While social media is still a relatively small channel for customer care (versus telephone or online self-service), it’s growing by double digits in many organisations. Its importance as a service channel is further amplified because (a) it’s public rather than private, which means a post can instantly reach a massive audience as opposed to a….
Everyone’s heard of pop-up kiosks and stores, even pop-up cafes and pop-up exhibitions. Most of us have been annoyed at some point by pop-up ads online. But how about pop-up contact centres? We believe it’s about time this term came into our lingo, as it’s a phenomenon happening more and more in this age of….
The humble kiosk is an often neglected consumer sales and marketing channel, which can complement a call centre or online strategy with a face-to-face offering. In person sales is the purest and oldest form of sales, and while costs are often higher than other channels, so are conversion rates higher, and customer intimacy is easier….
Becoming a contact centre agent is a similar process to getting a driver’s licence. First you get your ‘L’ plates and spend time learning in induction training. The next step is you get your ‘P’ plates and can join the customer contact highway. Once you have passed the final driving tests, you get your full….
According to Google, 61% of mobile searches result in a phone call, while xAd says that 52% of all mobile ads result in a call. These numbers are only increasing thanks to the explosion of smart phone usage. For marketing and call centre executives, the opportunity here is to integrate reporting so that calls resulting from….
The number of customers who still choose to pay by phone rather than the Internet is often underestimated. In Australia, 112 million Mail Order Telephone Order (MOTO) transactions are made every year, representing 16% of all Card Not Present (CNP) transactions. Three quarters of these are telephone payments. Furthermore, the average value of post and telephone….
Experiencing low staff morale happens to every business at some point. The challenge is to ensure it doesn’t get out of hand. Poor morale is like the sniffles. It might not seem like much at the start however if you don’t deal with it straight away, it can leave you flat on your back! Some….
If a company’s customer service is excellent, 78% of consumers will do business with them again after a mistake. (Salesforce Research) A 5% improvement in customer retention could increase profitability by 25%. (Forrester) Nearly 3 out of 5 consumers report that good customer service is vital for them to feel loyalty toward a brand. (Zendesk)….
There is one word that captivates the agenda of today’s customer service, marketing and IT executives alike: MOBILE. Mobile devices are outstripping PCs (in Australia, for example, more than two thirds of people own a smartphone), and in many markets, more customers interact with contact centres from a mobile phone than a landline. Perhaps surprisingly….
One of the biggest productivity killers, whether at home or in an office or call centre, is poor ergonomics. The good news is that this driver of absenteeism, injury and cost is largely preventable. Here are 10 prevention tips, provided by Matchboard’s O.T. consultant: 1. Chair height adjusted so the elbows are slightly higher than….
An increasingly significant portion of customer service operations integrate some form of virtual assistant software – otherwise known as chatbots or virtual agents – across customer channels.. Analysts such as Gartner agree that automated conversations will be a defining technology in the future of customer engagement. This white paper* demystifies the applications, benefits and use….
Fiji is probably not the first country that would come to mind when considering options to outsource your contact centre, but this white paper* presents the case for considering it. The cost of a contact centre in Fiji is less than half Australia, Sydney is closer to Fiji than Perth, and English is almost….
All customer survey platforms are not equal. This white paper* looks at some of the distinguishing features of the modern survey platform used to optimise response rates in a customer service environment. Generational differences often impact channel choice – for example, senior citizens may prefer voice to SMS, while millenials may respond better to an….
This white paper* examines how call centre speech analytics can be deployed as a service with as few as 20 seats, to achieve breakthrough results. With the only requirement being a call recording capability, which most contact centres already have, analytics as a service can be deployed quickly, with no need for internal specialists or….
The case for segmenting customer data to determine the best time, frequency and method of contacting customers is a slam dunk: it results in better productivity and sales performance, and provides a more tailored customer experience. For large organisations, there are also some hidden but powerful advantages to a bespoke rather than generic approach to….
As the CMO of AirBnB says, “Amazing things happen once we listen to consumers.” Many companies have embraced Net Promoter Score and are good at asking the golden nugget question (“would you recommend us…?”), but how many are actually listening to customer comments? The sheer cost and time of reviewing and coding every customer comment….
While the outsourcing industry has flourished in areas such as I.T. and customer service, such that it’s used by 70% of companies as a strategy, only 12% of companies outsource the sales function. Sales has remained sacrosanct. This white paper argues that companies are missing out on the many benefits of sales outsourcing due to….
Call tracking software is the missing link between contact centres and marketing departments. It gives a complete view of which online marketing campaigns are succeeding not just in terms of number of calls, but also in terms of sales conversions in the call centre, right down to which keywords customers searched before they called. This….
The advent of self-service, apps and social media was supposed to dramatically reduce the size of contact centres and traffic in shopfronts. However many organisations report growth in demand and headcount to service it. This paper* explores the key reasons for “failure demand” in a multi-channel world, and 3 things we can do to address….
For companies who boast values of sustainability and “giving back to the community”, outsourcing and offshoring can present a brand conflict. A new model for outsourcing – the Community Model – solves this issue and allows companies to operate efficiently and flexibly, while making a positive contribution to local society. The model presents an opportunity….
Matchboard’s Call Centre Audio Map allows you to click on a country and hear a call sample, illustrating a “typical” accent for English-language calls in that country. The Map is a world-first initiative, designed to help companies draw informed conclusions about accents when considering location options for their call centre services. Our call samples are….
9 in 10 consumers want support while online and web chat is ranked by customers as the “easiest” channel through which to communicate – just beating social media, but outstripping email, phone and online self-service by far.* So why do so few high-traffic websites offer web chat? The answer is not as clear as the….
If you are outsourcing a contact centre, back office or IT function, you probably have a Relationship Manager and a framework under which your account is managed. Effective relationship management is one of the most important ingredients of a successful outsourcing program, yet how many organisations are KPI-ing it? In the new world of partnering….
There is much talk about near-shoring and offshoring, but for some organisations, Australia is home. Matchboard recently interviewed a variety of organisations operating a contact centre in regional Australia to learn about the pros and cons of a regional versus capital city location strategy. The Pros The most widely cited benefit of a regional contact centre is single….
Social Media is usually the coveted domain of marketing departments, yet the benefits of social media stretch way beyond marketing. A good starting point is to consider not what it allows companies to do, but what it allows their customers to do. Most companies try to measure Social Media Marketing in terms of revenue, sales,….
This white paper* explores the common qualities of a good customer experience, with in-depth examples of three big brands doing it right. But in the rush to get into new markets and launch new products, even the world’s most successful companies sometimes get it wrong, and examples of this are covered as well.
Every year the goalposts are changing in social media. The Social Media Planning Guide* provides comprehensive, up-to-date advice on how to build your social strategy, with a specific focus on: trends that are affecting the landscape across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other major platforms embedding your organisation’s purpose within your social media plan – why,….
Recruitment can be the biggest driver of performance, but only if you get the right people. In this short guide*, we share a recruitment approach used to find thousands of top performers for contact centres across Australia. The same approach is applicable to recruiting any frontline service roles. Learn how to: Identify who your best….
What are the best in class customer service and Australian contact centre operations best practices? This was the question a client recently challenged Matchboard to answer. The number of white papers, ebooks and market research reports on this topic is, frankly, overwhelming, so we’ve distilled our top 10 best practices for customer operations below. 1. Voice….
There are thousands of call centre service options, but if you are outsourcing, finding the right one to meet your needs is not as difficult as you may think, thanks to powerful matching technology which queries your needs against a database of call centres serving the Australian market. Matchboard has collated information about each supplier….
