Call Center Management on Fast Forward: Succeeding in Today's Dynamic Customer Contact Environment (2nd Edition) - Softcover

Brad Cleveland

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1932558063 ISBN 13: 9781932558067

Publisher: ICMI Press, 2006

Synopsis

The industry s No. 1 selling book on call center management! Now updated and expanded, "Call Center Management on Fast Forward"; is the most comprehensive source available on running a call center. It covers every aspect of call center management - service level, forecasting, scheduling, resource calculations, metrics, quality, budgeting, reporting, strategy and key enabling technologies - in a format that is well-organized and easy to understand. The updated and expanded edition contains important new information, including: Trends in customer expectations; Best practices in performance reports and objectives; How to create an effective customer access strategy appropriate for today's environment; How to manage multichannel contacts with quality; New technologies and how they re changing customer contact services; Improving the call center s strategic impact and ROI; New case studies and examples from Wells Fargo, Starbucks, Aetna and many others.

About this title

From the Publisher

Written by Brad Cleveland, the president of ICMI and one of the world's foremost authorities on call center management and customer services, Call Center Management on Fast Forward has been the industry's standard reference on running a call center operation since it was originally published in 1997. Many of the processes and policies currently in place in leading service organizations around the world were developed from the books guidelines and suggestions. The updated and expanded edition provides a much-needed update that addresses the dramatic changes that have occurred in the call center industry over the years.

From the Author

The first edition of Call Center Management on Fast Forward was introduced in 1997. Sales soon surpassed our highest expectations, and we were excited and amazed to see the book reach so many corners of the world. It quickly became evident that it was benefiting from a much larger trend, as organizations everywhere were building their customer contact services and reaching out for management practices that could help. While we made small revisions along the way, we decided that nine years and 18 printings later, it was high time for a major revision.

As I worked on this new edition, two seemingly contradictory observations kept coming to mind. One is how much the call center environment has changed in the past decade. No surprise there, I'm sure. Management practices, processes, technologies, customer expectations and even (or especially) the call center's role in the organization have all substantially evolved. But the other thought that I couldn't shake was how little things had changed. After all, the fundamental principles of good management still apply -- they always will.

So... which view was more correct? There were urgent and practical implications to finding the right answer -- after all, I was supposed to be working on an update. And yet, chapter after chapter -- especially in the early weeks of the project -- I found myself staring at a cursor blinking over text I was loath to change.

Then it hit me... both views are correct! The bedrock principles and fundamentals will always be with us -- and understanding and applying them leads to new discoveries and opens new frontiers. I pondered other examples. A talented artist with a solid understanding of color, texture, depth and design can create beautiful new paintings that challenge conventional practices. An ever-deeper grasp of the fundamentals of flight has enabled engineers to move us beyond biplanes and into the space age. Exciting new discoveries in medicine are based largely on what has come before.

With this liberating revelation, I was off to the races. Rather than tamper with what didn't need changing, the challenge became one of filling in gaps, adding where necessary and rounding out the story. In the process, I became more and more excited about the important role customer contact services play in today's economy, and how much more they will change in coming years.

So, what's different about this new edition? There are all-new chapters -- on building a customer access strategy (Chapter 2), establishing performance objectives (Chapter 12) and designing an effective organization (Chapter 15) -- and every chapter has been expanded to reflect current trends and developments. But if you read an earlier version of the book, you'll also find much familiar territory. All of the basics from the first edition are here -- i.e., the factors of caller tolerance, customer expectations, the planning process, the immutable laws and, in general, the principles of effective management. It's my hope that this book will be truly helpful to you as you build your organization's customer contact services, and that you will use it often.

Many times during this project, my four-year-old daughter, Grace, would climb onto my knee and ask me, "Daddy, is your book done yet?" I can finally say yes -- yes, it's done! But I can't help but think that, as a profession, we're just getting started.

Edition details

• Publisher: ICMI Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1932558063
• ISBN 13: 9781932558067
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 440