CPI recently held a ribbon cutting ceremony to unveil a new state-of-the-art conference/demo/training facility at its corporate headquarters in Indianapolis. Michael Hylton, Membership Manager of the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce, and Mike Dickman, Senior Vice President of Construction at CitiMark were in attendance.

We, at CPI, are thrilled to be hosting a new quarterly Lunch & Learn event, Queued IN, for contact center professionals.  There are so many exciting things happening right now in the contact center world.  We want to help give you an edge with powerful and current industry information to empower your agents to provide a more remarkable customer experience.

Guest Post by: Roger Collings, Managing Director of RDC Communications Ltd in the UK and a telecoms consultant specializing in business VoIP.

Often, the first interaction that customers have with your company is with your phone system, and a good first impression is critical to the relationship with these customers. This requires great, well-designed call flows. There are many articles, videos, and classes devoted to this subject.

They cover topics such as the following:

CPI enabled the SBHC contact center to provide extraordinary service to Super Bowl fans from around the globe.

CPI was honored to be on the team with the SBHC Control Center to ensure that the fans could get quick and easy access to all of the resources that Indianapolis had to offer.

In many cases, the first thing a customer hears when calling into your phone system is a recorded prompt – perhaps something like “Thank you for calling XYZ! For sales, press 1. For support, press 2.” This relatively simple prompt creates a first impression of your organization that may be difficult to change. Whether it is a greeting, menu, or compliance message, the prompts a customer hears should accurately reflect your business and give them a positive impression… even if they haven’t actually spoken to an employee.

We are pleased to bring you a guest blog post today. This article was written by Lori Bocklund, President of Strategic Contact. The article was originally published in the July 8 edition of the National Association of Call Centers “In Queue” newsletter. Lori is a leading expert in the Contact Center field and NACC is a great resource for the industry.

I am in training to run the Indianapolis 500 Festival mini-marathon this year. I’ve never run a half-marathon before – actually, I’ve never run anything before. A friend asked if I would join her in this adventure and, in a moment of weakness, I agreed! There have been lots of long training runs to do. During those runs, I keep myself going by picturing what it will look like to receive my medal at the end of the race. I saw a shirt recently that said, “It’s all about the medal.” Yes, I am motivated by the medal!

Call center leaders are always measuring something. We’re buried in data and reports. One of the things we struggle to measure is “CSat” – customer satisfaction. We try post-call surveys to assess this; but privately, I think most of us would admit that we’re not sure those reports really amount to much of anything. If the customer is satisfied, they’ll keep coming back, right?

The Contact Center 2011 conference continued on Wednesday. Many more great speakers presented. Here are a few of the highlights I picked up from the day.

Change thought for the day: “Home agents – if you’re not doing it, do it. If you are doing it, it’s time to expand it. All of the excuses to not do it are gone.”