"Make sure that at every opportunity in the sales and service cycle, you are collecting as much information as possible about the customer. Incorporating data collection into your existing processes lets you organically grow the database you need to make intelligent decisions without incurring a large, separate line item expense for harvesting customer information."

"My suggestion would be to ensure that you measure FCR or First Call Resolution. Understanding how often you are able to rectify the customers issue on the first call can help you fix broken processes.

Looking at the secondary calls and correcting the broken processes that caused a call back will ultimately reduce you number of repeat or non value added calls."

"Don't expose your internal difficulties, departments and inefficiencies to customers via processes. Design processes from the customer's perspective then figure out what you have to do internally to achieve them."

"Don't make assumptions about me and why I'm contacting you. Take the trouble to properly understand my needs and then take the most appropriate action. It will shorten handle times and delivered far higher first time resolution!"

"The simpler the better. No matter what, the customer service process should always be easy and fast. Once a customer’s specific need is identified, the call should be directed to the right customer service representative."

"Align your business processes so that they support the customer facing teams and empower staff to make decisions that solve customer needs without requiring layers of management approval."

"People are only 4% of the solution. Before focusing on monitoring, training etc, do the real work of finding out "how the work works" Focus first on failure demand and the causes of it, then move on from there. Fixing highly inefficient service processes can be relatively simple and fun if approached in the right way."

"Build processes with service in mind and always have an out for your agents. Ideally by empowering them to be able to make some decisions that fall outside the norm, but at the very least provide them with an avenue to move a call forward if they have exhausted all avenues. It would help the front line agents, who really want to provide great service, and it would save the customer going away unhappy."

"Having a training process that focuses on the customer and how the company can help them make there experience -good Having a process that quickly resolves the customers issures with the customer feeling valued after the contact"

"My advice is to understand customers, their expectations and why they are calling. After this step, companies should define customer service processes that revolve around the customers’ expectations. Customers demand more and better for less, and this is why companies must focus on them to survive in highly volatile and competitive market place. They must objectively develop and operationalize actionable customer intelligence – only then can they build, strengthen and manage customer relationships profitably."

"Put the customer at the heart of your business processes - this isn't always easy, but organisations need to be more mindful of how customers actually want to work with them. Once you've challenged your processes, you then need to make sure they are optimised to ensure cost-effective service."

"Make sure business processes are documented and communicated to people within the call centre so that service is consistent regardless to the agent who deals with your call."

"Design the processes based on customer demand. Don't design the processes to meet internal constraints. You'll actually find that a lot of the customer demand is actually waste created by other areas of the business. Eliminating this will actually mean delivering better service at a reduced cost."

"Make Marketing pay attention to the abilities of call center operations and come up with a game plan that allows front line Operations to flex to marketing efforts in a realistic way. Way too many companies just let their marketing teams throw out program after program (sometimes on top of one another) with a complete disregard as to the kind of volume it will generate and how that volume need will be met."

"Standardize your processes for your frontline agents then have an escalation team to handle the anomalies. The members of your escalation team should handle the isses from the cradle to the grave. Where possible, develop SOP's for the anomalies and train your frontline staff."

"Strive for first time resolution at all times. Customers want resolution to queries immediatley and business processes should constantly be reviewed with the objective of achieving this."

"To be on the floor - listening, looking at monitors and watching facial expressions. NOTHING can help you manage, better than observing your staff as they interact with your customers."

"Business process should support customer service goals: delivery, quality and efficiency. There must be an on-going push towards excellence instead of perfection in the business process delivery."

"Examine all the processes together. Understand that customer service is not just the "customer service reps on the phone" or the customer facing employees, but includes all the other processes that impact the customer experience (like product quality, delivery time, billing accuracy, etc.)"

"Align technology with processes. The customer must understand why he/she has to provide a piece of information and what is the benefit of doing so."

"Simplify. Look at those forms, hard edits, procedural requirements, escalation for approval processes, handoffs for functionally specific steps in a process, et al. Make it easy for the person delivering the service to "WOW" your customer. Dehydrate for necessity, and then reconstruct for simplicity."

"Checks and Balances also need to be built into the processes. Exceptions need to be be clearly documented to record instances and details - for the policy to be amended if required."