Regardless of how demanding your work is, there’s always room for some cheerful humor at your work place. Nothing livens the atmosphere more than someone with a good sense of humor. There’s no reason why you can’t take your work seriously and at the same time know when light-hearted moments are permissible.

Humor does not have a concrete definition, but we all know what it is and we all know when it surrounds us. And we know how cathartic it can be to laugh-we just don’t do it as much as we should. One study has shown that children laugh nearly 400 times a day, but adults laugh much less (between six and eighteen times a day).

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Call Centers have proved their salt and worth in every sphere of business. Be it launching a product or after sales services, their services are impeccable and cost effective. In these competitive times and volatile economic scenario, business owners struggle to keep up with the pace of ever changing market trends and latest technologies. One of the two ways they can survive is either to spend hefty amounts to continuously upgrade themselves or to Outsource Call Center Services.

Partnering with the ‘right’ BPO helps you to

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Performance management is the driving force behind any successful call center operations.

To establish effective and best in service, Outsourced Call Center performance management system a rigorous implementation of a four dimensional program is highly recommended.

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The quality and pace of Call Center Operations are dominated and threatened by two visible hindrances which are agent turnover and agent productivity. The reasons for such challenges in a call center are poor handling of the resources and lack of skills for specific job positions.

The realm of call center operation is a specialized management field with its own hypothesis assessments and terminology. A complete and well- bred understanding of these tools is necessary to satisfy customers and to accomplish organizational objectives.

Selection criterions and performance screening tools can be vital tools to reroute the performance map of a call center on the track of success. These tools directly correlate to productivity, performance and agent retention within the organization. These measure the performance on the basis of candidate data such as:

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Workers and rank and file employees in the workplace may seem perplexed on how to develop leadership qualities. After all, they take care of the tedious details of work such as customer service, production and service delivery. All their energies tend to be dedicated to the business processes they are tasked to oversee.

Yet, leadership is important in all aspects of the business. Even in production teams and in various situations in customer service and other departments of the organization, leadership is important. Teams have also become popular in recent years because of the need to deliver beyond the capabilities of individuals. If you are a rank and file employee and you recognize the need for leadership, here are some tips on how to develop leadership qualities in the workplace.

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The lethargic is out and passionate is in. After the meltdown of last year, this seems to be the magic mantra to improve the efficiency and productivity of call centers. Here, let’s identify and discuss those super-seven ways to kick up the performance levels and efficiency of call centers’ employees.

The Right Contact
Why do your customers call live help? The answer is simple- when your IVR is not able to respond to the query satisfactorily. Identifying the reasons behind the calls can reduce the handling of time significantly. Consumer database, IVR recording, call coding or tick sheets are some wonderful techniques that can help you to eliminate the wastage of time. By doing this, you can also highlight what is expected from your organization in terms of call center services.

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While Rosemary Rein wrote this article in 2009, her message on creating award winning customer service is right up to date.

The Oscar of Customer Service in 2008 Goes to USAA!

This year the national business award for outstanding customer service, considered the OSCAR of Customer Service went for a second year in a row to USAA, the Financial and Insurance Provider to the U.S, Military. (Reported in the March 2008 Edition of Business Week)

The news was not surprising since last year alone the Customer Service Team at USAA attended over 240,000 hours of “Additional Training” beyond their “Basic Training”.

As you listen to your service rep phone calls, (you do don’t you? through call monitoring?); hear and see employees in the hallways, who frankly look and sound more like street thugs than valued and motivated employees; as you read painful customer complaints, customer surveys and oh no, see that customers have told the world how bad your service is by blogging you; Do you think maybe, those responsible for taking care of your valued customers might need a little more training and recognition themselves? Well, perhaps you need to say Hello and Hooray for Hollywood!

Rate Your Hollywood Star Power:

The first question for every CEO and Training Manager is how many hours of field training do you give your front-line staff each year to up-level their skills to achieve Oscar Worthy Customer Service Performances? The second question is how effective is that training? The third question is what, inspiring, recognition programs do you have in place to honor outstanding service achievements?

As a Former Director of Customer Service Training, I followed the Hollywood OSCAR Model for Service Training and Employee Motivation, using the format symbolized by Hollywood’s Golden Man. It produced results. It inspired and motivated the team and much like the Oscars, was talked about, read about and even ignited friendly competition to be the best. What else could you want from your a Customer Service Training and Recognition Program? Here’s how to execute a similar Hollywood Style training model and Roll Out the Red-Carpet to your Service Team

Develop & Deliver Red Carpet Training & Recognition:

1. Define Award Categories for all the Areas of your Company that Impact Customer Service Performance, including those back office functions like technical direction, script writing, and outstanding achievement in special effects (service improvements).

2. Develop a Nomination Process and rules for and selection criteria for “Your Service Academy” that represents a cross section of your organization or departmental areas. This is a critical step requiring analysis of all contributing factors to the total customer experience for award integrity.

3. Acting Class for Customer Service Employees? You bet! Why do actors say the right thing and project emotion? They have scripts and use theatrical/communication techniques! Great Hollywood Actors also understand the principles of directing the Big Picture! Do your employees know what the big picture is for your company and your customers? We use an engaging Hollywood theme in our customer service training. Note/ Themes Build Team.

I usually held these spirited 1 days training sessions in the Spring, after the Oscars to reinforce key service principles, introduce award winning customer scripts and even run screen tests with video-tape feedback by a customer service producer. A fun “improv workshop” helps employees improve body language, voice tone and most of all learn to laugh again and connect with the heart of the Customer/Audience. It’s all part of the work it takes to climb to the top of the service charts.

4. Finally, start planning your Big Red Carpet Oscar Night. Make It Big! Make It Memorable! Make it the Event of the Year that Everyone Talks About! Make Winning a Service Oscar, the aspiration of every bright star on your team, who has worked hard the past year, to deliver consistent and a heart-stopping customer service performances.

Rosemary Rein, Ph.D is an award winning Author and Speaker on Customer Service and is writing the chapter on Best Practices in Customer Service, in a new upcoming book “Blueprint for Success” with Dr. Stephen Covey and Ken Blanchard.

Bring Rosemary’s Customer Service Academy Awards Program to your Organization. For a free training proposal and Oscar template, write Rosemary@gowildgogreat.com or visit her web-site at http://www.gowildgogreat.com