Customer Reviews

CALL CENTER MANAGEMENT

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book does not cover the fundamentals of call center management; instead it focuses on proving the call center as a valuable component in business. For those that are looking to learn how to manage a call center, this book is not for you. Call center management deals with more than just understanding return on investments and customer lifetime values, it entails understanding the volatility of call centers, forecasting and staffing methodologies, call arrival patterns, as well as metrics used to measure performance. This book does briefly discuss metrics, however it suggests goals based on industry averages without explaining what industry they studied. Technical helpdesks are very different from customer service or even telemarketing, therefore to suggest goals without understanding the type of environment the readers are operating in can be misleading to the new or inexperienced managers. This book dwells too much on how to communicate successes and value to upper management without really telling you how to obtain the desired goals.

A bought this book before reading the review below, mislead by the title. What I found out was in half the book a brief descrption of metrics with recommendations on what to do with them and in the other half, some generic statements about concepts as customer life value, interviews, lineal regression and ROI. This book is intended as a recipe book for call centers management but it falls too much short. If you need to learn more about CC, then read "Call centers on fast forward". It's a more comprehensive treatment on them.

This book focusses on the metrics of call center performance, which it explores and explains better than any other book I've found. I consult in call centers and CRM, and I recommend it to all my customers. However, it is not (and should never be represented as) a general guide to call centers, CRM and the associated technologies.

I assisted Dr. Anton in writing this book by contributing practical call center metrics and five years of experience in running a major call center for OKIDATA corporation. Dr. Anton also solicited inputs from other call center managers like myself. This is a crash course on how to manage a call center that gets right to the nuts and bolts issues.