Advice from a Call Center Geek!

Send us Fan Mail What should your service level KPI's be in your contact center? In this episode, the voice of the Geek, Tom Laird, gives the "official" "Advice from a Call Center Geek!" SLA benchmarks for Voice, Chat, Email, QA, and Sentiment. Let the arguing begin! Follow Tom: @tlaird_expivia Join our Facebook Call Center Community: www.facebook.com/callcentergeek Connec...

Send us Fan Mail In this week's episode, we take a look at a really cool team-building exercise that I have done here at Expivia.  We sat down with some of our management and HR team and tried to discuss the top 10 customer service skills that an associate would need to be a world-class agent. The discussion was lively and fun!  Every organization will have a different set of ten, but going t...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Advice from a Call Center Geek! we dig deep into 13 questions that all contact center leadership teams should be able to answer and have a plan for. We dig deep into these questions to start anyone in management or working on the first lines of a contact center thinking on how they can improve as individuals and as a call center management team. Some of these qu...

Send us Fan Mail We had the privilege of talking to NICE CXone (inContact) CEO Paul Jarman on this episode of "Advice from a Call Center Geek!" In what will be one of our cornerstone episodes, we had the opportunity to get into the mind of a true CX leader and visionary. We talk about the state of AI, speech analytics, changing customer preference, the oncoming digital transformation, an...

Send us Fan Mail You just got the job as the new call center manager, you are super excited!!!  But then you realize, " I AM THE NEW CALL CENTER MANAGER!!!!", what do I do! In this episode, we take a look at what the first three weeks should look like for a new call center manager.  how to earn trust and respect, creating a culture to be proud of, and getting your team to row in the same...

Send us Fan Mail Speech analytics is an extremely powerful tool in creating a positive agent and customer experience.  sentiment, trending keywords, even frustration level and be monitored and tracked. What we all have been waiting for though is real time analytics. Technology that will help and empower agents in call.  Well we have found a call center leader and a forward-thinking company that is...

Send us Fan Mail What Is Customer Service Experience? "Customer service experience is the opinion your customer forms about the quality of the service you provide." Blocking and tackling.  Fundamentals.  This is what makes us excel at things that are important to us.  In this episode of "Advice from a Call Center Geek!" we take a look at 8 topics that can instantly and easily i...

Send us Fan Mail Back to the basics of what you all love about the podcast!  Let's talk about contact center coaching, how to improve it, have a plan for it, and improve our culture with it. Proper coaching is the most underrated way to improve (or ruin) the culture of your contact center. In this episode we talk about 10 Tips on Improving your Contact Center Coaching:   1. Praise Publicly Bu...

Send us Fan Mail Conversational AI...a  topic that confuses some and fascinates others.  In today's episode of "Advice from a Call Center Geek!", we have the opportunity to sit down with two industry leaders that are shaping how AI impacts customers and contact centers, especially contact centers that are sales and lead gen focused. Aktify CEO Kreg Peeler and CRO Craig Daly,  join u...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, "A Day in the life of a Contact Center Supervisor", we talk about what a full day looks like for our middle management. From greeting reps, planning goals, monitoring/coaching, to the end of the day synopsis, we talk about what we have found to be the best way for our supervisors to handle their day to add the most value to our associates and to our orga...

Send us Fan Mail It seems there is a big struggle to get people back to work post-pandemic. For various reasons, many service sector jobs, including the contact center are finding it harder and harder to find the quality help need to staff appropriately In this episode of "Advice from a Call Center Geek" we dig into proven hiring techniques to try to help all our listeners through this w...

Send us Fan Mail  Announcement- Expivia Virtual Reality Contact Center Concept Expivia is going to be attempting to build out a 100% fully Virtual Reality Customer Service Contact Center, and we want to show you how we are doing it, in fact, we want you to be a part of it! The goal is to have a 100% functioning POC that allows live customers to interact with LIVE virtual customer service Expivia t...

Send us Fan Mail We have the honor of having in the "Michael Jordan" of Contact Center Solutions, an encyclopedia of call center platforms, the players in the space, and the technology that is out there, Brandon Knight VP Advanced Solutions- Contact Center at Telarus. This is a can't miss episode for anyone looking to possibly change their call center technology or platform, or are...

Send us Fan Mail Customer experience is a multi-tiered onion that has so many different layers.  In this episode we take another look at call quality, we define that are the pieces that make up quality calls, and then we give an in depth look at 10 Ways to Improve Your Call Center Quality and Monitoring. These entail: 1. Investing in a Speech Analytics Software 2. Set Up a QA Team 3. Set Call Qual...

Send us Fan Mail When we go in to consult for a call center that is not operating at its peak, there are about 35 different aspects of the center that we look at.  In this episode of "Advice from a Call Center Geek!", we give you the top 11 call center topics that you need to look at and how to break them down to do your own process improvement plan. Many call center managers get overwhe...

Send us Fan Mail What is the proper way to pay your hard-working call center associates? In this episode, we talk about making sure we have agent and management salary paths for our call center workers to go down to make sure we are showing the proper progression and appreciation for all the work that they do on the front lines. There are a million different ways to do this but hopefully, this wil...

Send us Fan Mail Blockchain, Crypto, NFTs, Bitcoin. These are not just technologies to be ignored as passing fads.  There is a wave that is coming to the call center and to CX that you need to know about, you cannot put your head in the sand and hope it goes away. In this episode, we talk specifically about the role of blockchain in how call centers and service centers will operate in the near fut...

Send us Fan Mail Our new Linkedin group on call center operations tips and tactics is now live! You asked for it, you got it! MISSION: The purpose of this group is to engage with call center executives, managers, supervisors, and associates and provide ways to run their call center more effectively. We want to use the themes of the "Advice from a Call Center Geek!" podcast to try to impr...

Send us Fan Mail How many supervisors, trainers, team leads, and HR staff should you have to manage your call center? In this episode, we take a look at all aspects of management to associates ratio and make sure you are neither under nor over-staffing your management roles. Also, we are introducing our new "Advice from a Call Center Geek, Call Center Ops Tips and Tactics" Linkedin Group...

Send us Fan Mail In episode 103 we talk about the touchy subject of discipline policies in your call center and what should happen when you have to put an associate on an improvement plan. We talk about the touchpoints that should happen in the first 30, 60, and 90 days of a new hire, how to be proactive with your associates when it comes to discipline, and what should happen if your culture thres...

Send us Fan Mail In this week's episode, we dive deep into a really awesome call center motivation that we are doing here at Expivia.  This will hopefully give you some thoughts on setting up something like this in your call center.  We also added in a bonus motivation/game that we did today as well that has blown away our expectations when it comes to call center rep engagement. Love to know...

Send us Fan Mail Here is a little something different.  in this episode we infuse.  call center operations, entrepreneurship, and covid all rolled into one!  The host of "Advice from a Call Center Geek!", Tom Laird,  had the opportunity to be on the radio with host Joel Natalie of TalkErie. We discuss how our call center started, what technologies and employee strategies we are using, an...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we take a look behind the curtain of our call center here at Expivia to talk about what tools and technology we are using day in and day out and what tools are important in your call center based on the size and goals of the center. This is an interesting episode for anyone who wants to understand how all the call center technologies of omnichannel, analytics, WFM...

Send us Fan Mail Happy 100th Episode!!!!!! We want to set the table for 2021 and our next 100 episodes by asking you how we can do more to add value, and we have some thoughts.  We want and need your opinion in this episode.  Here is the link to the Advice from a Call Center FB Community Page: https://www.facebook.com/callcentergeekcommunity Also, we take some time to talk about the interesting wo...

Send us Fan Mail Do you and you care about your associates on a personal level?  I'm not saying you are best friends and go out on the town, but do the reps know that you as a manager care about them? Respect is something that today's generation really takes to heart, and we need to be able to provide respect to make sure our culture is working at its peak. In this episode, we talk about...