The best of form of marketing is through your customers! If they're happy, you'll find your products selling, but if customers aren't happy, you'll find yourself in a bit of a tough spot. Success of a brand not only depends on how awesome the product is, but also on customer satisfaction. Keeping customers happy is more than a prerequisite in today's world for the success of a brand. Right from respecting your customers to investing in improving customer loyalty, each impacts the performance of the company; this is reflected directly on the sales! Follow the below link to find out ways to keep your customer happy: 

http://www.listenupespanol.com/News-Resources/bid/92851/4-ways-to-keep-your-customers-smiling

All major corporates employ customer call centers to incline to the needs of their customers. A client usually calls the customer center and the first impression he receives is that of the service tended to him by the customer care representatives. So, organizations have started using automatic voice response systems to reduce the workload of their agents, attain to their customers round the clock and reduce operational costs. However, it has been found that many customers are disappointed with the automatic voice response systems due to various reasons. Companies need to design effective voice response systems that are brief and serve the needs of the customers. Find the detailed view point here: 

Call centers control nearly 90% of the communications with organization's field representatives and customers and thus have a tremendous impact on the credibility and perception of the organization. This makes training of its voice a crucial aspect. Four steps to evaluate your training program are-

1. Building the fundamental skills

2.Technology training program- so that the voice of your organization is up to date on the new technologies.

3.Training staff about how the company do business

4.Regular audit of training program.

To know more-http://www.callcentertimes.com/Articles/tabid/59/ctl/NewsArticle/mid/407/CategoryID/1/NewsID/989/Default.aspx

Social media has changed the retail environment by becoming the new consumer watchdog and has bring forth new challenges. It has changed the way people see news and learn about new products. If used wisely, mobile, digital and social media can be a powerful business weapon. Another great weapon is Customer service!
For instance a good customer service where you resolve a problem quickly can have a great influence on repeat purchases.
By being ferociously committed to customer service you can contribute to the success of your company. We need to remember a few basics-

1- Understanding customer needs- its very important to listen and show interest in customer needs.

2-Stepping into your customer’s shoes- Human beings like to be treated nicely so it’s important to show the customers you care about them and they matter.


3-Providing extra benefits- Going beyond customer’s expectation insures speedy success.


Read more here- 


http://www.callcentertimes.com/Articles/tabid/59/ctl/NewsArticle/mid/407/CategoryID/1/NewsID/988/Default.aspx

To make the contact center more efficient one should have the right equipment for their business. This is one of the ways to keep the cost down. One such equipment is the agent headset which provides the staff with quality communication at an affordable price. Apart from the quality what matters is how the calls are managed and monitored. Once you have an adequate record of every call that is made to your network, it is much easier to measure and manage the performance of employees in terms of how they interact with customers and clients. ?Read more here: 

 http://www.callcentertimes.com/Articles/tabid/59/ctl/NewsArticle/mid/407/CategoryID/1/NewsID/992/Default.aspx

Use of cloud contact center results in low cost, increased efficiency and greater flexibility but cost centers need to consider a good cloud connectivity. Businesses generally use public internet to access cloud services which is not reliable.  Fast and secure service can be enjoyed with good cloud connectivity and customers will be loyal because complexity will be reduced with a single point of contact for all services. Read more at: 

 http://www.callcentertimes.com/Articles/tabid/59/ctl/NewsArticle/mid/407/CategoryID/1/NewsID/973/Default.aspx

Companies are recognizing the need of contact center analytics to gain more consumer awareness but problems like cost of hiring new staff and procurement of new equipment are holding back contact centers from investing in analytics. Other factors like funding and prioritization are to be blamed as contact centers are now seen as cost centers but terms like customer experience and customer journey are gaining exposure. Read more at:

 http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/news/4500246053/Contact-center-analytics-still-an-uncharted-frontier

Companies are recognizing the need of contact center analytics to gain more consumer awareness but problems like cost of hiring new staff and procurement of new equipment are holding back contact centers from investing in analytics. Other factors like funding and prioritization are to be blamed as contact centers are now seen as cost centers but terms like customer experience and customer journey are gaining exposure. Read more at: 

http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/news/4500246053/Contact-center-analytics-still-an-uncharted-frontier

Fraudsters are exploiting weaknesses in call center and help desk user authentication processes. Common caller authentication methods are creating inconvenience for legitimate users. Current authentication methods fail in three ways. They are: 1. knowledge-based authentication (KBA) - KBA's are used to authenticate users.2. PINs. 3. Caller ID. The other two ways include PINs and Caller ID to authenticate users- all of which are accessible by criminal. The best security is always layered security. This principle holds true when securing telephony channel. Voice biometrics can catch fraudster voices and put them on a blacklist for future voice comparisons and verifications of callers. Phone printing combined with voice biometrics provides the strongest method for detecting fraudsters. To know more, read Avivah Litan's (vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner) article at: http://www.itworldcanada.com/blog/preventing-fraud-in-the-call-center-use-voice-biometrics-phone-printing/97217#ixzz3D51sGlc6

According to Brian Cantor (Managing Editor and community Director of IQPC's Customer Management IQ), businesses develop and put into operation strategies without truly trying to understand who their customers are and what they want, thus producing suboptimal customer experiences. The question is does a customer actually want to engage in long, personalized calls to identify and resolve a business issue?  A customer may not be supportive in all cases.  But a business that ignores the desires of their customers cannot be called customer-centric. Being alert of this problem, the author discussed this situation and was exposed to some of the factors that "normal people" value when it comes to customer service.  They are as follows: availability of full service 24/7 and quick resolution-because time is money and effort is money.  Read more at: http://www.callcenter-iq.com/customer-experience/articles/what-normal-people-think-about-customer-service/

According to Tracey E. Schelmetic (TMCnet Contributor), many small organizations with contact centers that could have improved their services to customers by using analytics were earlier forced out of competition. They were unable to bear the high capital costs of instigating such solutions unlike big companies with greater access to large amounts of data resources that have been able to use analytics solutions to run their businesses more efficiently. However today, cloud-based analytics solutions are helping even the smallest contact centers by turning all the communications with customers into useful data that can be used to provide better analytical solutions in the customer support operations thereby, leading to superior customer satisfaction ratings. Read more at: http://www.tmcnet.com/channels/workforce-optimization/articles/383244-smaller-companies-reaping-large-rewards-from-contact-center.htm

“Money is King” in the field of call center and the result is well proved in a research. An important feature of human motivation is influenced by perks offered. The company Snowfly, which is the leading provider of Internet based employee incentive and loyalty program offers different rewards to its employees, some of which are reloadable debit or gift cards that can be swiped anywhere, merchandise and donations in form of charity. Out of all anywhere spend cards are overwhelmingly in demand as compared to others. In the results, more than 98% of the value of rewards was both types of cards against the cash equivalent as they are soon forgotten but cards have long term motivational value. Thus, the study shows direction of how incentives are valued and the end line is for all that matters is money. Read more at: http://www.callcentertimes.com/Home/tabid/37/ctl/NewsArticle/mid/395/CategoryID/1/NewsID/549/Default.aspx

Mostly all customer service providers offer there service through phone calls. It is time consuming and customers have to wait long before they can have a conversation personally. Optus is an Australian Provider in integrated communications and a subsidiary of SingTel, brings in effective action its [24]7's mobile chat capability in Optus mobile app. This application will allow customers to chat with Optus customer care from a mobile phone. It is a very smart choice and it will give personalized service to all consumers. The same user friendly service which they accessed from their laptops and PC's is now available on their phones. It is a brilliant experience for the customers and increases customer satisfaction as it saves a lot of time. The same service should be adapted by other service providers also so that they do not lose their market share. Read more at: www.contactcenterworld.com/view/contact-center-news/optus-makes-customer-service-brilliant-with-247s-chat-in-the-optus-mobile-app.aspx

Nuance communications is one of the world's biggest providers of voice and language solutions to many businesses and consumers. Its applications experienced by millions of people. To streamline customer authentication and fight fraud at the same time it has partnered with TRUSTID which is a provider in contact center authentication technology. Nuance Voice Biometrics uses a technique to detect unique characteristics of a person's voice and creates a voiceprint which is used for future reference. It replaces the intrusive questions often asked and saves time. Contact centers that uses TRUSTID and Nuance in combination can see greater reduction in time taken on a call, operation cost and strengthening of security. Read more at: http://www.contactcenterworld.com/view/contact-center-news/nuance-and-trustid-partner-to-help-contact-centers-streamline-customer.aspx

The first step towards managing the call volume peaks is identifying the patterns. Some of the several tips are as follows: The fewer variances available on the desktop like emails, printers, office suites the better standardized it is. It reduces variances which may cause problems with updates which ultimately lead to call spikes. The second most important thing is to be better placed in your environment i.e. to keep call center agents well informed about their tasks and coach specific agents on specific skills. Lastly, the most important aspect is to design an efficient action plan containing a trigger point which could easily signal when the plan should go into effect. Read more at: http://blog.inovasolutions.com/2014/surviving-call-center-peaks-and-valleys-part-2-managing-call-volume-peaks

Customer service is the key element which decides the fate of a business. If the customers find the employees rude or they don't know what they are talking about the organisation will start losing customers. Irrespective of the business type, customers make phone calls and may want to know the hours of operation or they may have a query about a recent purchase. The customer service department should always follow up with customers in order to show that they care about their customers and they make sure that the product features matches the demand of the customer.Helping them to the car when they have an arm load of products is a good way to show them you care. Helping them decide on which products to purchase and helping them to understand which products will complement each other is another way. To know more go to:http://www.coursepark.com/blog/2012/07/4-reasons-why-customer-service-is-important-for-your-business/

Nintex , the world leader in workflow software, announced its integration with Salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the two market-leaders among CRM platforms. Nintex is the first workflow company which enabled business users to connect critical ECM and CRM systems through the cloud, and allowed customers to quickly and easily automate processes between departments in a customer-driven environment. With the new integrations, users can accelerate a variety of processes which involves frequent interactions between customer-facing teams and internal business operations. Nintex’s integration with Salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics CRM lets organizations:

• Drive business processes in SharePoint in response to events in CRM so work flows better between previously siloed systems

• Automate the process of creating, updating, retrieving, and querying records in Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics using simple drag-and-drop workflow actions

• Post status updates, links and polls to Salesforce Chatter or Microsoft Yammer, and progress workflows based on user responses in social channels

To know more, go to: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/nintex-announces-integration-with-salesforcecom-and-microsoft-dynamics-crm-2014-07-14

Craig Borowski (Research Associate at Software Advice, that offers call center software comparisons) in his survey data outlines the reasons why should a company offer callback instead of making customers wait on phone impatiently. 63% of respondents prefer call back instead of waiting on phone. 43% of them expect a callback within half hour whereas 25% said it does not matter when the call was returned. Thus three measures to eradicate the problems are: Introducing an intelligent call back system such as Virtual Hold Technology (VHT). Allowing the use of applications like FastCustomer and help it to navigate the IVR. The best solution possibly would be to launch a new phone system altogether. If callback emerges as a growing technology it will eliminate the frustration among the customers of waiting long and increase customer satisfaction and call center productivity. Read more at : http://inovasolutions.com/blog/post/contact-center-callback-services-are-improving-customer-service.

The most recently developed modern call center has emerged with so much of technology usage from cloud to Customer Relationship Management and Integrated Voice Response with new phrases catching up on people’s minds. It can be compared to an Oxford dictionary which gets 1000 new words added almost every year. There is always a need of new word to describe an innovation, idea or technology. These new words lead to puzzling communication. Thus the need of the hour is a jargon busting guide. Some examples are COLO which stands for Colocation. It refers to the service where data can be stored by a host company in a third party data center. For access to the whole guide visit: http://www.newvoicemedia.com/blog/understanding-the-modern-call-centre-our-jargon-busting-guide/#colo

Today call centers are becoming increasingly famous all over the world. Call centers play a vital part in most modern organizations, as they fulfill the need of creating a strong bond between a company and its customers. It is basically a place where inbound calls to the company are taken for customer service and support, while outbound calls to customers and clients are made for telemarketing. Taking the help of a company specializing in call center support will provide many benefits including: 1) saving money 2) saving time 3) providing expertise 4) better reputation. An expert call center gives protection to company and help build reputation. These benefits are required for many online companies and the best way to find a great call center is to compare the cost, reputation, such that any language barrier does not sustain between the countries. Read more at: 

http://serversitters.com/what-is-a-call-center-and-how-can-it-help-your-business.html