General questions

[bluescreen]

Hi Everyone.

I am a supervisor in a smallish Customer Care department comprised of about 5 FT/ 1PT folks. Ours is a company in transition, moving from being a small business where things were done very informally, into one where quality-of-service and other metrics are starting to be taken seriously.

Can you recommend any good places online or books in print where I can brush-up on topics like:

* how to determine quality-of-service with limited data
* what hold times and email response times are acceptable in my industry?
* what is the ideal % of calls that should be resolved at level 1, and what percentage is acceptable to go to levels 2 & 3?
* is it preferable to have agents specialized for either phone or email support? Or is it better to hire generalists who can do either?
* etc

You guys seem really knowledgeable about this, and I thought you could point me in the right direction so I can start building our department the right way.

Thanks so much for your help!

[ctaylor]

It sounds like life is very interesting for you!

At the risk of sounding gratuitous, I will suggest you sign up for 'Customer Reach' this is the operational newsletter published monthly by TRG and is distributed free to more than 600 senior call center industry subscibers. We regularly are told that the publication is valuable, informative and helpful...almost 60% of our subscibers have told us they have implemented change based upon what they read in Customer Reach.

You can sign up at www.thetaylorreachgroup.com

Please email me directly if I can of further assistance.

Colin

[bluescreen]

Hi Colin.

Thanks for replying. I tried signing up for your newsletter, but am taken to a blank-looking page with the words "Online Newsletter" and nothing else. I created an account for myself, but am unclear how to subscribe.

If it helps, my member name is Sagar Jethani.

Thanks!

[ctaylor]

Sagar,
Yes, I got it, sorry you experienced a problem, you will receive the first issues tomorrow.

Colin
ctaylor@thetaylorreachgroup.com

[bluescreen]

Just curious if anyone else can recommend any online or print sources for this kind of information.

Thanks!

[davecooper]

Sager,

Check out www.contactcenterworld.com for info, news and good research. I log on daily and it's one of the best sites around for our industry.

Dave

[bluescreen]

Thanks, Dave! I was worried that nobody would respond to my request!

:-)

[Martijn]

You can also check out the website of the call center school. They also have written a few books about supervisors, planning and team mgt.