Question:

Does anyone know if there any legal requirements about how long you must hold a recorded call for? Do you have any guidelines as to how long you hold your own recordings? 

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We have asked 5 call centre experts to answer this question sent in by one of our readers.

Question: I’m an advisor working in a contact centre, and I’m getting increasingly concerned about the poor level of staff/manager interaction that exists in my firm as it goes through a considerable revamp.
There’s a distinct lack of listening and communication skills from senior management at this time - something that is affecting all of us employees, who are struggling on regardless in fear of being given our marching orders from the director…
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Q: How does one deal with an agent whose personality has changed dramatically over the past two months?

One of my team has been suffering a great deal of stress recently at home, and it’s having a marked effect on her work - particularly on the way she deals with customers.
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Q: Do duvet days work?

We’re having a problem with absence in our contact centre. It’s not long-term sickness that’s the issue - rather people who call in sick for the day an hour or half an hour before their shift is due to start.

This is a fairly new thing for us; we’ve only seen a marked difference in the last three or four months. But when we’ve done the totting up, we can see things are getting worse month on month.

We were thinking about introducing some kind of incentive to nip the problem in the bud. And duvet days seem like a good way forward. Do other call centres run duvet days? And do they actually help manage absence?

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Q: What kind of questions should I ask when interviewing potential agents for an inbound sales call centre environment? Bearing in mind that I’m trying to find people who are sales oriented, should I focus on their sales technique or also try to ascertain their general customer service skills? Is there any way of bringing these two together in a simple set of open-ended questions? And what kind of responses should I look for from ideal candidates?
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Question: I am a call centre operator answering repetitive direct inquiries calls. I sometimes lose my concentration and find it hard to stay focused! I would appreciate it greatly if you could please give me some advice or some techniques that could remedy my problem.
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Question: Our organisation has an HR policy offering six-month sabbaticals to staff that have been with the company for longer than ten years. We’ve one senior manager in our call centre who would like to take advantage of this.
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Question:Do you think there’s value in undertaking 360 degree annual reviews? I’m always looking for new ways of increasing morale and productivity in our call centre, and having read a couple of articles recently on 360 degree reviews, I’m wondering whether they could work effectively in our business too.
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Question: I am the chief executive officer (CEO) of a telemarketing business and my problem is that I am finding it difficult to motivate my staff to stay with the company. This high turnover is starting to jeopardise the company’s performance and therefore my relations with clients.
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Question: We all know that call centre work can be monotonous. What I’m interested to know is how I can go about giving refresher training to customer service representatives who are starting to get bored and to hate their job? Can you recommend a style or approach that will help re-engage them? And what is the best way for me to deliver such a refresher programme?
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