Management, Human Resources, and Life in a Customer Focused World

Human Resources is one of the areas that is a challenge.  The definition of Human Resources tends to be one that is nebulous because each company uses it differently. In some companies, HR is simply the people that handle internal complaints and concerns including hiring, firing, harassment, etc. In others, HR’s role is expanded to [...]

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A while back,  a contact of mine from an “addiction treatment, publishing, education, research, and recovery support” contact center, asked me a question.  I didn’t have an answer for her since I’d never dealt with headset problems or complaints in the past, but she was able to eventually get the information she needed.
Her question was:
I am [...]

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Historically speaking, call centers have all too often been split — you’re either a selling agent or you’re a service agent. These two hiring profiles were polar opposites and even when sitting together in the same area they held themselves apart by force of personality and title separation. This was the paradigm that [...]

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I just reposted a post I wrote with some information about the compensation levels for call center functions at an agent level for 2007.  The same report (the U.S. Contact Center Compensation Survey by the Mercer Human Resources Consulting group) detailed some call center management pay for the same year (2007).
For Team/Group Managers, some of [...]

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Tom Vander Well’s QAQNA blog had an amusing post today that I wanted to share.  He talks about how you “Dress” your conversation.
Basically, his point is that a company with a physical dress code expects that their employees adhere to it. Coming to work in shorts and a T-shirt when the dress code is slacks [...]

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Reposted from early last year — I’m still trying to find a similar survey done for 2008 compensation to see how things have changed.
The amount that a call center agent is paid makes a big difference to them and to the company’s success. In general, the median total cash compensation varies about $3 dollars depending [...]

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Ask a Manager is a blog where people write in and ask questions of the writer.  The latest post is about scheduling — a very pertinent question in a call center environment.  The questioned asked, in summary, was
my boss has written me in for shifts without asking me if I am available.
Almost everyone in a [...]

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Back at the end of January 2008, MSN published an article called “10 Ways to Get Fired From a Home-Based Position” by the CEO of VIPDesk. (I can’t find the link anymore).
Here’s a few that I want to stress.

Having customers hear your kids playing in the background

Working in a noisy area or with the TV [...]

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MSN’s Careerbuilder.com wrote an article called 13 Things Not to Share with Your Co-Workers. Most of them make sense.
Medical history? Gossip? Religion? Politics?  You are at work, so keep it to a minimum or, preferably, not at all.  The fact is that people spend 40+ hours a week in the office together, nearly as much [...]

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I’m sure all of us have either asked or been asked this question — or both. It is a default question, a very boring question in an interview that tends to be responded to in a very cookie cutter fashion. How to answer them in a standard way can be found here, here, [...]

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