The Reality of Contact Centres

Send us Fan Mail How can you improve your outbound calls? Most outbound calls are unexpected, so are they cold calls, or something else? What are the best openings to use?  In this podcast, we give you key tips for opening B2C or B2B calls and explain how to maximise the outbound channel. Please listen, review and share! To find out more about our work and to see what we could do to help your orga...

Send us Fan Mail Many CCF listeners will work in Retention or ‘Save’ departments where the task is to keep customers and stop them from cancelling.  Another word for retention is ‘reselling’ - essentially you are reminding the customer of the value they bought originally and reselling it again. The calls have a different dynamic to new business calls, or complaints, because there is an implicit ag...

Send us Fan Mail Re-contracting. The vital underused approach for leaders to learn to change team or individual performance. When a new set of behaviours or approaches is required,  re-contracting is an effective way to make change happen. This can also be used to deal with individuals who are stuck or being difficult and disruptive. In the same way a contract  expires and it needs renewing, so ca...

Send us Fan Mail Most contact centres will monitor AHT (Average Handling Time) per call. This gives managers a snapshot idea of general productivity. It also helps form objectives because there is: a) a limit of how long a customer will want to talk for and b) a limit to the number of products or services that can be sold.  The problem is that AHT monitoring can skew results and call behaviours, s...

Send us Fan Mail What is the gap in your customer experience? What can you do to improve it?  This short podcast gives you 3 clear ways to close that gap and improve results as well. How consistent is your contact centre? Is there enough autonomy? Do you monitor numbers? Or behaviours? Does targeting broaden the gap?  Please listen and share. To find out more about our work and to see what we coul...

Send us Fan Mail Top Tips for Contact Centres for 2023 In this episode, Bob Morrell and Operations Manager of Reality Training, Ann Harris, present their top tips for 2023. If you work in contact centres, you are an advisor, a team leader or a manager, this episode is a short, sharp set of strategies to monitor and work on. 2023 will be a challenge – this podcast will help you.   To find out more...

Send us Fan Mail Part 2 of Leadership Styles, if you’re a manager, or you’re managed identifying these styles will help everyone.  In this episode we look at pace-setters, transactional leaders, and coaching leaders, which one are you, or are you managed by? A valuable 10 minutes for anyone in a contact centre.  To find out more about our work and to see what we could do to help your organisation,...

Send us Fan Mail What are the different types of leaders? In this new, short podcast, we look at 3 main types. We assess democratic leaders and consider if it really works, we look at autocrats who direct things their way, and we talk about charismatic leadership. What type of leader do you currently have? Or what sort of leader are you? Listen and learn about leaders! To find out more about our w...

Send us Fan Mail How do you become a coach after this podcast episode? The answer is you begin to become one and then you’ll be inspired to practise, reflect, practise. Whether you are new to coaching in a contact centre, or experienced, you’ll come away with a simple 3 step formula to coach skills and behaviours. You’ll get two brief demonstrations, one in coaching skills and the other in behavio...

Send us Fan Mail How do you sell your products or services? Which features do you use to explain the value to the customer? This short podcast explains what a VAP (Value Added Proposition) is, and how to use them effectively. This is the secret to getting across the value, and you need to understand how to use them and practice creating them. This podcast follows perfectly our CCF on Questioning S...

Send us Fan Mail Working in a Contact Centre, we want our customers to say yes and buy. Sometimes we need to use some techniques to help them arrive at that decision. In this podcast we discuss a number of the most common ways to ‘close the sale’ and present a couple of alternatives you may not have considered. Most of us use the same type of close (which there is nothing wrong with) but there are...

Send us Fan Mail This is the subject we get asked about the most. How do you deal with a price related objection? We give you 2 techniques that are proven to work. These give you more confidence in your prices and the value you are selling. To find out more about our work and to see what we could do to help your organisation, visit www.realitytraining.com .

Send us Fan Mail The World of Compliance and Language: Working in a contact centre the compliance department will be constantly wondering about what you are saying to customers and judging if it is compliant or not. In this short podcast we talk about the nuances of language and challenge compliance thinking. Have a listen and consider if what they’re telling you is right or wrong in terms of lang...

Send us Fan Mail Most of us don’t ask enough questions. Many of us ask the same questions. Sometimes we ask very dull questions, and often these questions add little of nothing to the conversation. If we can develop the right questioning skills, and continue to create great questions and deeper, more illuminating discussions with customers then we’ll sell way more. That engagement requires an unde...

Send us Fan Mail As a Sales leader, or Team Leader, you will be running several types of meetings – and this short episode focuses on Sales Meetings – the best type of meeting you can have, and how you can make them dynamic and effective. Crammed with tips and perspectives, you will soon be delivering inspirational, motivational sales meetings on a regular basis!  To find out more about our work a...

Send us Fan Mail ‘9’s and 10’s are what we’re looking for…’  NPS is a measure of service quality which is assessed by customers. The grading is 1 to 10, and 9’s and 10’s is what everyone is chasing.  NPS is also a measure that can alter the way we treat our customers, and can be a misleading metric which it is essential we understand. Chasing a high score can hugely change the way you look at your...

Send us Fan Mail ‘It’s not me, it’s the system.’ ‘They’ve put the price up…’ ‘I used to be able to do this…’ ‘I don’t set the prices…’ ‘let me see what I can do…’ In your contact centre, you will have colleagues and managers who will be using Disloyal Bonding tactics to win customers, and this may be having a great effect on your results, whilst damaging your business.  This is a problem that is b...

Send us Fan Mail After Black Friday, we really unpick the pricing psychology that is supposed to appeal to customers.  Do people always want the cheapest? What assumptions do we often make that can be entirely wrong? What is a good discount? In what circumstances can a smaller discount be attractive?  This podcast helps you understand the importance of selling on value and of not taking decisions...

Send us Fan Mail After some years as an agent or advisor in a contact centre you may well aspire to management.  What will that promotion give you? Who will you be reliant on for some of your salary and bonus? How will you balance the tasks and team management, with the driving of performance?  This podcast will help you decide if being a team leader or manager is really for you and also suggests...

Send us Fan Mail What are the words we can’t stop ourselves saying? What phrases do we pepper our conversations with? Do we understand the effect on our customers and our results?  This podcast nails the most common phrases and words that literally ‘irritate’ our customers, and should be avoided! To find out more about our work and to see what we could do to help your organisation, visit www.reali...

Send us Fan Mail With over 6,000 contact centres in the UK and a high turnover of staff recruiting is a constant and tricky job. What kind of people should you recruit? To recruit advisors with the right skills to do the job they should be sales minded. If there is any kind of incentive it is a sales role not a service role.  If the role is to win or retain customers and to sell more products and...

Send us Fan Mail How do you prepare for dealing with difficult customers?  This podcast offers some simple to remember techniques for coping with these types of call. Listen to 3 role plays, think about the language and the tone – how can you adapt these for your difficult calls?  Also watch out for disloyal bonding – saying the wrong things to get the result you want – it’s a dangerous habit.  Pl...

Send us Fan Mail Contact Centre Focus is an industry specific, regular podcast, which will offer advisors, agents, salespeople, team leaders, managers, and directors of contact centres, the very best advice.  Our perspective is to develop individuals and management, so that the contact centre industry, including call centres, web chat teams, and virtual contact centres, is fit for purpose in the m...