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LOMA
Contact Center Workshop
Spring
2007 Session Information
Wednesday,
May 9
7:45 A.M. – 8:45
A.M.
Continental Breakfast
8:45 A.M. – 9:45
A.M.
General Session
Call
Center
Excellence: The New York Life Experience
Lynn A. O'Neill,
Assistant Vice President, New York Life Insurance Company - AARP
Operations
Attaining and maintaining excellence in a call center is not an easy feat.
New York Life is recognized as a leader in call center excellence and has
a strong customer service culture. O’Neill will provide insight into the
culture, best practices and processes resulting in the success of a call
center and how to maintain a service excellence culture.
10:00 A.M. – 11:30
A.M.
Interactive Discussion Session 1 (Select One)
1A: Managing
Difficult Employees While Rewarding Outstanding Performers
Properly managing the
factors that affect employee performance is vital to the quality of
service you can deliver. Gain insight on how to deal with problematic
employees while keeping your stars motivated. Discuss stifling bad
influences, turning the negative into the positive, when to terminate
difficult employees, maintaining staff morale and other related topics.
Learn about ways to motivate for performance with non-monetary rewards,
dispelling false rumors, promoting from within the department, and guiding
staff members through alliances, mergers, acquisitions, downsizing and
other transitions.
1B: Coaching for Success
Success and more
importantly, continued success, depends on more than a one time event.
True success requires constant monitoring, training and coaching your
staff to build and maintain a successful contact center. Discuss how using
a contact monitoring program fits into an overall contact center strategy
and innovative ways of developing staff through various coaching and
training methods. Also learn what technologies and techniques other
organizations are using to monitor and record phone calls and how these
are being used in the coaching process
1C: Telecommuting
and Home Based Agents
Whether referred to as
telecommuting, home based agents or simply working from home, this
practice is on the rise. It has been enabled by technology and
frequently implemented out of necessity to retain valuable staff members.
Participants in this session should be prepared to discuss why and how it
is employed in their organization, technology requirements as well as
changes in management practices and monitoring of the home based agent.
Attendees will learn how other companies are being successful with this
practice as well some of the pitfalls to avoid.
11:45 A.M. – 1:00
P.M.
Lunch Provided for Conference Attendees
1:00 P.M. – 2:00
P.M.
General Session
The Lifecycle of a Customer Service Representative
Dru Phelps, Vice President, Benchmark Portal
Research asks, “Does a
motivated employee provide greater results for your company?”
Intuitively we answer “yes”, but what are the stepping stones along
the way that empower the ‘art and the science’ of behavioral
motivation leading to enhanced performance? Since your major
investment is staffing, the greatest impact to the business is your staff,
the CSR. Dru will cover tactics in attracting, selecting,
training, monitoring, incentivizing, and advancing your top talent.
Dru Phelps, a Valued
Partner, shares 21 years of pragmatic expertise in customer service,
quality management systems and performance engineering.
Currently, Dru contracts as a Senior Advisor on 4-D services and Auditor
on the methodology and measurement to industry peer groups with
BenchmarkPortal’s Certified Centers of Excellence.
2:15 P.M. – 3:30
P.M.
Interactive Discussion Session 2 (Select One)
2A: Hiring, Staffing and
Employee Retention
A significant challenge in a call center is reducing the employee turnover
rate. To counter the turnover rate, hiring employees that will stay
with your organization is critical. Excellent phone skills are no longer
the complete definition of a successful CSR. Today’s reps need excellent
written and verbal communication skills, advanced product knowledge and
computer skills. Discuss selection tools that work, what questions to ask
during an interview, and how to find, hire and retain the best reps.
2B: Workforce Management
Call volumes fluctuate in
nearly every call center. There are various methods to anticipate
these peaks in volume and practices that may be employed to ensure proper
staffing levels during these periods as well as to avoid being overstaffed
during the down periods. Participants in this workshop should be
prepared to discuss the workforce management tools employed in their
organization as well other practices employed to manage the workforce for
consistent staffing in the call center.
2C:
Handling the Difficult Caller and
Complaint Resolution
Not all calls to a call center are routine. In fact, some callers
are rude, angry and at times difficult to deal with. Complaints
from callers are also common and have to be dealt with by call center
representatives. Attendees to this session will share their insights
into how their organization handles the angry or difficult caller and
their procedures on handling complaints.
3:45 P.M. – 4:45
P.M.
Interactive Discussion Sessions 3 (Select One)
3A: Measuring the Metrics
Moderator: Dru Phelps, Vice President, Benchmark Portal
It has been stated before that you can’t manage what you don’t
measure. Using metrics to measure productivity is the first step to
increasing it. Attendees will talk about the most critical measures of
call center and CSR performance, how to calculate those numbers and what
to do with the data. Discuss how to balance productivity and
quality, as well as create highly visible metrics that drive the CSR’s
improvement process. Learn what can be gained from individual metrics, and
how to integrate key metrics to increasing customer satisfaction and
customer loyalty. Discover how to use key metrics to train, motivate,
improve and retrain employees.
3B: Best Practices
in Call Center Management
Best practices may be defined as those practices that an organization
may consider as their greatest attribute. Most successful call
centers follow a certain set of practices that maximize productivity,
customer loyalty and employee satisfaction. Attendees should be prepared
to discuss their call center’s best practices that optimize performance
and service.
5:30 P.M. – 6:30
P.M.
Networking Reception
Thursday,
May 10
7:45 A.M. – 8:45
A.M.
Continental Breakfast
8:45 A.M. – 9:45
A.M.
General Session
Achieving
Service
Center
Excellence
Stephen
E. Murphy, FLMI, CLU, ChFC, Senior Consultant, Robert E. Nolan Company
Management Consultants
The
bumpy road to service center excellence is pocked by challenges that must
be overcome by both management and rank-and-file workers.
Murphy’s presentation will identify these challenges and outline
the opportunities we all have to smooth the way and achieve service
excellence. Included will be a
discussion on how to develop a contact center strategy and how to align
management tactics to that strategy – enabling you to handle call
demand, staff accurately and control resources in the most efficient
manner. Also discussed will be
Workforce Management (WFM) – how to develop a WFM system, how to use the
inherent tools to offer excellent low-cost service, and how to measure the
results.
9:45 A.M. – 10:45
A.M.
Interactive Discussion Session 4 (Select One)
4A: Emerging Technology
Technology is one way to move your call center to a new level. Call
centers are transforming into multi-media customer contact centers and
distribution channels driven by new and innovative technologies. Discuss
how to choose and implement the right tools. Is there a role of
web-chat speech recognition in your contact center? What about VoIP?
Be prepared to share insight into the technology tools employed in your
organization that have been the most successful.
4B: Improving
Morale & Preventing Employee Burnout
The stress often associated with a call center representative’s job
often leads to low morale, burnout and eventually high turnover.
Share ideas on ways of improving morale and preventing burnout by
improving working conditions, establishing incentives and providing a
career path for your reps. Learn how to prepare your staff for the new
skills and performance standards expected in the contact centers of today.
Attendees should be prepared to discuss how to maintain morale during
mergers and downsizing.
11:00 A.M. – Noon
General Session
Customer Self-Service:
A 5-Step Plan to Implement Speech Recognition
Roger Nunn, Vice
President, Voxify
Customers are
increasingly demanding self-service at all touch points. Speech
recognition self-service is the latest technology used by call centers to
improve customer service and reduce costs. Speech self-service is
delivering exciting results today! And the technology is helping to
ensure high-quality customer experiences. This interactive workshop will
show you how to expand your customer self-service offerings using this
technology and will describe the five steps that will assure a successful
implementation of speech recognition in your call center.
Noon
Conference Adjourned
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