers are now expected to go beyond conventional forms of customer service and capitalize on opportunities to deepen customer relationships. Considering the diminishing returns and high risk of annoyance associated with outbound telemarketing, companies are becoming particularly interested in the possibilities of inbound marketing – which is initiated by the customer’s call or visit to a Web site or even a face-to-face interaction in a retail branch.

The problem that contact center managers face is that their systems are inadequate for the growing demands being thrust upon them. They suffer from an:

1. Inability to Personalize Offers and Recommendations.
2. Inability to Manage Customers Across Channels.
3. Inability to Empower Front-Line Service Personnel.

The Opportunity: Intelligent Customer Interaction.

Profit-minded contact centers are building their foundation on Customer Interaction Optimization platforms. This represents the next generation of intelligent interaction solutions – going beyond basic analytics to provide predictions around customer behavior and drive action that maximizes business benefits. Such platforms are software-driven solutions that provide recommendations to service representatives or communicate directly to customers, drawing on continually refreshed profiles of contextual and historical customer data. Such interactions may occur in the call center, within an IVR, on a Web Site or at an ATM or retail branch. These solutions are notable for their intelligence (drawn from real-time analytics and data on historic behavior),their orientation to the individual customer and their capacity to enable channel spanning interaction. Whereas today’s call centers and Web sites are often siloed and rule-bound, the Customer Interaction Optimization approach is based on the principle that companies can most powerfully strengthen customer relationships through an integrated platform based on real-time intelligence.

Advanced Customer Interaction Optimization solutions are composed of several key elements including:
1. Real-Time, Personalized Guidance.
2. Multi-Channel Engagement.
3. Full-Spectrum Customer Insight.

For financial services firms looking for a competitive edge, such systems provide several key benefits and advantages. Among them:
1. Enhanced Cross-Selling and Upselling.
2. Stronger Retention and Loyalty.
3. Compelling Customer Experiences.

What to Look for in a Customer Interaction Optimization Solution Provider
As financial services players consider possible ways of addressing their customer-focused business challenges, they’ll need to examine the types of solution providers that can get them to the next level. Here are some of the key decision criteria that should guide an investment in a Customer Interaction Optimization solution:
1. Industry Expertise
2. Channel Neutrality
3. Analytical Depth
4. Real-Time Capabilities
5. Seamless Integration

Strategy Distraction

As many of you know, we are passionate supporters of strategic planning. We believe your sales and marketing success depends on it. We believe in a well-built strategy that tightly integrates the sales and marketing process and consistently communicates a company's position (who you are, what you do, and why you) in your market. And, we believe a strategy based on the knowledge your target market is not everyone, your product/service does not do everything, and you do have competition will win every time—especially when executed flawlessly, consistently, and as planned.

And so it is with great sadness we report an epidemic—"strategy distraction." And like most epidemics it is running rampant and wreaking havoc throughout sales and marketing organizations everywhere. In fact, this epidemic can often be traced to the very top. Adam Hanft in his inc. magazine article "It's Swing Time" perhaps illustrates it best: "I've seen CEOs change strategic direction over a weekend—and not even a long holiday one—based on a single article they read, or a cocktail party comment, or because they confused the inability to execute with bad strategy."

Aside from having no strategy at all, it is this last reason (failure to execute) that we see as the most significant cause of strategy distraction. If you honestly analyze your sales and marketing effort and find a) your messaging varies from sales rep to sales rep and marketing piece to marketing piece, b) your marketing plan keeps changing with your newest idea or target market shifts, or c) executing your marketing plan only becomes a hot priority when sales are down, then it is time to cure yourself of strategy distraction:

Build a strategy of uniqueness—it must be relevant. As with everyone (including myself) everyone has built a plan and like many have had trouble completely executing it. However, if you haven't yet built your plan, there are great reference books / tips, available on successful planning. Again, the key to a strong strategy is understanding the integration points between sales and marketing, having a good understanding of your target market, product positioning, and competitive landscape, and building a marketing mix that communicates your unique value and leverages the impact of multiple vehicles.

Get REAL buy off from your team—they must believe. Real buy-off requires real input. Don't create your strategy in a vacuum. Include the sales and marketing team throughout the entire process. And, before you begin execution, present the final strategy and implementation plan to your sales and marketing teams for one last buy-off. A team that believes in the strategy (and they should, they helped create it) will by nature be more inclined to execute it as planned.

Execute the plan—you must commit. As the introduction of this tip indicates, building a strong strategy with internal buy-off from your team is important, but will only get you halfway there—execution is critical. Don't bite off more than you can chew. If the plan isn't something you have the resources to implement and stick with, scale it back to something that you can more easily commit to. Then, build a detailed project plan for implementation, detailing departmental dependencies, resource allocation, project tasks, and key deadlines on a weekly basis. And, hold each other accountable to delivering on the strategy, whether strategic or tactical.

Measure, measure, and measure—we must be accountable. Measurement of your strategy should be multi-faceted. First, did you execute what you planned to execute? After all, if you failed to nail down your positioning statement, missed a mailing, never got that article written, didn't get your email out on time, were unable to reach your target market, etc., then can you really tell if your strategy was on target? Next, assuming you did execute completely, what were the results? Create a scorecard based on the goals you set out for yourself in the planning process (i.e. # of leads, web traffic, information inquiries, proposals/bids, sales, etc.) for tracking this monthly. Of course to do this you will need to get disciplined about asking, "how did you hear about us" at every contact.

Remember this key point as you continue to analyze your results—failure to execute a strategy is very different than failure of the strategy itself.

Why Thought Leadership - Most Valuable Asset

As a B2B marketer, thought leadership is one of the most valuable assets your brand — or you — can attain.

In down economies, prospects conduct even more research leading up to the purchase. This means B2B marketing professionals must help educate prospects in the early stages of the buying cycle; doing this well can help frame their buying process and establish your brand as a trusted advisor that understands their problems and knows how to solve them. Therefore it's more vital than ever for your organization to be viewed as an industry leader and trusted resource for all key stakeholders: customers, media, analysts, investors and everyone in between.

Unfortunately thought leadership is not as easily quantifiable as other demand generation metrics like revenue, sales or leads. And investing in reputation building may not produce the same short-term, immediate effects of efforts such email marketing campaigns. But cultivating thought leadership can have a significant long-term payoff, as in time it elevates your brand at scale.

What are the qualities that define thought leaders? Thought leaders:

1. Develop relationships with customers, prospects and others by engaging them in non-sales, industry-relevant conversations.
2. Become the go-to source for research, insight and interpretation of the latest news and trends.
3. Gain trust among prospective customers so that when the time finally comes to purchase, customers turn to the thought leader organization.

Try incorporating some of these ideas in your marketing efforts to build your organization's reputation:

Provide original research. Conduct a poll on your website, send out a survey to customers or perform a more in-depth study with the help of a third party. Whatever type of research you conduct, this information can be especially useful for media and industry analysts. And the more often your research is picked up by these sources, the more likely prospects will view you as a trusted source.

Use your company blog to provide insight. Every company is now a media company. And while networks like Twitter are all the buzz, the most flexible and ultimately valuable publishing tool remains a blog. For your blog to succeed at positioning your brand as a thought leader, you need to go beyond simply reporting and reacting. Include insightful commentary and analysis on industry trends, and start threads of original ideas. This will position you as a leader as opposed to a follower.

Be a solution for specific problems. If your finger is on the pulse of your industry, you'll understand clearly what the pain points are for prospects. Taking the time to articulate solutions to timely problems will position you as a trusted source. When you are able to solve specific problems that people in your industry are actively seeking solutions for, you'll be positioned well ahead of competitors.

Join the speaking circuit. From keynote speeches to panel discussions to breakout sessions, opportunities abound to provide insight for potential customers at industry events. Research the types of conferences, meetings and conventions that you prospects are likely to attend, and develop relationships with event organizers.

If you still aren't sold on the value of cultivating thought leadership, consider the indirect result of these measures. Done well, reputation-building efforts can:

1. Provide you with additional quality inbound links to your website
2. Increase higher-quality referral traffic
3. Elevate your brand to become referential

Plus, the more optimized content you produce in the form of whitepapers, blog posts and webinars, the higher your search rankings. What's not to like about that?

Rrrrrng a Bell ?!

A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in California when suddenly a brand-new BMW 7 Series advanced out of a dust cloud towards him.

The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Cartier sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, 'If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, Will you give me a calf?'

Bud looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, 'Sure, Why not?'

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his HP notebook computer, connects it to his Nokia N95 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.

The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany.

Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-Tech Miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says, 'You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.'

'That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,' says Bud.

He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then the Bud says to the young man, 'Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?'

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, 'Okay, why not?' 'You're an IT Consultant', says Bud.

'Wow! That's correct,' says the yuppie, 'but how did you guess that?'

'No guessing required.' answered the cowboy. 'You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about cows...this is a herd of sheep. . .'

''Now give me back my dog''

Your Idea Alone has no Value !!!

Contrary to popular belief, great companies are not borne from great ideas alone. We'd all love to think that if we could simply invent the next Post-It note, we could sit back and watch the cash tumble in.

But if great ideas don't spawn great companies, what does?

The short answer is: you. The longer and far more complicated answer is how you specifically position yourself and your company to execute on an idea. Anyone who overhears your idea, has the same idea at the same time, or basically plans on doing anything similar, is already on the same playing field as you are.

In order to differentiate yourself and your idea, you don’t need a patent or some proprietary method. You need a focused plan that allows you to execute above and beyond your competition every day of the week.

Think of your competition like your favorite professional sports league. There are dozens of teams which have talented players on them, but only one team that is going to perform better than everyone else. Your goal is to build that team.

Focus on Execution

There is a massive chasm between having a great idea and executing flawlessly on a business model for a great idea. Lots of people have great ideas, but very few people ever execute well on them.

Execution isn’t just about showing up for work every day and punching a clock. For the team that wins, execution is about going above and beyond the call of duty each and every day. It’s about reaching out to your customer when there are no problems just to see how they are doing.

It’s about releasing a product feature faster than your competitor even when you’re already ahead. It’s being the first car in the parking lot in the morning and the last one to leave at night. It’s doing what the guy next to you isn’t willing to do.

Service the Heck out of your Customer

Even a product that’s a total commodity, like food, can take on a whole new meaning when you compare the service that comes with it. In your city there may be a hundred places where you can order a filet mignon, but only a handful that are considered top notch.

The difference is that the top restaurants understand that in order to differentiate their product, they need to rely on better service. They pay attention to every detail of your experience, from the greeting you get at the host stand to whether you’re given a white or black napkin based on your pant color.

Exceptional service is by no means a commodity. It’s a rare and unusual thing that very few companies can deliver. Chances are your competition isn’t going to go the extra mile to service the heck out of your customer, which creates an incredibly powerful competitive advantage for you.

Find the Weak Spot

It’s not uncommon for a startup company to go toe-to-toe with a much larger company offering a very similar product. On its face, it looks like the startup is at a severe disadvantage. Surely the behemoth megacorp can provide better execution and better service with its vast resources than a scrappy little startup can.

If you were to try to compete against the behemoth on their own terms you’d get crushed. That’s why startups tend to look for the weak spots in larger companies and exploit them. You can easily differentiate your product from a larger company by focusing on stuff large companies mess up all the time.

Unlike a large company, you can offer the personal service and attention your customers love and probably are missing from your bigger competitor. You can leverage your speed by releasing new versions of your product faster and responding to market conditions more quickly. You can offer talented managers founder’s stock while a big company can only offer another bonus plan.

Every weak spot that you can exploit is another way to add value to your idea. Once you’ve identified the points, the more pressure you put on those weak spots, the more value you’ll build for your own product.

Tying it Together

Outmaneuvering your competition isn’t about doing any one of these things – it’s about doing all of them consistently. If your idea is great and novel, the only guarantee is that it will be copied. If it’s not, you have to wonder how great of an idea it really is.

When your idea does get copied, the only thing you’ll be able to rely on is your team and your execution. All of the points about going above and beyond the call of duty, servicing your customer, and exploiting the weak spots will soon be used against you.

The only defense against the next up and comer and the only way to consistently create value around your idea is to stick to fundamental execution. Nothing else has value.

Walk the Talk !!! It's your Job...

It never ceases to amaze me that how little managers running businesses in service companies know about how their operation works. In service companies, less than 10% of P&L managers get out of their offices and go and take a look for themselves at what goes on at the front line and in the operation? Why so few? I suspect that part of the reason is that P&L managers do not tend to get promoted from operations or from the front line and therefore these areas are under-valued. This makes me very angry.

However if you do manage to drag a manager out of his office and make him walk the line i.e. walk the end to end process, the result is always the same – absolute horror. I have been on 100s of waste walks myself in contact-centre services companies and each time I discover at least one example of ‘process nonsense’. The level of waste is there to behold – you don’t need process expertise to see it – it slaps you in the face. Typically you see process after process; report after report, delivered the same way with absolutely no clue whether there is a problem or whether things are normal.

The tragedy is that this is the norm. Most managers or employees in service companies cannot imagine what a great process looks and feels like. No-one sees the need, never mind the opportunity, to improve. Any CRM service company would be out of business if it were run along similar lines. When I take managers on waste walks, I see the light bulb go on and the spark of a strong desire to improve. The good news is that improvement is typically inexpensive and not difficult with the appropriate vision and support from the management and help from lean experts.

A great process is a joy to observe. Reduced waste means people get more out of their jobs; visual management means that a manager can see if there is problem within 30 seconds; increased productivity means improved bottom line numbers and fewer errors and faster turnaround times mean happier customers.

Good leaders walk the line regularly to see for themselves what is happening and are proud of their processes. Great leaders walk the line and are never satisfied. Which are you?