Call Center Management on Fast Forward: Succeeding in Today's Dynamic Inbound Environment (1st Edition) - Softcover

Cleveland, Brad; Mayben, Julia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0965909301 ISBN 13: 9780965909303

Publisher: Call Center Pr, 1999

Synopsis

This is the only book available today that provides a very readable, step-by-step guide for managing an incoming call center. The book combines theory with practical advice and is filled with over 100 charts and graphs, several case studies and an extensive glossary and index.

About this title

About the Author

Brad Cleveland is perhaps the best-known name on the call center industry speaking circuit and has taught seminars on call center management throughout North America, Europe and the Pacific Rim. He is president of Incoming Calls Management Institute(ICMI), based in Annapolis, Md.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From Chapter 1: It was the turn of the century and the dawn of a new age in communication. The telephone had been invented a few decades earlier in 1876, and telephone service was proliferating rapidly. The public was beginning to depend on, and even expect, reliable service. As the subscriber base grew, telephone companies were contending with new resource planning problems. Automated central offices hadn't been invented yet, so human operators were required to establish connections for callers. One big question was, how many telephone operators are necessary? Too few, and service levels would be unacceptable to callers. But too many would be inefficient for telephone companies and would drive up costs for subscribers. Further complicating the issue: calls arrived randomly, driven by a myriad of motivations individual callers had for placing the calls. In the years that followed, many bright people would grapple with these resource management challenges. One of the first was A.K. Erlang, an engineer with the Copenhagen Telephone Company, who in 1917, developed the queuing formula Erlang C. The formula is still widely used today in incoming call centers for calculating staffing requirements. Others who followed Erlang focused on developing disciplined forecasting techniques, scheduling methodologies and system reporting parameters. The advances continued. Things have come a long way since the early 1900s. Today, there is no need for operators to connect calls since the process has been automated. But if you manage a modern call center, there is at least a ring of familiarity to the challenges the early telephone pioneers faced. Forecasting calls accurately, staffing appropriately, and getting the right people and other resources in the right places at the right times continue to be key objectives.

Edition details

• Publisher: Call Center Pr
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0965909301
• ISBN 13: 9780965909303
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 280