The industry s No. 1 selling book on call center management! Now updated and expanded, "Call Center Management on Fast Forward"; is the most comprehensive source available on running a call center. It covers every aspect of call center management - service level, forecasting, scheduling, resource calculations, metrics, quality, budgeting, reporting, strategy and key enabling technologies - in a format that is well-organized and easy to understand. The updated and expanded edition contains important new information, including: Trends in customer expectations; Best practices in performance reports and objectives; How to create an effective customer access strategy appropriate for today's environment; How to manage multichannel contacts with quality; New technologies and how they re changing customer contact services; Improving the call center s strategic impact and ROI; New case studies and examples from Wells Fargo, Starbucks, Aetna and many others.
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Written by Brad Cleveland, the president of ICMI and one of the world's foremost authorities on call center management and customer services, Call Center Management on Fast Forward has been the industry's standard reference on running a call center operation since it was originally published in 1997. Many of the processes and policies currently in place in leading service organizations around the world were developed from the books guidelines and suggestions. The updated and expanded edition provides a much-needed update that addresses the dramatic changes that have occurred in the call center industry over the years.
From the Author
The first edition of Call Center Management on Fast Forward was introduced in 1997. Sales soon surpassed our highest expectations, and we were excited and amazed to see the book reach so many corners of the world. It quickly became evident that it was benefiting from a much larger trend, as organizations everywhere were building their customer contact services and reaching out for management practices that could help. While we made small revisions along the way, we decided that nine years and 18 printings later, it was high time for a major revision.
As I worked on this new edition, two seemingly contradictory observations kept coming to mind. One is how much the call center environment has changed in the past decade. No surprise there, I'm sure. Management practices, processes, technologies, customer expectations and even (or especially) the call center's role in the organization have all substantially evolved. But the other thought that I couldn't shake was how little things had changed. After all, the fundamental principles of good management still apply -- they always will.
So... which view was more correct? There were urgent and practical implications to finding the right answer -- after all, I was supposed to be working on an update. And yet, chapter after chapter -- especially in the early weeks of the project -- I found myself staring at a cursor blinking over text I was loath to change.
Then it hit me... both views are correct! The bedrock principles and fundamentals will always be with us -- and understanding and applying them leads to new discoveries and opens new frontiers. I pondered other examples. A talented artist with a solid understanding of color, texture, depth and design can create beautiful new paintings that challenge conventional practices. An ever-deeper grasp of the fundamentals of flight has enabled engineers to move us beyond biplanes and into the space age. Exciting new discoveries in medicine are based largely on what has come before.
With this liberating revelation, I was off to the races. Rather than tamper with what didn't need changing, the challenge became one of filling in gaps, adding where necessary and rounding out the story. In the process, I became more and more excited about the important role customer contact services play in today's economy, and how much more they will change in coming years.
So, what's different about this new edition? There are all-new chapters -- on building a customer access strategy (Chapter 2), establishing performance objectives (Chapter 12) and designing an effective organization (Chapter 15) -- and every chapter has been expanded to reflect current trends and developments. But if you read an earlier version of the book, you'll also find much familiar territory. All of the basics from the first edition are here -- i.e., the factors of caller tolerance, customer expectations, the planning process, the immutable laws and, in general, the principles of effective management. It's my hope that this book will be truly helpful to you as you build your organization's customer contact services, and that you will use it often.
Many times during this project, my four-year-old daughter, Grace, would climb onto my knee and ask me, "Daddy, is your book done yet?" I can finally say yes -- yes, it's done! But I can't help but think that, as a profession, we're just getting started.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
great for newbies as well as those with experience in the industry,
This review is from: Call Center Management on Fast Forward: Succeeding in Today's Dynamic Customer Contact Environment (Updated and Expanded Edition) (Paperback)
I have been in the call center industry for some time and I find that you can't know it all, especially if you are in a large call center where roles are very specific. This book has help me understand the things that others do and has helped me to advance into other areas. The book is well laid out and explains everything fairly well, but not perfect. The book also gets right to the point of data is important to gather and how to best illustrate that data in a spreadsheet or chart. It has really helped me to better organize my KPI's and focus on just a few important pieces of data instead of having to sift through piles of numbers. This book has also helped me to become better at workforce management strategies and forecasting. Two areas I had little familiarity with. This book will certainly bring you up to speed quickly. Even after reading and applying everything in the book, I continue to reference it all the time.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good for the budget computations,
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This review is from: Call Center Management on Fast Forward: Succeeding in Today's Dynamic Customer Contact Environment (Updated and Expanded Edition) (Paperback)
The book provides good tips on modelng of various aspects for the contact centers. I used budget modeling techniques from this book. The built excel model was well percieved by top management because of transparancy and insight in all the factors that decrease the productive hours. The budget for this year was much beter so the center could cope with the extra large call volumes caused by cold winter in the Netherlands.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great all around "Call Center Management" book,
By George Stanley (California, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Call Center Management on Fast Forward: Succeeding in Today's Dynamic Customer Contact Environment (Updated and Expanded Edition) (Paperback)
This book has everything you need to know about running a call center along with an overview of the main metrics to monitor.
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Inside This Book
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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs):
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customer access strategy, rostered staff factor, forecast call load, random call arrival, peaked traffic, caller tolerance, call center objectives, call center planning, response time objectives, average handling time, many call center managers, customer contact environment, other routing systems, evolving customer expectations, leading call centers, staffing calculations, improving call center, pooling principle, invisible queue, calls per agent, average talk time, service level objective, many call centers, workforce planners, workforce management systems Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Agent Type, Banker Connection, Calculate Base Staff Organize Schedules, Calculate Costs Forecast Call Load, Call Center Management Review, Acquiring Necessary Data, Boosting Individual Performance, Example Applications, Characteristics of the Best-Managed Call Centers, Driving Forces, Familiar Challenges, Skill Choice, Back Announcement, Core Value, Levels of Service Lowe, Peter Drucker, Ring Delay Average, Trunk Load Agents New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
customer access strategy, rostered staff factor, forecast call load, random call arrival, peaked traffic, caller tolerance, call center objectives, call center planning, response time objectives, average handling time, many call center managers, customer contact environment, other routing systems, evolving customer expectations, leading call centers, staffing calculations, improving call center, pooling principle, invisible queue, calls per agent, average talk time, service level objective, many call centers, workforce planners, workforce management systems Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Agent Type, Banker Connection, Calculate Base Staff Organize Schedules, Calculate Costs Forecast Call Load, Call Center Management Review, Acquiring Necessary Data, Boosting Individual Performance, Example Applications, Characteristics of the Best-Managed Call Centers, Driving Forces, Familiar Challenges, Skill Choice, Back Announcement, Core Value, Levels of Service Lowe, Peter Drucker, Ring Delay Average, Trunk Load Agents New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 15
books:
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- Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming on page 284, Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Driving Peak Sales Performance in Call Centers by Mary Murcott in Front Matter, page 259, and Back Matter
- Les Miserables by Victor Hugo on page 288, and Back Matter
- Principles of Forecasting (International Series in Operations Research & Management Science) by J.S. Armstrong on page 105, and Back Matter
- The Organized Executive: A Program for Productivity--New Ways to Manage Time, Paper, People, and the Digital Office by Stephanie Winston on page 220, and Back Matter
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