The Top 20 Articles

Over the last 20 years we’ve shared thousands of articles with our audience.

Here are the top twenty articles, according to our analytics figures. Enjoy!

1. The Top 50 Words to Describe Yourself on Your CV

Struggling to find the words to describe yourself and enhance your résumé? Then try out our CV buzzwords, key adjectives and examples, which will boost your chances of getting your dream job.

Views: 1,884,231

The Top 50 Words to Describe Yourself on Your CV

2. Top 50 Positive Words and Phrases – With Examples

Looking for some positive spiel to help brighten up your customer conversations? Here we have put together a list of positive words and phrases for your advisors to use.

Views: 407,205

Top 50 Positive Words and Phrases – With Examples

3. Empathy Statements for Customer Service

Here are our tried-and-tested empathy statements for customer service that can help agents build great rapport – across all channels.

Views: 282,875

Empathy Statements for Customer Service

4. The Top 10 Acknowledgement Statements for Customer Service and Difficult Situations

Want to coach your agents on acknowledging the customer’s query at the start of every conversation, but don’t know where to start? We’re here to help!

Views: 227,185

The Top 10 Acknowledgement Statements for Customer Service and Difficult Situations

5. 150 Great Complimentary Words and Phrases to Use in Customer Service

Looking for some compliments to add into your call centre scripts?

We have put together a list of over 150 examples of complimentary words for customer service to help your agents boost their conversation with friendly rapport – every time.

Views: 217,718

150 Great Complimentary Words and Phrases to Use in Customer Service

6. The Best Customer Service Greeting Phrases – With Examples

Want to refresh your call centre scripts with great customer service greetings?

Or maybe you’ve pondered what the first sentence you say to every customer should be, or whether you really need to say ‘thank you for calling’ at the start of every conversation, then look no further!

Views: 154,093

The Best Customer Service Greeting Phrases – with Examples

7. 102 Excellent Customer Service Quotes

Motivate your teams by making sure that you hang some of these inspirational customer service quotes on the walls of your contact centre.

Views: 119,504

102 Excellent Customer Service Quotes

8. UK Phonetic Alphabet – Free Download

The UK Phonetic Alphabet is a way of spelling out letters that can be easily confused on the telephone.

Get your free download of the UK Phonetic Alphabet now.

Views: 133,346

UK Phonetic Alphabet – Free Download

9. Probing Questions to Improve Your Customer Service – With Examples

Want to better understand your customers’ problems? Try introducing more probing questions into the conversation.

Here, we share some great examples of probing questions you can use straight away, alongside advice on key probing techniques and skills.

Views: 112,057

Probing Questions to Improve Your Customer Service – With Examples

10. How to Work Out How Many Staff You Need in a Contact Centre

Working out how many staff you need in a contact centre is a straightforward task, but it is easy to make mistakes.

We have condensed all the information that you need to make this calculation into an easy-to-use, nine-step process, and we have also covered what you should NEVER do when making this calculation.

Views: 111,760

How to Work Out How Many Staff You Need in a Contact Centre

11. How to Calculate Contact Centre Shrinkage

Here is a definitive method on how to calculate shrinkage – including the shrinkage formula and a free shrinkage calculator – as endorsed by industry experts, alongside information on how to apply shrinkage to the call centre.

Views: 107,492

How to Calculate Contact Centre Shrinkage

12. How to Handle Angry Customers in a Call Centre

Here we present our analysis of the four main irate customer personality types and our list of suggested phrases for tackling these most difficult of characters.

In addition, we also supply a list of words we recommend using and helpful advice from our readers on how to deal with angry customers.

Views: 100,683

How to Handle Angry Customers in a Call Centre

13. Erlang C Formula – Made Simple With an Easy Worked Example

The Erlang C formula is quite complex to look at, but can be straightforward to apply, if you follow these easy steps.

We have also included a worked example in Excel to help you follow the maths.

Views: 100,178

Erlang C Formula – Made Simple With an Easy Worked Example

14. How to Write a Good Customer Service Letter – With Examples

We take a look at how to put together a great customer service letter, giving examples to bring best practice to life.

Views: 97,672

How to Write a Good Customer Service Letter – With Examples

15. 10 Effective Questioning Techniques for Customer Service

We examine ten key techniques for questioning customers, listing lots of helpful probing questions and skills along the way.

Views: 96,176

10 Effective Questioning Techniques for Customer Service

16. How to Calculate Attrition Rate – The Formula

We look at how to measure and calculate attrition rates in the contact centre.

Views: 95,689

How to Calculate Attrition Rate – The Formula

17. What Is the Phonetic Alphabet?

We introduce the phonetic alphabet before highlighting why contact centre advisors should use it and how to train them to do so.

Views: 92,021

What is the Phonetic Alphabet?

18. 28 Effective Ways to Build Rapport With Customers and Clients

Here are some tips and advice on building rapport with customers, along with snippets of advice from our readers.

Views: 90,208

28 Effective Ways to Build Rapport With Customers and Clients

19. The Best Call-Closing Statements – With Examples

Here’s a round-up of some of the best closing spiel, statements, and phrases for your call scripts – as well as some handy hints too.

Views: 85,979

The Best Call-Closing Statements – With Examples

20. “Sorry for the Inconvenience” – How to Offer a Genuine Apology

So what is the best way to apologize for the mistake and the inconvenience?

Liz Doig of Wordtree shares her advice for avoiding awful apology statements like “sorry for the inconvenience” and turning “sorry” into lifelong loyalty.

Views: 82,761

“Sorry for the Inconvenience” – How to Offer a Genuine Apology

Top Tools

1. Erlang Calculator – for Call Centre Staffing (Online Version 5.0)

Views: 1,230,373

Erlang Calculator – for Call Centre Staffing (Online Version 5.0)

2. Online Forecast Calculator (Beta Version 2.0)

Views: 55,160

Online Forecast Calculator (Beta Version 2.0)

3. The Multi-Channel Calculator (Version 0.9)

Views: 31,738

The Multi-Channel Calculator (Version 0.9)

We hope that you found each of these stories, and all of the others published throughout the years, informative, and that you were able to implement some of these ideas in your contact centre.

But stay tuned, as we look to create even more great articles in 2023.

And remember to subscribe to our newsletter if you don’t want to miss out!

Viewing stats and social shares are accurate as of 1st June 2023.