Like many of the young professionals my age, I work in a cubicle.  This isn’t an ideal situation, but at least it gives me an incentive to work up to an office some day.  Given the limitations of working in a cubicle, I’ve been forced to make the most of the space I’ve been allotted.  I don’t take it completely for granted, though, because I likely have more space than most customer service representatives (reps, on average, have 40% less space than other functions provide).

It is thus important to make the most of what you’re provided, so here are some strategies I would recommend to improve the use of space within your organization and enable reps to perform their best: Read More »

• A new app lets users rate customer service on their iPhones. [PCWorld]
• And there’s more for customer service-related apps: another app allows support agents to manage a company’s help desk. [PCWorld]
• CCC Press Coverage: six myths about customer loyalty. [CEB-LiveMint Venture]
• A new internet scam: the lure of fraudulent customer service mystery shopping jobs. [The StarPhoenix]
• Tailoring cross-/up-sell to customer segments. [Collections & Credit Risk – free registration]
• Fun fact: Twitter set a new tweets-per-second record during the Super Bowl. [Mashable]

By Kirsten Robinson

Imagine a customer who made a complaint to your contact center and was so unhappy with the response, they posted a song on YouTube about it. By now most of us have seen or heard about Dave Carroll’s United Breaks Guitars video, which has received over nine million hits and counting.

There are no surefire methods to avoiding a YouTube debacle, but there are ways to improve conventional approaches to handling customer complaints. Read More »

By Dan Clay

One of our biggest responsibilities in customer service is resolving customer complaints.  Many complaints are constructive customer voice, and some are more ‘noise’ than representative challenge.  But in either case, it’s our job to react and it’s our challenge to recover that customer’s loyalty. 

The stakes are high: escalated complaints cost a lot (in terms of staff time and customer compensation) and the rise of social media means these complaints can quickly reach the masses.  Thankfully, there are simple steps you can take to get ahead of complaints and save money resolving them.  To help here, I thought I’d tackle the two most common questions CCC gets about complaints:

• How do you define a “complaint”? 
• What’s the best way to respond to a complaint?

Read More »