Contact Center Training Evolves as Classrooms Go Virtual
Effective coaching and training for frontline associates and managers are critical enablers of delivering a differentiated customer experience, achieving associate career aspirations and driving business performance. Coaching and training programs are frequently too...
read more
4 Best Practices for Workforce Management Capacity Planning
Ensuring scheduling efficiencies while carefully considering the needs of associates is a difficult balancing act even for a sophisticated Workforce Management team. However, when executed correctly, effective workforce staffing practices can have a long-term impact...
read more
Blockchain, Distributed Ledger Technology, and Use Cases for Telecom Carriers
The advent of new technologies creates a recurring challenge for business leaders to maintain an understanding of the best method of maximizing value capture in their automation initiatives. A good example of an emerging technology that sits in a blind spot for many...
read more
Five Steps for an Effective Quality Monitoring Program
Call centers have come a long way since the 1950s when housewives became the first telemarketers by selling home-baked goods over the phone. Today, customers connect with call center agents via voice, chat, text, email, and even video communication platforms like...
read more
Strategically Design Your Contact Center Remote Workforce Model
Recent contact center industry trends indicate significant growth in the number of remote employees. While some companies already had an existing work-from-home model in place, a substantial number of companies quickly transitioned to work-from-home models after being...
read more
4 Business Lessons Learned from Leading Through a Global Pandemic
2020 is surely a year for the record books. The COVID-19 pandemic drastically altered our lives in ways we had never imagined. Many businesses were so severely impacted that they weren’t able to recover, while others found ways to pivot, adapt, and in some cases,...
read more
The Relationship of Spectrum and Infrastructure Investments in 5G Networking
Consumers and businesses are both anticipating that 5G mobile networks will be the next frontier for everything from enhanced mobile communications to ultra-reliable low latency IoT, to factory automation, to self-driving cars, to augmented/virtual reality, and...
read more
6 Strategies for Delivering a High Level of Customer Service During COVID-19
With the onset of COVID-19 came a period of real difficulty for most businesses. Companies equipped with the technology to transition to a remote environment were urged or forced to do so—and fast. With this pivot, many companies anticipated new pain points would...
read more
Call Center Coaching and Training: Two Keys to Delivering Excellent Contact Center Service
Developing service excellence at the contact center management level is a critical enabler for a company’s long-term success. Providing exemplary customer service is essential for all businesses that strive for differentiation and growth. Customer service associates...
read more
Quality Monitoring: From Business Insights to Business Impact
Contact center quality monitoring programs aim to capture a 360-degree holistic view of an omni-channel customer journey, focused on the Voice of the Customer and agent behaviors that impact customer experience. The purpose of that exercise is to glean meaningful,...
read more
Why does Innovation Fail? Because Great Ideas are Difficult to Execute
It’s all about the ideas. “I just need to come up with that one great idea.” It’s a mantra that many innovators tell themselves. I need to find the idea that will generate a new line of business and huge profit margins for my company. If it were this easy, there would...
read more
How to Take a Contact Center From Good to Great
At The Northridge Group, we frequently come to the aid of companies with struggling contact centers, but what about the ones already doing a pretty good job? Let’s say you have a secure process in place, your wait times are acceptable, and you’re meeting many industry...
read more
Empathy and the Customer Experience
Are your customer service agents offering empathy during the Global Health Crisis? Sympathy and empathy are behaviors that are often used interchangeably although they are quite different. While sympathy is feeling “for” a person, empathy is feeling “with” a person....
read more
Growing Revenue in Times of Slowing Demand
Revenue is a function of both price and volume. In turbulent times, many companies react to the uncertainty by focusing on growing volumes as the key driver of revenue growth. This is typically achieved by lowering prices, especially in recessionary times when demand...
read more
Rethinking Office and Workforce Models to Adapt to the Post-COVID-19 Environment
As business leaders navigate the post-COVID-19 landscape, they are finding that traditional office and workforce models have changed forever. Companies that had diligently thought out their five-year plans are having to start over because the constraints that resulted...
read more
Operational Analytics Can Provide a Triple Win for Customers, Employees, and Shareholders
Dwight Eisenhower once said, “Plans are nothing, but planning is everything.” As a former CFO of a Fortune 25 sized enterprise, I have experienced this first-hand, time, and time again. Plans are static, but circumstances constantly change the path to our goals....
read more
Digital Transformation as an Enabler of Improved Business Performance, not a Singular Solution
If you peruse business management literature, you’ll find no shortage of conversation about Digital Transformation. Yet for all the hype, there is little specificity about what it means to be digitally transformed. So, for many of us, it’s easy to conclude that if...
read more
Helping Small Businesses Survive the COVID-19 Crisis
Many small businesses are struggling as a result of the COVID-19 crisis and its impact on the economy. As I reflect on the other three recessions I have faced in my career, the best advice I can offer these businesses is to focus their energy on their employees,...
read more
