Call Center Operations: Profiting from Teleservices [Paperback]

Charles E. Day (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 28, 2000 | Series: McGraw-Hill Series on Telecommunications

Optimize call center technologies and boost your bottom line. Open up new sales opportunities and improve customer service with today's newest teleservice technologies! Call Center Operations: Profiting from Teleservices , by Charles E. Day, puts at your fingertips everything you need to understand computer telephony integration...assess available methodologies...and pick the ones right for your business needs. This hands-on guide covers all the angles: management and marketing issues such as business-to-business and business-to-consumer campaigns, facility and people resources, and call center organization; network architectures, including ISDN; PBX/ACD functionality; local,long distance and cable providers; and more; automatic and predictive dialing...client server technology...GUIs and legacy hosts; call center software packages and systems; workload management, forecasting and staff schedule modeling and much, much more!

Editorial Reviews

Review

From excerpts of review by Curt Kampmeier, Editor

...This book aims to increase our understanding of the subject of call center operations and help us, and our clients, conduct business more successfully.

...a very timely book for management consultants. Day cuts through the confusion and jargon. He deals with the related technology, process, and people aspects of call center operations in a clear, systematic manner that makes the technical aspects accessible to all.

...helps us cut through the jargon and grasp the underlying concepts. Free of gobbledygook, Day guides us on a step-by-step understanding of many of the developments within the teleservices industry.

...Day’s knowledge and recommendations come from years of practice serving hundreds of clients and from his impressive synthesis of concepts and materials. In this 500-page book, he has produced an exceptional reference guide that is packed full of useful information on call-handling applications. His writing is lucid and eloquent. What's more, he has organized his framework, chapters, appendices, index, and glossary so that navigating is easy. He takes us from the general to the particular—so we can choose between a surface understanding and real submersion in the subject. He tells us the basics and also provides a context to make sense of new developments and shifts that are currently taking place. (Consulting to Management )

From the Back Cover

Call centers have revolutionized the way business gets done. This book dissects this explosively growing phenomenon, revealing new efficiency-boosting techniques, gainful technologies and applications, and profit-increasing management stratagems. Call Center Operations Profiting from Teleservices Charles E. Day, CMC In this expert guide, one of the leading computer-telecom integration (CTI) consultants in the United States shows you call center deployment and operation from the inside out. Exposing new uses, cost-cutting technologies, efficiency-boosting strategies, and assessment methods with superior accuracy, famed authority Charles E. Day makes it clear why call center operations increased by more than 700% between 1983 and 1997, and continue to grow. The heartbeats of many of today's businesses--serving functions as diverse as telemarketing, customer ordering and service, help desks, inside sales, reservations, and financial services by phone--call centers offer one of the best paradigms for coaxing every bit of efficiency-boosting power from new communications and computing technologies. In these pages, Charles E. Day, an expert who has helped hundreds of well-known businesses deploy and improve call centers, demonstrates how to maximize call center efficiency, yields, and cost savings in your business. Inside, you'll find page after page of ways to: Analyze the gains possible from call centers. Fill a variety of business needs with integrated telephone and computing technologies. Integrate telephone services and computing with efficient, effective technologies. Link databases, call handling, workstations, GUIs, legacy systems, software packages, and networks for a better bottom line. Explore practical, profitable applications of CTI in depth Test-run a call center with out-of-house resources. Get new ideas for call center uses from examples throughout the book. Expand your customer base and improve relationships with existing customers. Boost employee performance. Design a state-of-the-art call center that optimizes use of available resources and potential return. Packed with detailed strategies that translate technology into business solutions, this guide is clear enough for a novice to use. Charles E. Day's Call Center Operations is a resource likely to pay for itself by several orders of magnitude.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 528 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Professional; 1 edition (April 28, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0070164304
• ISBN-13: 978-0070164307
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,380,638 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Overview of a Hot Topic in Business Today, December 21, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Call Center Operations: Profiting from Teleservices (Paperback)

As a soon-to-be manager of a new call center operation, I found Day's book to be both comprehensive and easy to use. Virtually all topics related to establishing and operating a call center, then managing its operation, are covered in well written, concise chapters. In addition, he provides a reasonably good set of appendices with references to consultants, measurement techniques, etc. The style and language employed by Day are targeted toward intelligent readers. When jargon is used, though, clear definitions are always close by. Overall, I found the book to be just what I was looking for -- a one-volume reference to make me aware of all the issues I may face in the management of this new facility.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Indispensable!, September 23, 2002

By 

Roger E. Herman (Greensboro, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Call Center Operations: Profiting from Teleservices (Paperback)

I never cease to be amazed at how many call centers-inbound and outbound-operate in the United States, and in other countries as well. Thousands and thousands of people reaching out for more business and servicing existing customers through call centers.

But, all is not happy in call center land. These facilities are often plagued by high-and very costly-employee turnover and a wide range of inefficiencies. Many of the people running these operations are relatively untrained people who have been promoted from within, because there are too few true professionals in the field. Think about it: how many people do you know who have majored in Call Center Management? You'd think there'd be masters-level programs in the field with the tremendous opportunities that abound. Sorry. You'll have to learn the ropes some other way.

There are really two choices to learning everything you might need to be a real pro in this field. One is to understudy someone who really knew the field and could coach and mentor you to success. Those wise people are few, far between, very well paid, and probably too busy to spend much time with you. The other alternative is this book.

Imagine a 486-page book that would teach you every aspect of call center operations. Imagine that this book would explain each facet of the business so you could really "get it"-well enough to write your own ticket in the field. "Call Center Operations" is about as close as you'll ever get to the dream book in this specialty. Fifteen chapters, six appendices, and a comprehensive eight-page index...

Given the volume of information between these covers, a listing of the chapters will help you gain a better appreciation of the power in these pages: Introduction to Call Center Operations; Management, Business, and Marketing; Telecommunications and Network Facilities and Premise-Based Telephone Systems (these two chapters hit the technological side of the business). You'll learn from chapters on Telecom Industry Perspective, Automatic and Predictive Dialing, Client-Server Technology, Graphical User Interface and Legacy Hosts, and Relational Database Management Systems. Yes, we're getting deep now, but the more you know the stronger manager you will be. Chapter 10 addresses Call Center Software Packages and Systems and 11 gets into Computer-Telephone Integration. Continue with Workload Management, Forecasting, and Staff Schedule Modeling and then ask How Does Your Call Center Measure Up. The last two chapters look at Service Bureaus and Reference Materials.

If this book is beginning to feel like a college textbook, you understand. This is not a book for the weak or the meek. This is a treasure for the pros who have been searching for an "everything you ever wanted to know" book. Working my way through it to write this review, I learned more than I'll ever need to know about this growing field, and I gained a deep appreciation for those responsible for running call center operations professionally.