50 Quick Ideas to Improve Contact Centre Performance

We present a series of bite-sized ideas to improve contact centre performance bit-by-bit.

1. Find Out Why People Are Calling You

Why do people call you? It’s a simple question. And I’m not just talking about the call reason codes that you put into your CRM system.

Sit down and think about why people really need to call you and then think about what you could do to remove that reason.

It’s all about root cause analysis and about removing the reasons for people to contact you.

It could be as a result of a lack of information on your website or your literature not being very clear, or not answering your emails quickly.

So take an hour out of your day tomorrow, listen to some calls and answer the question “Why do people call you?”

Peter Massey provided a good framework forhow to go about this, in his article: A Simple Technique to Improve Your Contact Centre Strategy

2. Try Floating Hours

There are going to be periods when you get busy and need some extra flexibility.

Reduce the working week by one hour and use the extra hours as “floating time in lieu” instead of overtime.

3. Remember, Positive Reinforcement Works

Catch agents doing something right.

One of the problems with most quality systems is that they tend to overly focus on the things that agents are doing wrong.

Instead, try to catch agents doing something right.  Positive reinforcement is so much more important than negative scoring.

The agent will feel better and may then volunteer areas where they could have done better.  This then drives positive change.

4. Improve Your Agents’ Decision-Making Process

You should encourage your agents to make good decisions on their own, by getting them to ask themselves:

• Is it right for the customer?
• Is it fair for the business?

Am I willing to take responsibility?

This should encourage all of your agents to do the right thing without always needing to ask their team leader.

If you do implement this in your contact centre, you need to make sure that you are then supportive of the actions taken and are careful not to criticize when things don’t always go the way you would have liked.

5. Simplify the IVR (or Remove It Completely)

When you start to listen to callers as they move through your IVR system, you will be struck by how little people like to use it, and by how it impacts the overall customer experience.

If you use an IVR you will probably need to simplify it, particularly for older people.  Where possible, make sure that it is only one level deep and that it does not have more than 4 options on it.

You might even want to remove it completely.

For more guidelines on how to best use the IVR, read our article: Call Centre IVRs – How to Review and Improve Your IVR

6. Add Questions to Emails to Check for Understanding

If you are sending a lot of emails out to your teams, it is hard to know whether they are reading the information or not.

This isn’t an issue if you are updating them about free cake in the breakout room, but can cause complications if they don’t read a memo that a promotion has ended and continue selling it to your customers.

A good way to check that everyone has understood the latest news is to add some questions to the bottom of each email.

This could be as simple as asking: “When you have read all of the above, please email me back telling me the name of your favourite animal.” If this is inserted into the final line of the text, it can show that the recipient has read to the bottom.

You could also include a multiple-choice question on the key facts. For example: “Our new product discount goes live on A. Monday, B. Thursday, or C. Friday.”

7. Forget the Breakout Room… You Need a Virtual Chill-Out Area

Instead of the bland café-style breakout room, why not set up a chill-out area?

Call centre work can be quite stressful – having to deal with many customers who may not be happy.

Advisors need a chance for some downtime, so a chill-out room could be a good option.

Get your team together and ask your staff if they have some creative ideas for a virtual chill-out area. This could include the space to play online games.

If you plan to go back to the contact centre, instead of just tables, chairs and a vending machine, why not have sofas and beanbags? If you are in a city, why not pick a room with a nice city view.

You could put up a plasma TV so that people can watch the news or the latest sports. An Xbox or a games console can also be a good way to wind down.

8. Hold Skip-Level Meetings

Skip-level meetings are a great way for call centre agents to interact with managers two levels above them without their team manager present.

It is a good opportunity for a senior manager to find out what is happening at grass-roots levels – which is especially important in times of remote working. They can also help your agents to feel they are being listened to.

9. Lunch Buddies

A simple technique to ensure lunchtime cover in a contact centre is to set up a lunch buddy system.  This is where two people team up and decide how to cover the lunch period. Only one of them can be away from the phones at a time.

This is self-managing and can help make sure that you have coverage for the lunch period to keep the service levels up.  It can also help adherence.

For more ideas that will help to keep service levels up, read our article: 14 Best Practices for Maximizing Your Service Level

10. Vary the Pitch of Your Voice

Nothing sounds more uninterested than a monotone voice that does not vary in pitch.

Train your agents to vary their voices.  Encourage them to match pace with the caller and to let their vocal tones go up and down.

11. Workspace Decorating Competitions Encourage Teamwork

A good idea for the “brick and mortar” contact centres is to regularly overhaul their décor by pitching your agents against one another in a pod decorating competition. But you can still get agents to decorate their home workspaces and make a game of it.

Once you have chosen a theme, hand each team £10 on a Monday morning and give them until Thursday night to (secretly!) plan and purchase their decorations.

On Friday, ask your agents to reveal their purchases and decorate their pod between calls and during their breaks. The management team can then decide on a winner and give out a prize. This could be anything from a box of chocolates to an early finish.

You can also ask your agents to hand over their receipts, which can be used in a tie-breaker situation. For example, the team who spent the least wins.

12. Support Agents in Their Hobbies Outside of Work

Here is a fun idea to help promote better relationships between your agents.

Where possible, try to support and encourage agents in their personal hobbies outside of work. For example, if one of your agents is in a band, organize a company social event to go and support them.

This will help to improve team bonding as well as reassure agents that you care about more than just their key performance indicators (KPIs).

13. Understand the Art of Language

Considering how many conversations we have with customers, it is amazing how little we think about the words that we use.

Sure, we have the quality scoring sessions to ensure that we used the customer’s name, or that we have used the compliance statements.

But how much effort have we put into considering the power of the words that we use?

In letter or email writing it is all about using simple and clear language. On the telephone it is all about the tone of voice that is used in the conversation.

Cutting across it all is the power of words – words that have an emotional connection.

To find out how you can improve the language of your contact centre, read our article: Positive Language for Customer Service Conversations

14. People Will Stay With Your Company If They Have a Career

There are two interesting factors in retaining staff – a career plan and a best friend at work.

A career plan doesn’t have to be all about moving up the career ladder into management (although for some it would be) or about moving into a different department.

You can also allow people to develop a career plan in speaking to customers. The smarter contact centres allow people to progress in their jobs by acquiring extra skills or product knowledge – perhaps by becoming a product expert.

The tough part is trying to match the remuneration levels to the new skills.

For more on the power of friends at work, read our article: Employee Engagement: Do You Have a Best Friend at Work?

15. Don’t Stop the Training!

When things get busy, don’t stop the training.

It is a common thing that I see in contact centres. When the contact centre gets busy, it is “all hands to the pumps” and the training gets postponed (for “postponed” read “cancelled”). But when things get busy is particularly when you need the training.

Stopping training is the wrong answer. You may need to do some overtime. You may need to get people to come in on a Saturday to do a training session.

When you cancel or postpone a training session, you may not realize it, but you are sending out a subtle signal to your staff that training is not very important.

Staff will then pick up on this and will also see it as not so important. And if your team leaders pick up on this, it can be even more damaging.

So when things get busy do not stop the training!

16. Simplify the Words You Use in Emails and Webchats

If you are writing to customers it is important to simplify the words that you use. But that is obvious – isn’t it?

Yes, but while you may think that you are already using simple words, there is a good chance that you may not be.

Why does it matter?

There are a number of reasons why using simplified language is important.

Customers may not understand any jargon that you are using.

• According to UK Parliament statistics, there were 9.5 million foreign-born residents in the UK in 2019 (14.3% of the total population).
• There are around 1.5 million in the UK with learning difficulties [source: Office for National Statistics (2019)].

If any customers do not understand the language you are using, they may become more anxious and may well contact you to get you to explain. This will only increase your call volumes.

It is not difficult to simplify the language. Get together a group of advisors and go through your customer communications (particularly the frequently used templates) and see how they could be improved.

17. Publicly Celebrate Your Agents on Social Media

The next time one of your agents presents you with a “wow moment”, post a photo of them on your Instagram/Twitter feed telling the world why they are wonderful.

This will put a smile on the agent’s face as they become instant company ambassadors, as well as help your customers relate to the real people in your contact centre. It will also give your Twitter feed some variety.

Starbucks are a major brand that does this very well. They post stories that means a lot to their employees on Instagram and share them, in the hope of raising awareness for certain causes – like in the example below.

For more advice on how to best use social media in the contact centre, read our article: How to Provide Great Social Customer Service – With Tips, Challenges and Expert Research

18. Send Your Best Agents to Customer-Facing Events

The next time your events team are heading out or watching a virtual event, send one or two of your best agents along with them.

Your agents will appreciate the variety in their week, while the events team will benefit from having a customer expert on hand to answer any nitty-gritty questions.

Alternatively, ask your agents to help put together an FAQ sheet that the events team can reference when they are out and about.

19. Give Agents “Bonus” Opportunities to Leave Their Desks

Being a contact centre agent is one of the only jobs where you don’t have the freedom to get up and make a cup of tea as you please.

You can boost morale by giving agents extra time off the phones when you can. Some telephone systems have a wrap-up timer that allows agents a short pause between calls.

You could also reward agents with free time if they make a sale.

For more ideas of rewards for call centre agents, read our article: How to Improve Your Employee Reward Schemes – With Examples

20. Double Check Your Metrics Aren’t Contradicting You

When trying to change your company culture, make sure all aspects of the company are aligned so you don’t send mixed messages, contradict yourself or make it difficult for your agents to meet their new goals.

This is especially important in your choice of metrics, as you could struggle to drive a customer-focused culture while heavily targeting agents against Average Handling Time (AHT).

You should also look out for other contradictions – such as banning the use of mobile phones on the floor while the management team play with theirs in full view.

21. Don’t Just Hand Out Treats on a Friday

Friday is a natural go-to when wanting to celebrate the week with some cake, ice cream or other treat, but this is the day most people take off – as they try to kick-start their holiday or have a long weekend.

If you vary the time and day you share treats in the contact centre each week, you can help to make your treats more inclusive, as well as spice up the usual routine.

22. Condense Internal Memos to Make Them Easier to Understand

Instead of sending out lengthy emails containing every last detail regarding a new update, try condensing it into just a few key points.

This is a far better way to ensure your colleagues absorb the information.

If you still want them to have access to additional detail, you can include a “link to more information” for those who do want to read more into the subject.

You may have a fight on your hands with some people who think every one of their 1,000 words is necessary, but once they see the wider benefit, it should all be fine.

23. Reward Everyone for Great Customer Service

You probably already reward your agents for delivering great customer service.

While it is your agents’ job to work on the front line – and they certainly deserve recognition for a job well done – everyone in your business has the ability to impact the customer experience.

With this in mind, you should reward everyone when customer service targets are met. This could be through the introduction of a company-wide bonus scheme or treating staff to a monthly or annual dinner when customer service targets have been met.

With a direct reward system in place, even those who don’t speak to the customers on a day-to-day basis will try to do their best to make sure everything goes smoothly.

Do you want to reward your people with the right incentives? If so, check out our article: Reward Everyone for Great Customer Service

24. Colour Code Your Internal Emails

Many contact centre employees receive a large number of internal emails throughout the day, from everyone from the receptionist trying to locate the person who has left their lights on to the team leader trying to share a vital update.

Information overload often results in many of these messages being zoned out, especially during a busy day.

A good solution to this is to colour code your internal emails

For example:

• RED – URGENT UPDATES
• YELLOW – IMPORTANT INFORMATION
• GREEN – GOOD TO KNOW

It can also help if you segment your bank of email addresses, so people only receive the emails that are relevant to them.

Just make sure you create a firm definition of what each colour code means – and make sure everyone sticks to it. Otherwise everything will end up RED and you’ll be back to where you started.

For more great email tips, read our article: What Is Customer Email Management? – With 10 Simple Tips, Software Advice and Mistakes to Avoid

25. Understand How Timing Impacts the Core Focus of Customer Surveys

Depending on the time you ring them, customers will tend to focus on different aspects of the call in your post-call surveys.

If you ring a customer back immediately, the agent’s personality will be at the forefront of their mind. You may subsequently find their opinion of your processes is shaped by the good or bad rapport they’ve built with your agent.

On the other hand, if you call one week after the call, the customer probably won’t remember the experience they had with the agent (unless it was particularly awful) and will instead have a more balanced view of the end-to-end experience with your business.

Instead of trying to capture all of this data, create two separate surveys – one for agent feedback and another for your processes, and adjust your timings accordingly.

26. Think About Why Your Agents Are Using “Should”

Words like “should” and “probably” have the power to kill customer confidence, as they can make agents come across as uninformed or (even worse) as liars.

Do you know what words your agents are using?

If you hear an endless torrent of “should”, “could” and “hopefully” in your call recordings, it could be a red flag to a deeper problem.

Your agents might not believe in the promises they are making or haven’t had enough training to have conviction in what they’re saying.

Whatever the root cause, it needs addressing, and fast!

For more language to avoid and better alternatives, read our article: Positive Scripting for Customer Service

27. Send Teams on Virtual Coffee Breaks Together

Sending your teams on coffee breaks together is a great way to promote team bonding, as it grants them the opportunity to build more personal relationships by talking about their home life and hobbies.

If this looks like a scheduling nightmare to you, scale the idea to just one-off “bonding” sessions once a week or month – in the same way you would a training session. Team leaders can also step in to take calls for the 10-15 minutes the agents are away from the phones.

Alternatively, why not offer each team a free breakfast – with a Deliveroo or Uber Eats voucher – once a month, if they all have to start really early one morning.

28. Respect Your Customer’s Choice of Channel

Ringing back every customer who emails you isn’t always the best strategy.

Some contact centres take the approach that it is quicker and easier to ring back a customer who has contacted them via Twitter or email, especially if the query is more complex.

But your good intentions may be doing more harm than you think!

• What if your customer is on a train?
• What if they have a stutter?
• What if they just don’t enjoy talking over the phone?

By following up an email query with a phone call, you are disregarding your customer’s personal preference and making them wonder why they bothered with email at all.

Instead, train your agents to attempt to answer all queries on the channel they came in on – and if they still feel the need to switch channels, they should ask the customer before picking up the phone!

29. Ask Customers to Rate Agents Separately to Your Processes

If your customers are giving one score to rate their entire experience, it can be hard to understand exactly where your customer experience is going wrong.

You won’t be able to tell, for example, if an agent built brilliant rapport and the process let the customer down, or if everything went smoothly and the agent had a poor attitude. This is because both of these scenarios could receive a less-than-perfect score but generate no clear understanding as to why this happened.

You can overcome this by splitting your surveys into two distinct parts – processes and agent behaviour.

Once you start to collect this specific information, you can identify where your real weaknesses are and take action to improve them.

30. Ask Agents to Stand Up When They Put Customers on Hold

This is a good tip for if you choose to stop remote working and switch back to a brick-and-mortar contact centre.

Ask agents to stand up any time they put a customer on hold. It is a great way to demonstrate just how long it feels to the customer and to encourage agents to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

This action can also act as a visual cue to a supervisor that something is wrong, especially if they see an agent standing up for more than five minutes.

Another idea is to extend this practice to call quality exercises, where a manager or supervisor stands up for the time the customer was put on hold to help better understand the customer experience.

31. Encourage Live Chat Agents to Not Be Too Robotic

It is easy for live chat agents to fall into the habit of using the same copy and paste responses when talking to your customers – often making them appear robotic and uncaring.

To overcome this, you should encourage your agents to act more freely in their conversations. Train them to think outside the box, be themselves and look out for cues which will help them build better rapport.

Asking customers if they would like to hear an (appropriate) joke, or wishing them good luck in their new home if they are contacting you to change their address, will go a long way in creating a fun, memorable (and maybe even tweet-able) experience.

For more great live chat pointers, read our article: 10 Best Practices to Improve Live Chat

32. Direct Calls by Difficulty

Amend your IVR options so that the more technical and complex queries are directed to an experienced agent, while your simpler queries are sent through to the newer members of the team.

This two-tiered system will help your new starters to settle in. It will also make it easier for you to handle overflow in busy periods, as you can ensure your temps only receive the simpler queries too.

Find lots of great ways to direct calls by reading our article: The Top 10 Call Routing Strategies

33. Make Your Feedback More Precise

After listening in on your agents’ calls, you may have a long list of what your team need to do to improve.

But if you aren’t tactful with how you deliver these suggestions, you could be risking information overload – which won’t do your agents or their performance any good.

One way to overcome this issue is to make your feedback more precise – and more memorable – by delivering each point using the Situation, Behaviour, Effect, Wish model.

• Situation – What was the situation?
• Behaviour – What did the agent do?
• Effect – How did it affect the customer?
• Wish – How should the agent act in the future?

34. Reward Agents for Improving

It is easy to direct all your praise at your top performers, but it is far more beneficial to praise agents who have made noticeable improvement in their work.

Making an effort to ensure that those who are improving – and not necessarily ‘perfect’ – are recognized for their efforts will help to keep the whole contact centre motivated to reach their full potential.

You don’t have to overhaul your whole agent recognition scheme either. You could just add a new category called “areas of noticeable improvement” to your quality assurance (QA) scorecard or add a “Most Improved” category to your monthly or annual awards.

35. Remind Your Agents of Their Success

It is easy to generate excitement in the contact centre with spot prizes, award ceremonies and sweet treats, but the fun times are quickly forgotten once normality sets back in.

A great way to keep morale high is to regularly remind your agents of the fun times they’ve had and the awards they have won.

Here are some ideas to help your team relive their favourite moments:

• Take photos to mark special occasions – even the little ones – and stick the photos on an online internal social group.
• Dedicate one of your central dashboards to celebrating your agents’ achievements. You can then “shout out” about great calls past and present – as well as keep a running loop of every “Agent of the Month” that year.
• Put a slide-show presentation together at the end of every month or year to celebrate your agents’ achievements. Presenting this at a team meeting virtually, with a lively backing track, is a great way to bring a smile to everyone’s faces.
• Give out certificates as well as edible prizes, so agents have something to keep on their desks.

36. Use the Intranet to Build Cross-Site Relationships

When running a national (or even international) contact centre operation, it can be hard to promote team spirit between your different sites – especially if agents are working at opposite ends of the country and never get to see each other.

A shared intranet site is a great way to bring everyone together in spirit.

Once set up, agents across all sites can regularly share fun photos, updates and achievements for everyone to see. For example, photos of everyone dressed up for Comic Relief.

For more ideas to improve communication across the business, read our article: 7 Clever Ways to Improve Internal Communication Between Departments

37. Tackle Seasonal Peaks With Flexible Contracts

If you are struggling to staff your contact centre evenly throughout the year, try introducing flexible contracts.

Flexible contracts allow agents to work more during busy times and less during quieter times but still get paid a regular monthly income.

This is a win–win situation. You won’t be scrabbling around for time-filling exercises and your contact centre will be staffed properly throughout the year.

Your agents will also be more engaged, as they won’t spend half the year twiddling their thumbs at their desks.

To find out how to manage spikes in call demands, read our article: The Fundamentals of Contact Centre Peak Management

38. Regularly Mix Up Your Virtual Groups

Most contact centres give agents virtual meetings with a few fellow agents in order to protect their teams against social isolation while working from home.

It can be hard to encourage knowledge sharing and good communication in a contact centre with an “us and them” mentally existing between the teams.

One way to overcome this is to mix up your teams and/or seating arrangements two or three times every year. This should help to break down any communication barriers and encourage a more cohesive working environment.

If you are faced with some resistance, you could support each “changeover” day with a day of team-building activities.

39. Streamline Your Quality Scorecards

How many separate criteria do you have listed on your agents’ current QA scorecards? Can’t remember off the top of your head?

Your agents probably can’t either – and how are they supposed to improve if they don’t know exactly what they are working towards?

Streamlining your scorecards into 5-10 actionable points can help drive real change in your contact centre, as agents will understand exactly what is expected of them and won’t feel so overwhelmed.

When making your condensed list, think about what is really important to your contact centre. If you pick areas that go beyond basic training (e.g. how to introduce themselves), you can focus on the areas that will drive quality up from good to great.

If you are worried about skipping over compliance issues, you could try separating your quality process into two steps – compliance and “wow” factors.

For more advice on improving your QA scorecards, check out our article: How to Create a Contact Centre Quality Scorecard – With a Template Example

40. Learn From Agents’ Past Experiences

It is really easy to do things the same way just because “it’s the way we’ve always done it”.

Having a long-established management team in place can also make it difficult to challenge processes or generate genuinely new ideas.

A great way to expose yourself to a different point of view is to ask your new agents what worked well in their previous job.

By gaining an understanding of how other companies have tackled similar problems, you can begin to make positive changes in your own contact centre.

41. Use Dual Screens

A simple way to make your agents more productive is to provide two large PC screens per agent.

Costs have fallen considerably over the past few years and a new 24-inch screen can be bought for less than £80 ($105).

Agents can then lay out their screens next to each other and can be logged into the different systems that they need to look after the customer.

If you are running off an older PC, you may already have two display outputs (one for HDMI and one for VGA/DVI).

If you have a more recent computer with just one HDMI card, you need to buy a USB to HDMI adaptor.

42. Hold Monthly or Quarterly Staff Surveys

It’s generally acknowledged that happy staff = happy customers. How do you know if your staff are still engaged if you rely on an annual staff satisfaction survey?

A much better idea is to do a regular (monthly or quarterly) survey of your staff to check if they are still engaged.

You should also try varying the questions that you ask.

Here are a few good ones:

• Do you have a best friend at work?
• Do your technology tools help or hinder your performance?
• Do you have the correct information to do your job properly?

43. Train Your Advisors to Recognize Emotions

Recognizing and reacting to customers’ emotions can be a great way to build rapport and turn around angry customers.

For example, if a caller sounds angry or upset, a good approach could be to say: “It sounds as though you are angry or upset.”

If they agree you could follow up with: “That sounds really bad – why don’t you tell me about what has happened?”

You then need to be quiet and listen. This will help the caller to offload their emotions.

A good check question would be to ask yourself after the call: “If this was your nan, would you be happy with the outcome?”

For more on the benefits of emotional intelligence, read our article: How to Improve Your Customer Service with Emotional Intelligence

44. Allow Your Staff to Set Their Own Breaks

An old method that worked well in some contact centres to allow staff to set their own breaks starts with a goldfish bowl and a number of table tennis balls.

When a member of staff goes for a break, they must take a ball. If there are not enough balls, they can’t go for a break until someone brings a ball back.

This way the team will work out for themselves how to handle the breaks.

The team will love it and it’s definitely a topic that you can bring up with your planning team.

To do this remotely, there will likely also be an easy way to use online counters instead of table tennis balls.

45. Get the Processes Right

There are so many broken processes that are making customers unhappy and are costing the company a lot of money.

So, spend time with the team identifying the major broken processes and then do a vote to identify the top three problems.

Then put maximum effort into fixing just these three processes. It will be quite hard work and can get quite bogged down in detail, but it will be worth it.

Once you have fixed these three processes, repeat the exercise. You’ll soon find strengths in what you are doing and the next batch will be a lot easier.

Remember, success breeds success.

46. Understand That Your Team Has Its Own Chemistry

Your team has its own chemistry, and you are the alchemist that can pull it all together.

In your team you will have all sorts of magical powers in the form of the strengths of all your players.

It’s your job as a leader to figure out what these special skills are and how you can blend these together for the greater good.

Fizz or bang – you have a lot of power at your fingertips!

47. Remember, It’s Not All About Efficiency!

We have a tendency to treat the contact centre like a big factory of telephone calls and emails.

This becomes most apparent when we look at contact centre metrics. Numbers of calls, average handling time, service level and cost per call are all measures of efficiency. But they are not good measures of effectiveness.

It is better to start using metrics that look at outcomes.

We need to develop a culture where we do the right things for our customers and the stats don’t get in the way.

48. Go and Talk With Marketing

The contact centre benefits from a good relationship with Marketing, so staff are aware of upcoming promotions. And Marketing needs a good relationship with the contact centre in order to help it understand clients’ needs.

One way to improve communication between customer service and Marketing is to set up regular contact between the two. Try holding regular face-to-face meetings if possible, or user video-conferencing if teams are remote.

For more on creating a strong relationship with marketing, read our article: How to Better Integrate Customer Service and Marketing

49. Focus on People’s Strengths

Don’t only focus on the weaknesses of people working for you and try to manage them out of those weaknesses.

That’s one of the best ways to demotivate people – and one that abounds in our educational system.

It’s much better to make sure that we understand people’s strengths and their special gifts – and we try to maximize on them.

In a team environment, we can ensure that the strengths of the team will more than adequately compensate for the weaknesses of one individual.

50. Get Out of Crisis Mode and Into Strategic Mode

It’s very easy to get stuck in long-term crisis mode.

Too many calls, too many escalations, not enough staff to handle contact volumes, technology that is struggling today. These all sound like “crisis mode”.

You need to take a step back from the business and start building some strategic plans.

Remember, ignoring long-term planning doesn’t make it go away.

Here are a few examples of long-term strategies to try out: The Top 10 Customer Service Strategies That Stand the Test of Time

For lots more quick ideas for running a great contact centre, read our articles:

• 50 Ideas to Transform Your Contact Centre
• 50 Call Centre Training Tips
• 59 Call Centre Quality Assurance Tips