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Contact Centerfold: BLINDS.COM

11/6/2013

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Many contact center managers say, “Our senior
management just doesn’t get it.” You won’t hear such a
complaint from any managers (or anyone else) at Blinds.com – not with someone like Chief Operations Officer Steve Riddell in the boardroom. Few people are as passionate about and committed to the customer experience and a positive contact center culture as Steve is. And few people are as proud of what the Blinds.com team has been able to accomplish in terms of performance, customer loyalty and agent engagement.

I had the honor of interviewing Steve recently to learn more about what drives Blinds.com’s tremendous customer care success. Following are the questions I posed to him – and the insightful responses he provided.

Q: You’ve said that what sets Blinds.com’s contact center apart from much of the competition is its focus on “competence over compliance”. Can you please elaborate?

Most contact centers operate with a heavy focus on QA. What then happens is that success is defined by a score. But if you ask the average contact center, “Is it possible to get a great score and have it be a bad call?” most centers will say yes. And if you ask the converse, “Is it possible to get a bad score but be a great call?” they’ll say yes again.

So I ask, “Am I the only one in the room that thinks that’s wrong?” You’re not measuring the right thing. Score rarely measures skill – most folks in a contact center will exhibit aberrant behavior to change the score to increase their pay.

Scores rarely manifest great skill. Teach your team the skills that are important to you, the business, and you get greater compliance through improved skill. When you chase the right things, you start seeing double-digit performance improvement.

When skills get better, the customer experience gets better. That’s the value of competence over compliance.

Q: How do your center’s quality monitoring and performance management practices support your “competence over compliance” mantra?

After about a year of discovery, we were able to identify 10 skill sets that need to be exhibited during a customer interaction. By identifying such specific skills, our coaches can come in and help make agents and interactions better. We take QA and remove the ambiguity and judgment. A person can listen to a customer service call and say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on whether particular skills were demonstrated.

Actions speak louder than words. We practice daily coaching to build skill and compensate our team based on the presence of those skills – even customer service! Again, you need to chase the right things.

Q: I’ve heard you speak of the three components of the “Blinds.com Experience” for customers. Can you list them and elaborate a little on each?

Certainly, but let me start off by pointing out it’s the definition of the customer experience that defines the role of an employee, not a job title or script. If you ask the average contact center employee, “What’s your job?” they’ll say something like, “To answer calls”, or “To help our customers”, or “To assist customers in making a good purchasing decision.” Those are all great things, but that’s not it.

We at Blinds.com have spent a lot of time discerning what we want the customer experience to be, and have focused on that. When customers love the experience of doing business with you, they come back. People buy from people they like and trust.

Do customers really want their name said three times in a conversation? Wouldn’t they still buy from you if they truly liked you? Yes. Like me, trust me, buy from me. You must have the definition around that incredible customer experience that your employees can rally around.

Now, all that said, the three components of the Blinds.com customer experience are:

Customer solutions – A customer service rep’s job is to deliver solutions for everyone that talks to them. If they don’t, they haven’t done their job. Not only do you need to give a customer what they ask for, but also think ahead of what they might need next. Buying a blind? You’ll need a way to clean it. There’s a big difference between a commodity provider and a customer solution provider.

Make it easy – If it’s hard to work with you, customers won’t want to do business with you. Regardless of how challenging your job is or how hard your product is to sell, the customer simply doesn’t care what you have to go through. The easier you make it on them, the more they’ll want to return – and they’ll tell their friends.

Extraordinary service – When a person hangs up after a call with my team, their first reaction ought to be “WOW! That was great!” All businesses provide customer experiences, but I’d be hard pressed to say they are all good ones, or even average ones. We let employees know that providing extraordinary service is their job, and they know what really defines their job. All of our employee training revolves around how to deliver amazing experiences. Define your customer experience, make it easy to do business with you and you’ll see happier customers and happier contact center employees.

Q: What are some of the customer service and contact center related awards Blinds.com has received in recent years?

Contact Center of the Year Award (10th Annual Call Center Week)
Gold and Silver ‘Stevie Awards’ for Service, Innovation and Leadership
‘50 Most Engaged Workplaces in America’ ranking
‘Houston’s Best Place to Work’ (multiple years, presented by the Houston Business Journal)
‘Houston Top Workplaces’ (multiple years, presented by the Houston Chronicle)
Internet Retailer Top 500 Companies
AMA Marketer of the Year
Houston’s Best and Brightest Company to Work for

It’s an interesting exercise to review what kinds of awards your business is winning – they tell a story about your brand. The awards we are most excited about are typically the ‘best workplaces’ awards – they are a testimony to how we pay attention to the internal workings of the company. When culture is thriving inside, it goes a long way toward great customer service.

Q: Great customer service and experiences don’t happen without great agents in place. What does Blinds.com look for when selecting new agents for the contact center?

Getting hired at Blinds.com is admittedly a lengthy process. We actually have a 7-stage interview process:

General skill tests – can you type and navigate through a website?
Screening phone call
Initial in-person interview
Sales/service manager interview
Group interview with three members of the agent team – employee approval is important to us!
Then you meet me – I’m looking for areas of trainability and how well you perform under pressure. This interview isn’t one of the fun ones.
And finally you meet our CEO, Jay Steinfeld – he’s looking primarily for cultural fit and values. His questions are higher level and really insightful.

Culture is everything to us, and we are very protective of it. Just because an applicant is competent doesn’t mean they’ll be a good cultural fit. We take great pains to try to smoke out candidates that are not a good fit. We hire only about one out of every 50 applicants we meet.

So yes, our hiring process is very long, but our retention rate is unheard of – less than a 4% turnover rate annually. Agents don’t get on floor if they don’t hit the metrics during training (we call it ‘Academy Bay’). We just don’t let the bad ones in, and we have a great and exciting structure in place to keep the good ones with us for years and years.

Q: What kinds of practices and programs are in place to keep agent performance, engagement and retention high?

We don’t spend a lot of time on contests, awards and tricks. (We do occasionally employ these, but very selectively and only if I want an added push or extra benefit.) The best motivators around are a fun and positive work environment, a focus on personal development, great paychecks and opportunities to grow your career. Our employees legitimately love coming to work every day. It’s a fantastic environment and our customers hear that in our voices.

Our team gets unusually high conversion rates (approaching 50%) and a great Average Order Value. People here aspire to do a good job – always better than the day before. We are creators of opportunity, and when you have a company that’s growing and has opportunity inside, it’s a huge motivating factor.

Q: Can you provide a quote from a couple of agents regarding what it’s like working at Blinds.com?

“I feel more like an owner/operator of my own business than a design consultant in a call center here at Blinds.com. As a team, we are an important part of deciding what goals the company should meet, and are expected to voice ways for us to reach those goals. It really is a privilege to call myself a member of the Blinds.com family!” –Christian Quinn

“Working at Blinds.com is like being next to your best friends all day. We learn, get frustrated, find solutions, grow and celebrate together. The support to be the best person I can be is the greatest thing about working here!” –Rachel Bills

Blinds.com – The Big Picture
Contact center location(s): Houston, Texas
Hours of operation: M-F 7am-9pm CST; Sat & Sun 9am-5pm CST
Number of agents employed: 140 agents (with 180+ employees total)
Channels handled: Phone, email, chat, web self-service, and social media
What’s so great about them: Their focus is on ‘competence over compliance’. Internal scores don’t drive the business – it’s all about agent development and the customer experience, NOT mindless metrics. A very positive culture!

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Contact Centerfold: ASDA

6/10/2013

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It’s one thing to have coaching and training in place for your contact center agents; it’s quite another to cultivate and sustain a strong culture of continuous learning. Asda, a large supermarket chain and online grocer based in the UK, has done a bang-up job of accomplishing the latter.

In 2010, Asda implemented its Customer Service Academy – a highly dynamic and progressive learning and development initiative that enables agents to transform themselves into customer care gurus. The Customer Service Academy provides agents with ample training autonomy and accountability, and embraces a wide array of learning methods and styles.

I recently caught up with Nathan Dring, Customer Service Academy Manager at Asda, who was kind enough to share his experiences and insight regarding the highly successful learning initiative.

What is the difference between the Customer Service Academy and a traditional contact center training program? Do all agents “enroll” in the Academy, or is it optional?

Almost all of the learning is optional, though there are, inevitably, certain things that need to be trained out – for legal compliance or to support the HR agenda. As much as possible, outside of this, ‘training’ is not a term that is used that much here. ‘Training’ tends to create a state of passivity in the learner (conscious or otherwise) – usually coupled with images of a classroom and death-by-PowerPoint!

‘Learning’, on the other hand, can be done at any point in the day. Yes, in the classroom, and yes, using PowerPoint…but not exclusively. The program of learning in the contact center is under the title of ‘Step On’. As a learning function, we will avail all kinds of development opportunities to you, but you are not forced to take them. If you want to develop, then you take the proactive steps yourself. No one will march you to a classroom!

In doing this, a culture of learning is created, where different-style learners can benefit and peer-to-peer learning is promoted – with no stigma attached to the word ‘training’.

Through mid-year and year-end reviews, as well as a robust coaching program, colleague strengths and opportunities are highlighted – behavioral or technical – and then there is the opportunity to get some learning support…training, coaching, mentoring…on the job or in a classroom.

Please describe some of the modules/programs offered as part of the Customer Service Academy.

Among the programs and courses delivered by the Academy are:

Candidate assessment – a group of 12 or so candidates are invited to a two-hour evening session (always on evenings to make it easier for people who are in a different job to attend, as well as to check the commitment of those applying!). The assessment includes a group activity, a grammar & spelling test, a telephone role-play, and an interview. and observe candidates. A group of managers, coaches and trainers observe each candidate to see if they have the attitude and personality to fit – we can teach them the skills.
Induction – new-hire training/orientation.
The Asda Quality Framework – how we live and breathe quality in all our customer interactions.
Management assessment – this is run to see which of the existing colleagues have the aptitude and attitude to be future leaders. We use it to identify potential team managers or quality coaches. It features a series of interviews, role-plays, team activities, and some quality monitoring.
English writing course – this course was a runner-up in the National Training Awards.

All of these have elements of interaction, review, video, game and story. We firmly believe that we cannot write engaging training material/learning activities. Instead, we must design things that are attractive – so that colleagues choose to engage. Therefore, the different elements of training intentionally tap into the things that we know colleagues find attractive – the things they choose to do in their spare time – and then we link them to learning points and weave them through the fabric of what we do.

Have you actively involved your agents in the development of the Customer Service Academy?

Yes, we actively take feedback from colleagues on what they think of learning activities they have completed. In addition, we listen to what they do with their spare time, what things they choose to engage with outside of work, to see what principles we can include.

Who provides the actual training and instruction? What types of training are used?

The training in the classroom is facilitated by one of the Academy trainers, but as much as possible learners lead themselves. We encourage questions to come from the colleagues and where possible, answered by them too. During things such as inductions, we bring other managers and teams into the training environment, but our focus is always around who is the best communicator. Subject matter experts do not always communicate in a way that colleagues can engage with, and seniority does not necessarily mean that a manager can ‘present’. With anything trained in a classroom, powerful communication skills is foremost – subject knowledge can much more easily be learned by our communicators, rather than communication skills learned by our SMEs.

Story continues to be one of the most powerful ways of communicating a message – and a way that helps knowledge retention significantly. In some ways this is not a surprise…people engage in story almost every day of their lives through magazines, tabloids, soap operas, etc.

We do use role-play for some scenarios, but we never use that term as there are too many preconceived ideas about what it will involve and colleagues often disengage at that point. We use e-learning for a number of modules – particularly those that are compulsory/legal and need to be revisited and refreshed on an annual basis. More recently we have started to use apps on android devices – again, this uses a medium that colleagues regularly use in their downtime and therefore does not create a barrier between the training environment and the rest of what they do with their time.

Is there a testing or certification process involved to show that agents have successfully completed a module or program?

We have an electronic system to log colleague training and also have paper files to show what colleagues have attended…though attendance does not always equate to learning! As such there are a couple of different activities that we do. We rarely do a ‘test’ at the end of a module – this tends to simply check the short-term memory of the learners…little more. Instead, we ask colleagues to write pledges to say what they will do differently as a result of what they have learned and then these are given to their manager for review at a future one-to-one. There is also an element of performance – are the colleagues now putting into practice what they have learned?

What impact (if any) has the Customer Service Academy had on…

Agent performance and development? The only metric that we hold colleagues to account for is their quality. They are not given any other operational metrics to hit. To support this quality agenda, the Academy wrote and delivered the Asda Quality Framework – now used in all 32 sites across 24 partner companies. The result of this has been a marked improvement in quality scores. Whilst this is an internal measure, there have been benefits in terms of competition and external benchmarking, in which Asda’s Home Office Contact Center has for the last two years been the Best Contact Center in the Retail sector, Most Improved Contact Center in 2010 and 2011, and Top 10 for both voice and non-voice service – all part of the Top 50 Companies for Customer Service scheme.

Agent engagement and retention? As members of the Institute of Customer Service (ISC), in 2012 we took part in their ServCheck program, which surveys colleagues on their level of engagement with Asda and the how ‘happy’ they are to work here. (Again, this was done for the Home Office Contact Center in Leeds). The survey showed that we had the best score in the Retail sector, the highest score of any UK Contact Center, and the second highest score of any business that the ICS has surveyed in the UK.

What has been the biggest challenge in implementing and managing the Customer Service Academy? How have you overcome this challenge?

One of the biggest challenges that we face is offline time for colleagues. As long as there are operational issues or constraints, then dealing with the immediate can become the focus and therefore time set aside for learning can be one of the first things dropped. This was a challenge in 2012, as Asda operates ‘lean’ and so there was not capacity for a lot of offline time. Since the start of the year, with some team restructure and after lengthy discussion of benefits etc., offline time has become more readily available and there has been a significant increase in the amount of time invested in colleague development.

What do you feel are the biggest benefits of the Customer Service Academy?

Having the Academy signifies an intent to invest in colleagues. This shows colleagues that they matter and that they are more than a just a body. As a result, colleagues will invest back into the business – they will go above and beyond for their colleagues, managers and the customer…often with no further incentive or offer of reward.

Anything new or notable in store for the CSA you’d like to mention?

The launch of a 2014 graduate scheme is very exciting. Elements of this have been piloted in the first quarter of 2013 and a new recruitment drive will start in September.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

One of the things that we are very proud of is that last year we achieved ‘Gold Investors In People’ status…and were invited to be champions. This put the site in the top 0.4% of IIP companies in the UK. We are the only UK retail contact center to have achieved this.

Asda – The Big Picture
Contact center locations: Leeds and Cape Town (plus 30 other sites around the UK working with 24 partner companies)
Hours of operation: 8am-8pm; Home shopping 7:30am – 10:30pm
Number of agents employed: 250 at Leeds center; approx. 6000 across all sites
Products/services supported/provided: Store support, general customer support, home shopping support, and direct sales and after sales.
Channels handled: Phone, IVR, Email

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Contact Centerfold: SALT RIVER PROJECT

7/9/2012

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Salt River Project – one of Arizona’s largest utilities – has long engaged agents (and customers) with its positive and powerful culture of service. I recently had the honor of interviewing SRP’s Director of Residential Services, Yolanda France, who was gracious enough to share many of the practices and approaches that drive the contact center’s high employee satisfaction and performance.

(In the Q & A below, “GL” is me and “YF” is Yolanda France.)

GL: I hear that at SRP, rewarding & recognizing agents is a high priority. Please describe some of your rewards/recognition programs and practices, and the impact they have had on agent engagement.

YF: We value our representatives and know that they have a very challenging job – perhaps one of the most complex in our company! We want to let them know that being here and doing a good job assisting our customers is very important and that we really appreciate them.

We have an award given monthly for the best call for a specific topic. An example of a specific type is a high bill call. The winning call is chosen by a committee of fellow phone reps who listen to the call and decide if their peer was able to help out the customer. Prizes include movie tickets, lunch with a supervisor, the rep’s preferred schedule for one week, and an extra-long lunch hour.

All of our reps can also qualify for the “Perfect Attendance” award. Being tardy or absent disqualifies a rep for that award, which is given out on a monthly basis – we randomly choose three winners among those who qualify each month. So, it pays to come to work, literally!

Here’s what a couple of our contact center supervisors have to say about our employee rewards and recognition practices:

Gene Gerhart, Supervisor: “We hear all the time that reps like to be recognized. The opportunities and rewards we provide them motivate them – and a happy employee stays.”

Frank Garshak, Supervisor: “We want to let our reps know that we appreciate their effort because without them we would not be able to have a world-class organization.”

GL: How do you balance individual awards and team awards to ensure that not only the “stars” get recognized? Do you do any “recognition for recognition’s sake” types of things to keep center-wide morale up?

YF: We like to recognize people for their strengths. They don’t have to be the star, but we really concentrate on finding out what they do well and maximizing that talent. For example, if we have a person who is technically inclined, we may have them help with testing of new functionalities of our customer relationship management system. We also have a whole team devoted to doing fun events. They are called the “SWAT” (Spirit Work Activities Team). They plan events for various occasions throughout the year for holidays and Customer Service Week. The team also coordinates things like pot-lucks, games, parties and salsa challenges as well as holiday food drives, Adopt-A-Family volunteering, and many other activities that support SRP’s community involvement. You say you’re having a "lack-o-fun" emergency? Call in the SWAT!

GL: Do agents have a say in the types of incentives and awards that are provided? Do you seek their feedback to ensure that the various rewards & recognition programs are effective?

YF: Absolutely! In fact, many of our current awards programs come directly from feedback given by reps. Call Center management meets monthly with reps to update them on various projects throughout SRP. These meetings also serve as a forum for reps to provide feedback on what is and what isn’t working in the Call Center. We have sessions with the Senior Director of Customer Services, Renee Castillo, known as “Rappin’ with Renee.” And myself, the Director of Residential Customer Service, have meetings called “Yappin’ with Yolanda.” See a pattern here?

GL: I understand that agents have ample opportunities for cross-training and other development initiatives to add diversity to their core job function. Please provide some examples.

YF: Reps are often selected by their supervisors for opportunities to cross-train in other functional work areas within Customer Services, such as Billing, Accounting, Research & Communications Services, and Field Services, just to name a few. Reps can also participate in a variety of special projects and teams. As I mentioned, they participate as user acceptance testers for new software releases and upgrades to our customer relationship management system. They are the primary users and know when things work and when they don’t. These activities do not come with pay raises but build a knowledge foundation and provide networking opportunities when our reps feel they are ready to become Lead Customer Service Reps or move on to other departments within SRP.

GL: Is there a clear career path in the contact center (i.e., various agent levels, team lead/supervisory opportunities, management training, etc.)?

YF: Many of our reps are promoted up the Call Center ladder, so to speak. The traditional progression is to start as a rep, then progress to a Lead Customer Service Rep, and then possibly to Call Center Supervisor or Call Center Analyst, and then to Manager. As an interesting tidbit, 14 of the 19 members of the Call Center management team (Supervisors, Managers and Director) were SRP reps at one point in their careers.

GL: Your agents seem to stick around for a long time. Surely your hiring practices help set the stage for such high retention... can you share how you hire and select reps?

YF: Certainly. We have a pretty comprehensive hiring process. We ask candidates to take an assessment test. Those who pass the assessment are then invited to call for a quick phone interview. Those who pass the phone interview are invited to participate in a “speed interview.” Managers and supervisors throughout Customer Services along with members of our Training Development and Customer Interaction group interview the candidates. Each candidate gets two minutes to answer a question and then moves to another seat where another interviewer asks another question. We’ve found that candidates tend to be less nervous, and get to meet people with whom they would be working. In turn, managers, supervisors, and our Training group get to meet potential reps and, collectively, select the best of the best.

GL: Is there anything else you would like to add?

YF: I’d like to share some comments from a couple of members of my esteemed team. I think what they have to say pretty much sums up our contact center environment:

Di Witt, Supervisor: “We really feel that having a balance of fun and professionalism is important so that employees come to work and know that we want them to be happy coming to work. If they are happy, our customers will be happy too.”

Seth Bingham, Rep: “I’ve worked in customer services for over 10 years with five different companies. SRP is the best by far! The caliber of the people who work here is amazing. [Management] makes everyone feel welcome and like they are family. Work has never been so enjoyable until I started working here!”

SRP – the Big Picture
Contact center locations: Two (Arizona) locations: one in Tempe, and one in Queen Creek
Hours of operation: 24/7
Number of agents employed: 230
Products/services supported/provided: Electric utility service
Channels handled: Phone, IVR, email, web self-service and social media
What’s so great about them? The center prides itself on its excellent rewards & recognition practices, as well as its strong focus on agent development and empowerment.

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ACTIVE NETWORK

10/31/2011

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Almost as challenging as handling all the customer contacts that Active Network’s contact center receives is managing the slew of job applications and resumes that arrive daily. Once you hear about how much Active Network values and empowers its staff, it’s easy to understand applicants’ attraction.

The San Diego-based company’s heavy emphasis on agent wellness, development and empowerment – as well as its popular work-at-home initiative – are among the key reasons why the resumes keep flowing in and existing employees keep sticking around. In fact, San Diego Business Journal named Active Network among San Diego’s Best Places to Work in 2011 and listed it among the finalists for the magazine’s “Healthiest Employers Award” in 2010.

“The leaders of Active Network believe in our mission of connecting people with the things they love, want, and need to do,” says Dennis Triplett, Senior Vice President of Operations at Active Network. “This extends to, if not begins with, our employees. From the first day of training, our call center agents feel empowered to provide high-level customer service to our clients.”

Active Network is the largest network of activities, organizations and people linked by world-class technology. The company’s flagship media property, Active.com®, is the leading online community for people who want to discover and participate in activities about which they are passionate.

A Healthy Approach to Contact Center Management

Agents at Active Network don’t merely feel empowered; they feel powerful –thanks to the company’s passionate commitment to employee health and well-being.

Agents at each contact center location participate in a comprehensive employee participation and wellness initiative called “Active X”, which includes such offerings as daily exercise programs, walking/running groups, nutritional behavior workshops, smoking cessation courses, yoga classes, nutritional seminars, and community volunteer opportunities.

“ActiveX is the internal manifestation of our company mission, and one of the reasons why we are frequently listed as a best place to work,” says Triplett. "Our wellness beliefs are rooted in participation and the intrinsic outcomes of being part of something healthy. And our [wellness programs] are filled with success stories – in just a short period of time, they have made significant changes in our employees’ lives. These lives have touched others, infecting active participation across our company, spreading to their families and into their communities.”

Ensuring Agent Success

Having physically and emotionally fit agents on the frontline is a big benefit, but wellness programs alone don’t drive lasting agent engagement and performance improvement. That’s why Active Network invests a lot of time and effort in agent development and recognition, too.

After a careful applicant selection process, new-hires are immersed in a rigorous and engaging training program featuring a healthy mix of traditional classroom training and role-playing as well as e-learning via the center’s Learn.com web-based training/testing application.

Active Network’s agents continue to receive ample training and coaching throughout their tenure. Those committed to serious careers in customer care can take part in the contact center’s Leadership Development program, which grooms staff for more advance positions within the division. “Agents are able to apply for open positions not only in the call center,” explains Triplett, “but also in other departments in our division – particularly with the Customer Service and Help Desk departments. The majority of our call center Support staff, Supervisors, Team Leaders, and Call Center Senior Management began their career as call center agents."

There’s still plenty of opportunity and allure for agents who don’t go the Leadership Development route. For instance, all frontline staff are encouraged to participate on teams and task forces committed to enhancing performance and employee engagement. Direct agent involvement on such projects has led to numerous new programs and initiatives, including a couple of rewards & recognition programs (“Kudos” and “Shining Star”) and improved system workflows (e.g., scripting for sales calls).

Driving additional agent engagement and performance is the extra cash that agents can earn by learning advanced new skills, and by achieving goals set around such key metrics as quality, attendance and sales productivity. Says Triplett, “We foster a ‘The more you know, the more you can earn’ philosophy.”

Not all incentives in the contact center are monetary; agents enjoy plenty of public praise and recognition whenever they exceed key performance objectives, show notable improvement and effort, or receive positive comments from customers.

Work-at-Home Works Well

Many agents get to enjoy Active Network’s enticing culture without ever even having to show up to the contact center. That’s thanks to the company’s progressive and thriving work-at-home initiative, which features up to 170 home agents during the peak season.

Unlike home agents at many other organizations, Active Network’s virtual crew members are truly untethered – they can live pretty much anywhere in the U.S. Having such a non-restrictive geographical policy is a big boon to the contact center’s recruiting efforts and ability to handle an ever-fluctuating workload, says Triplett.

“We have the ability to hire high quality customer service agents in a seasonal environment without expanding the operational hours of our ‘brick & mortar’ locations.”

The only people happier than him and his management team are the home agents themselves.

“We have seen an increase in our [overall] Employee Engagement results," Triplett says, "specifically with the work-at-home team.”

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Active Network – the Big Picture:
Location: 7 brick & mortar centers (+ numerous home agents) located throughout the U.S.
Hours of operation: Most centers are 8 am-10 pm ET. One center is 24 x 7.
Products/services provided/supported: Inbound sales and inbound/outbound service for Active Network’s technology solutions (for online registration, transaction processing, and marketing services)
Channels handled: Phone, IVR, email , web self-service, and social media
What’s so great about them? Their heavy emphasis on agent wellness, empowerment and development drives a highly engaged frontline to deliver exceptional customer service.

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Contact Centerfold

Here's where I feature “sexy” contact centers – customer care organizations that are doing exciting things and aren’t afraid to reveal some “hot” secrets of their success.

C’mon – you know you want to look.

Contact Centerfold: BLINDS.COM

Contact Centerfold: ASDA

Contact Centerfold: SALT RIVER PROJECT

ACTIVE NETWORK

Contact Centerfold

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