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Manawatu Contact Centre Cluster do it again...

Posted Thu 27 November 2008 @ 7:34 p.m. by Megan

In their 3rd year of holding their own regional Contact Centre Awards, the Manawatu Contact Centre Cluster celebrated on Friday 15th November with their Awards evening in Palmerston North. With 310 people in attendance, the night was hosted by TV3’s Hamish McKay and the guests danced the night away to The Mermaids.People, who attended from outside the region, talk about the fantastic buzz that was created during the awards ceremony, and how all the finalists were passionate about ...

Categories: Events | Leadership | Lifestyle | Profile

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Speech Recognition-Don't make me talk to the automated person...

Posted Thu 20 November 2008 @ 1:22 p.m. by Megan

I was out to dinner with small but successful business the other night and the conversation got on to contact centre’s that have speech recognition as part of their service option when calling. And the most disappointing thing was that there were no ‘happy’ service stories with the technology during the evening. One story was of a genuine cough during the call and the next thing this person was transferred to another area as it ‘recognisied’ a cough as a word. I know this is might be an extreme...

Categories: Benchmarking | Leadership | Lifestyle | Technology

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Who is Garry Jones?

Posted Thu 13 November 2008 @ 3:22 p.m. by Megan

Ernie had the pleasure of introducing Garry Jones as our new TUANZ Contact Centre Committee Chairperson back in September 2008. For such an important role, TUANZ has asked Garry to introduce himself and give the members an understanding of where he has come from and what his objectives are as the new Chairperson.Garry has been a contact centre professional for the last decade and is currently the Contact Centre Manager for iinet. Garry has had a taste of all the key roles within...

Categories: Events | Leadership | Profile

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Are you looking for a Supplier or Vendor?

Posted Thu 30 October 2008 @ 6:45 p.m. by Megan

And you don’t know where to start? As a new Contact Centre Manager many years ago, I felt lost at times when I was looking for products and services and finding out what company did what!. Networking luncheons and the TUANZ Contact Centre Conferences were a great place to start. However I wanted a ‘place’ to go to get information when I wanted. TUANZ has identidied this gap and have decided to ensure that TUANZ members can gain access to this information easily and to make contact...

Categories: Events | Leadership | Lifestyle | Profile

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An interview with Sovereign, Contact Centre Award Winners 2008

Posted Thu 30 October 2008 @ 4:13 p.m. by Megan

We have another great interview from our Contact Centre Award Winners 2008. This week we are profiling Sovereign the winners of TUANZ Contact Centre of the Year 26-75 seats. Sharron Botica, Head of Customer Services at Soveriegn, has shared her thoughts on the win and how it has reinforced to the staff that they are valued and what they do, make's a difference. The Sovereign Contact Centre is a 50 seats operation and is located in Takapuna, Auckland. Their hours of operations are...

Categories: Leadership | Lifestyle | Profile

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'Smile'...when you talk to me

Posted Wed 22 October 2008 @ 7:43 p.m. by Megan

We have heard it a hundred times, by trainers everywhere, in their training courses and seminars. Tone is everything over the phone, and you really can tell the difference over the phone when someone is unhappy. Unfortunately, I have been on the end of some very unhappy representatives recently, but I still believe these people are a small minority in our centres. It just makes me very sad and angry at the same time. Every time they get on the phones they are damaging the businesses reputation...

Categories: Leadership | Lifestyle | Profile | Recruitment and HR

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TUANZ Contact Centre Awards Winners 2008, how are they doing now?

Posted Wed 15 October 2008 @ 5:06 p.m. by Megan

It's been over 6 months since the Award Winners were announced at our TUANZ Contact Centre Awards Dinner at Sky City.So we felt it’s time that we checked-in with our winners and see how they are doing and bring you an update from each winner over the coming weeks. We wanted to ensure that we continued to acknowledge the winners and that they are not forgotten as they have been judged as our 'Best of the best' for 2008.In celebration we have created a new 'Award Winners 2008' page in our...

Categories: Leadership | Lifestyle | Profile

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Customer Service, don't stop now.

Posted Wed 8 October 2008 @ 5:01 p.m. by Megan

I think I’m verging on being a nervous and/or difficult customer for the next few months. And I don’t think I’m alone, let me explain why. I have been doing some work with a business, which are going out and hiring outbound calling staff for the next few months. The sole purpose is to: proactively build and/or maintain the customer relationship. In these perceived hard times, this company is saying: our customers are still very important and therefore we need to ensure they ‘feel loved’....

Categories: Leadership | Profile

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Dress Standards, does it help or hinder performance?

Posted Thu 2 October 2008 @ 9:15 a.m. by Megan

Does it really matter what contact centre staff wear? I am torn between the two sides of the debate and I guess even now, I am sitting on the fence. We hire based on experience, knowledge and skills, so why should we care what they wear or even how people do their hair? My definition of corporate dress standards may differ from others. So, for the purpose of my blog, this is how I would define casual/mufti dress: jeans, short skirts, strappy or strapless tops or dresses worn...

Categories: Leadership | Lifestyle

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SPAM...what you need to know

Posted Wed 1 October 2008 @ 2:05 p.m. by Megan

We all have it, spam that clogs up our email and it consumes time whether we like it or not. Not all SPAM is bad, however it's the bad SPAM that is getting all the publicity. That's where the Unsolicited Electronic Messaging Act 2007 comes in. The Department of Internal Affairs created the act as part of the strategy on Antispam. We have added it to our Resource Library under Legislations. The Department of Internal Affairs website also has an excellent Antispam video for business...

Categories: Leadership | Profile

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Work-Life Balance, what's it all about

Posted Thu 25 September 2008 @ 4:59 p.m. by Megan

I used to believe that people who talked about getting Work-Life Balance were searching for something that they will never find. That they were people who were always busy, always stressed and always making excuses. They worked long hours for perceived little reward but they had a buzz word that made it all better as they were striving for this balance. I now stand corrected that Work-Life balance is much more than that. We are each accountable to ourselves firstly. By that I mean not...

Categories: Leadership | Lifestyle | Recruitment and HR

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Learnings from the ICMI Conference

Posted Mon 22 September 2008 @ 3:58 p.m. by Sarah

On her way back from Phoenix, TUANZ Key Relationships Manager Bernice Archer has found time to reflect on the ICMI Annual Call Center Exhibition and Knowledge Exchange Conference. Here are her findings: The ICMI Annual Call Center Exhibition and Knowledge Exchange Conference was held over a few days in Phoenix Arizona last week. I was fortunate enough to attend and witness some very informative sessions. The theme throughout the conference leaned towards work relationships, and...

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Garry Jones is new Contact Centre Committee chairman; more committee members sought

Posted Thu 18 September 2008 @ 2:01 p.m. by Ernie

TUANZ Board Chairman Chris O'Connell has confirmed Garry Jones as the new Chair of the TUANZ Contact Centre Committee, effective immediately. The position became vacant following the resignation of Megan Lacy, who moved on from her job at LIC and is now a part time contributor to this Blog.Garry has been on the Committee for three years and is a practicing Contact Centre Manager, with responsibility for iinet's 90-seat facility. He was previously contact centre manager for Ihug, then a subsidiary...

Categories: Events | International | Leadership | Lifestyle | Profile

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TUANZ in Phoenix

Posted Wed 17 September 2008 @ 3:22 p.m. by Sarah

Bernice Archer, our Key Relationship Manager is in Phoenix this week on a fact-finding mission for next year's TUANZ Contact Centre Conference. She's promised to keep us up to date, so here's her first installment:I’m in Phoenix, Arizona, at the ICMI/ACCE Annual Call Centre Exhibition and Conference, experiencing 40 degree heat, with no fridge, food, or beverages provided in my not so cheap hotel room in the city. The closest convenience store is 1 MILE away (they have not yet discovered the...

Categories: Events | International | Leadership

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Workforce Management, do you want to know more

Posted Wed 17 September 2008 @ 11:58 a.m. by Megan

Do you want to know more about Workforce Management and Solutions. The difference between Skills based routing vs Skills based scheduling. How to handle multimedia work and how ACD and Workforce systems interact with each other. Giles Potter from Great Outcomes has found a great website that answers these questions, plus alot more. We have added this to our Resource Library under Workforce Management go here>

Categories: Benchmarking | Leadership

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Why cant they start work on time?

Posted Wed 17 September 2008 @ 11:02 a.m. by Megan

I've had a couple of enquiries recently around what can Managers do, to get staff, to start work on time. This is a ‘hair pulling out’ issue for Workforce Planners and Managers and is in my Top 10 frustrations as a Centre Manager. To this day I still don’t understand why some staff members can’t get to work on time. I can and 99% of the Centre staff get to work on time, so I need help to understand what the problem is and why? Of course I’m talking about the serial offenders here; they are...

Categories: Leadership

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Need to keep up with Legislation?

Posted Wed 10 September 2008 @ 11:01 a.m. by Megan

Do you need to keep up to date with legislation in the workplace, then check out our new Legislation page in our Resource Library, we have links regarding Health and Safety, Employment Relation, Harassment and Bullying and the new Flexible Working Arrangement Act. If you want a particular legislation added in our Resource Library, email megan@tuanz.org.nz

Categories: Leadership | Lifestyle | Recruitment and HR

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Walk it off

Posted Wed 3 September 2008 @ 1:48 p.m. by Megan

Did anyone see the 20/20 program last Thursday; they presented a workplace that had set up treadmills and staff using them as their normal desks? Of course it started with a study that found people working in an office environment, weren’t physically active during the day. And that food was making for a happy work environment, yes that sounds like my kind of work place. So what they did was enter an office and got a few staff to volunteer to use these walking desks, I thought they...

Categories: Leadership | Lifestyle

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Networking, we need to continue doing it

Posted Wed 27 August 2008 @ 8:55 a.m. by Megan

Now that I’m on board with TUANZ, I have been sitting down, working through the Resource Library that has been created so far and wondering, how do I continue to make the library grow into a great resource available to Contact Centre Manager and Team Leaders. Continue ‘Networking’ is one way. This makes me ask, ‘why’ are some people so good at networking and some people prefer to be in the back row of a conference or luncheon hoping not to be seen. Ok, I stick my hand up and say, I...

Categories: Events | Leadership

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Introducing Megan

Posted Tue 19 August 2008 @ 12:10 p.m. by Sarah

Great news! Megan Lacy has just signed on as the TUANZ Contact Centre Section Editor. In addition to editing the section, she will be finding and writing new content and contributing to Mouthpiece. Many of you will know Megan as she is a stalwart of the profession in New Zealand. Her last role was as the Contact Centre Manager for LIC, and she served as Chair of the TUANZ Contact Centre Committee. One of the really exciting features that Megan will be adding to the section is Talk Time with TUANZ....

Categories: Leadership | Profile

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TUANZ lifting the bar on contact centre activities for 2008/2009

Posted Wed 9 July 2008 @ 4:57 p.m. by Ernie

Bernice Archer, TUANZ Key Relationships Manager, reports as follows: “Following a decision in May by the TUANZ Board to allocate more resources to serving the needs of contact centres, A dynamic and buzzing TUANZ Contact Centre Committee convened a few days ago for a Strategic Planning Session for 2008 through to 2010. Committee Chair Megan Lacy (Livestock Improvement Corp), committee members Anne Withington (TelstraClear), Paul Eastwood (Coca Cola Amatil), Giles Potter (Great Outcomes),...

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Monitoring agents on the web – but where’s the trust?

Posted Tue 17 June 2008 @ 10:52 a.m. by Sarah

Staff abusing their web privileges and wasting time on sites like Trademe and Facebook is a problem that plagues many contact centres. There is plenty of software out there that will monitor individual workstations, and I often get press releases emailed to me from companies advertising their solutions. But the one I received today for a product called Spector 360, gave me pause. Here’s their advertising pitch: With Spector 360 you will find out: Which agents are off-task instead of doing their...

Categories: Leadership | Recruitment and HR | Technology | Vendors

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“You’ve just wasted all my time.”

Posted Mon 19 May 2008 @ 9:10 a.m. by Sarah

As a contributor to Mouthpiece I’ve shied away from dissing contact centre agents, having been of the opinion that there is plenty of that going on in other media and we’re about supporting the profession. But over the weekend I was told an anecdote at a social occasion which led me to consider just about how much power the humble agent has. Because if it’s true that a manager is only as good as his or her staff; then senior management needs to realise their brand’s reputation is only as good as...

Categories: Leadership | Recruitment and HR

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Marketing struggles to be heard in the boardroom too

Posted Thu 15 May 2008 @ 4:24 p.m. by Sarah

One of the issues contact centre managers struggle with is how to get the ear of their company's CEO and its board. So I couldn't help but smile when, in the latest issue of NZ Marketing Magazine, chief executive of the Marketing Association Sue McCarty mentioned boardroom buy-in was a hot topic at a recent US conference run by The Economist."There was a lot of talk about the challenge of getting marketing into the boardroom and the language and approach senior marketers need to adopt in order...

Categories: Events | International | Leadership

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Clarity, Specificity, Brevity, Power of the pause – Conference 08

Posted Thu 1 May 2008 @ 9:57 a.m. by Sarah

As a delegate, the success of a conference can be measured by the number of tools that you take back to your workplace the next day. So it was rather good of keynote Kare Anderson to provide so many 'take-home' in the first session on day one of the TUANZ Contact Centre Conference 2008. Her insights into how we communicate and how those at the coalface of customer service can ensure they make a good – and lasting – impression, were extremely valuable According to Kare, there are four ways to can...

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