Not too many business owners would say “no” to an ongoing free marketing opportunity, but LinkedIn is just that, and it continually surprises me how few people are taking full advantage. There are many ways to leverage LinkedIn for the benefit of your business and one of them is to use the tool as….
People said I was crazy and naïve – how could you base an entire business model on the assumption that your clients would be honest? The concept for my start-up business (Matchboard) was simple – jump online, answer a few questions about the product or service you’re looking for, and get connected with the best-fit suppliers for your needs. Suppliers pick….
Seeing is believing Here’s a vignette not to forget: on average people retain 70-80% of what they hear and see, 20% of what they read, and 10% of what they hear. In this sense, video beats all other channels of marketing and customer service for impact. In a marketing environment, website visitors convert at a….
Can the canned response! How often have you heard phrases such as, “That call centre agent sounds like a robot!”, “The person who invented IVR should be shot!”, “I just got a pro forma email from a company that didn’t address a single issue I raised!”, “Why does the speech recognition system not understand a….
Let’s face it, first impressions count. And when it comes to contact centres, often the first impression is created not by the contact centre agent, but by the message the caller hears while waiting patiently in queue. When you consider the statistics that most people hang up after periods of silence of 45 seconds, it’s….
The contact centre industry is in an era of “multiplicity” – multiple channels of contact, a rich array of technology solutions and deployment options, and multiple delivery location choices on, near and offshore. That’s not to mention inhouse, insourced, outsourced and DBOT models. But a revolution is underway adding yet another dimension to the industry,….
Most of us look after our health. Feel ill? See the Doctor. Need a check-up? See the Doctor. So when did your contact centre last have its blood pressure or cholesterol checked? One thing we all know is that the only constant in a contact centre is change. So if things are constantly changing we….
If the number of Unique Australian Visitors [UAVs] on YouTube (15,000,000) is any indication, Australians love video. Video is the new black of the customer service world – it’s cool, it’s fashionable, and it’s rapidly on the rise. While more and more companies are creating ‘how to’ videos as an extension of their self-service offering, the real innovation….
[Open letter to Matchboard Suppliers] On Sep.3, 2012, Matchboard launched its smart sourcing website to the market, and today, we celebrate our 1-year anniversary! Thanks to every one of our suppliers, Matchboard has been able to meet market demand for a huge variety of products and services across the sales, customer service and back office….
What is a customer journey map? A customer journey map is a visual representation of a customer’s end-to-end experience with a product or service. Creating these maps is often a revelation for organisations not used to looking at things from the customer’s perspective: broken, unfriendly or duplicate processes become apparent; service accessibility gaps are suddenly….
Looking after our health and well-being should be our first priority in life. Yet we forget how important and vital it is to be well. We think we have no other choice but to keep going, or that we’ll be all right if we push through. There are so many external demands placed on ourselves,….
It was just a few years ago that “multi-channel” became the buzzword of customer service executives around the world. They proudly boasted of introducing a range of new channel options to customers, from social media service and web chat to two-way SMS, video and mobile self-service. Customers could now pick and choose their “preferred channel”…..
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….
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,….
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….
All too often we get so caught up in the day to day grind of managing our staff and serving our customers that we don’t take time to sit back and take stock of how well our call centre services are really performing. Are we really as healthy as we’d like to be? Ask yourself:….
