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

Tuesday was the first full day of the Contact Center Conference and Expo 2011 in Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve met a wonderful variety of contact center staff and leaders and I had the opportunity to attend several excellent sessions. I could write for a long time trying to recap the various sessions, but you’d get bored with that! Instead, I’ve pulled three things that stuck out to me today.

We hear so much about customer satisfaction, but is “satisfaction” enough? Moving a step beyond to delighting – even astonishing — our customers helps build loyalty that keeps customers coming back. What does it take to create an astonishing experience? I had one of those experiences recently and I saw 3 things I’d like to share with you.