Direct marketers know their ROI metrics cold, except for the one that's often quietly distorting the numbers. Average Handle Time flies under the radar and routinely shows up as the difference between a campaign that pays back and one that doesn't. Here's what AHT is, why it matters for both inbound and outbound, and how to get a feel for what "reasonable" looks like.
The campaign is built, the lists are loaded, and the calls are going out, so the marketing job is done, right? Not quite. Call centre execution is where good campaigns quietly under-deliver, or over-perform. Here are seven execution areas, scripting, consultant matching, timing, staffing, where small fixes routinely move conversions by 1% or more.
Marketing builds the offer and throws it over the wall; the contact centre catches it and discovers half the orders don't fit through the system. It's a familiar dynamic in plenty of businesses, and it leaves money and goodwill on the floor. Here are five practical tips for bridging the gap, starting with making sure the campaign can actually be processed.
A call centre audit sounds like compliance theatre, but a well-run one is one of the cheapest ways to find real improvement opportunities, strengths, gaps and benchmarks against best practice. Here's what a call centre audit actually is, how to plan one, how to evaluate the findings and why an external auditor is usually worth the spend.
Most call centres run their processes the way most drivers run their cars, until something breaks. There's a better model, and it doesn't have to mean a big lean-six-sigma program. Here's what continuous process improvement actually looks like in a contact centre, and why the businesses that adopt it pull steadily ahead of the businesses that don't.
A 50/50 split on which vendor to award is a sign the tender process needs help, not that one of the vendors needs to negotiate harder. Here's what to do when a call centre technology tender has stalled, the review framework, the missing criteria, and how to get the project team to a defendable recommendation for the board.